Abb Case Analysis

In the changing business environment, leaders of all organisations may face unprecedented uncertainty, especially the technology advancement and changes among the employees. To survive and succeed, leaders should have some necessary attributes. Meanwhile, some changes for leadership skills have to be made to confront the challenges.

An organization must align its strategy and structure to allow itself to achieve performance improvements over time. The four different structures, simple, functional, multidivisional, and matrix, are all suited to allow companies with different strategies to succeed but the company must decide which of these is correct for itself. A small start-up company will overburden itself with excessive cost if it seeks to implement a functional structure because it clearly will not have the talent on hand to create whole departments of HR employees or accountants. On the other hand, a company that grows to become a large multi-national

Structure is the basis through which an organization seeks to create control the direction of an organization. This is completed through clear definitions of the allocation of work, differentiation, and the coordination of having those responsibilities working together towards the efforts of the organization, integration (Bolman & Deal, 1993, pp). Through these methods, the organization is able to devise a division of labor that collaborates to bring about the missions and goals of an organization. The structure that comes about from this can be varied in their rigidness and flexibility it allows, and to an extent this is a great contribution to its success.

Matrix organizational structures combine the characteristics of a functional and divisional organizational structure. The matrix organizational structure works more like a team. Instead of department heads, each team has a leader. Matrix organizational structures bring together employees who focus on a project, but fill different roles from across your business. The matrix organizational structure has the most decentralization, which means it can confuse employees about who is in charge. The matrix organizational structure is appropriate if your business operates on an international level, or serves different geographic regions.

All businesses have organisational structures, even if they are small or big, they have some type of structure so they can operate productively.

● Performance evaluation is more complex and more subject to error in a matrix form of organization.

A business’ organizational structure is critical to the business and the employees. An organizational structure is “the manner in which an organization arranges (or rearranges) itself” (Fontaine, 2007, p. 6). At Kudler Fine Foods (KFF) the organizational structure that they operate under is a functional structure. A functional organizational structure is a structure where the position and function of employees are clearly specified. The business is divided into separate departments with specific tasks (Pearce & Robinson, 2009).

The Functional, Product/Division, Hybrid, and Matrix are traditional structures that may work depending on the organization's size and goals (Organizational behavior). This is important to understand seeing that each structure has positive and negative effects. Multinational organizations utilize these structures in their own ways, picking bits and pieces to create their unique structures in accordance with demands. Creating a structure in which to run a company is no easy task because it takes time and effort to analyze what is beneficial for the company and its employees.

Though it is obvious why understanding organizations is critical to business success, nevertheless it is worthwhile to review these reasons. The structure of a firm either enhances or hinders efficiency and productivity. In other words, how information flows and to whom, whether and how many parts of the work process is redundant, how clear and precise is the reporting structure, if and how new ideas and products are promoted - these and many more issues are obvious consequences of structure and profoundly affect the success of the business.

BEC has taken on the matrix organizational structure. This type of structure combines functional and divisional organization structure styles. There are advantages and disadvantages in utilizing this

Organisation structure can vary along a number of dimensions in the form of bureaucratic, functional, matrix or network structure. The choice of structure is influenced by an organisation’s strategy, its size and the technology used. As an organisation changes its strategy to respond to PEST factors in its external environment, so should its structure change to maintain the strategy-structure relationship (Senior, 2002). To allow organisational survival, organisations tend to favour flatter and more flexible ways of working compared to hierarchical organisational forms and bureaucratic control systems which can be a hindrance to change (Collier & Esteban, 2000).

A matrix structure will not be successful if an organization’s employees are not trained with the ability and skills necessary to operate within the structure. Employees must have the right mindset and behaviors in order to operate in an environment that is constantly conflicted with multiple bosses and simultaneously pursuing multiple aims (Bartlett and Ghoshal, 1990; Ford and Randolph, 1992). The employees need to have the same goals within the organization so there is less competition among them. For example take two teams one is in marketing and one is in development if both of them have different goals to achieve this leads to conflict among both teams creating a dysfunctional workplace. These same employees also need to know exactly what their job requires them to do. The matrix structure adds flexibility to the organization but the company needs to make sure that the responsibilities of the top executives are not the only known responsibilities, those job indicators need to be exchanged between all levels of the workforce. The flexibility the structure provides can lead to untimely decisions. This is created by the fact that the matrix structure requires input and collaboration among its staff. The employees may have trouble deciding whose’ input is needed because the interpersonal skills of the employees is lacking leading to untimely decisions that could result in a loss of quality. Or the employees may just become divisionally focused and not see the organization

There are many different types of structures any organisation can operate with depending on what their purpose is but, for this study, the following types of organisational structures will be discussed: the flat structure, the tall

* Lack of Information and communication across divisions Each division maintains its own marketing, manufacturing, logistics and administrative departments (Silos)

The basic advantage of the matrix structure is that it facilitates to the changing market and technical requirements. “The matrix combines a vertical structure with an equally strong horizontal overlay.” (N Anand & Richard L Daft 2007) The horizontal structure provides coordination while the vertical structure operating as silos provides traditional control within functional departments. The shifting emphasis from flat organisation to matrix organisation has reshaped the roles of Thinc directors. The biggest difference has been having direct control over resource utilisation and profit margin to achieve the target. An employment survey done in 2015 which showed 52% of employees didn’t know how individual roles fit into organisation goals. (Refer Table 2 Turner & Townsend Thinc Employment Survey Result 2015, point