Government by Committee: Organizing for Congressional Business
Congress has twin organizational bases: committees where most of the substantive work on legislation occurs and the leadership provided by the party. Initially Congress tried to operate as a "committee of the whole" but the gridlock that resulted mo...
Mass Appeal: Collective Behavior and Social Movements
The emergence of a social movement often marks the culmination of years of struggle. But as challenging as launching a movement may be, creating an organizational framework that allows that movement to endure can be just as daunting.
Divisional Structure
One type of organizational structure, known as divisional structure, tends to encourage decentralization of authority. It can be organized around products, geography or types of customers.
Organizational Re-Design: Mercy Hospital and Medical Center
To operate more efficiently in the increasingly competitive world of health care, Mercy Hospital and Medical Center instituted a massive organizational re-design called Care 2000. In Mercy's former design, the simplest tasks were parceled out to a m...
Organizational Design and Change
Like Hospitals everywhere, Mercy Hospital and Medical Center has had to deal with drastic changes in a business environment that has become increasingly competitive.
Organizational Design and Diversification: Fluor Corporation, The
To implement its diversification strategy, Fluor Daniel adopted a highly flexible, diversified network organizational design that aligned separate business units with a wide variety of engineering and construction markets.
Organizational Structure
Organizing, as the word suggests, is the phase of management that defines the structure of an organization. It lays out a set of parts and coordinates efforts to achieve goals developed in the planning phase. In practice, however, many organizations...
Organizational Structure: Traditional vs. Non-Traditional
Although specific organizational designs vary from company to company, there has been a broad trend away from what might be called mechanistic organizational designs toward more organic ones. Mechanistic designs depend on centralized authority and m...
Matrix Structure
One type of organizational structure, known as matrix structure, involves an overlay of two different forms of structure. It temporarily groups together specialists from different functional departments or divisions to work on special project or pro...
Organizational Structure Case Study: Patagonia
At Patagonia, which produces high quality, outdoor clothing, the organizational structure originally was based on a steep hierarchy, with up to eight levels between the individual working in production and the CEO. In time, however, that structure w...