Organization design is part of every manager and leader’s job: attempting to
understand and improve how organizations function through creating or adjusting of roles,
processes, and structures. In fact, most managers are faced with organization design
challenges on an almost daily basis.
Managers constantly design and redesign individual roles, define new projects
(including their structure and reporting relationships), and contemplate better ways to
co-ordinate organizational processes with multiple internal stakeholders. Periodically
they may also make more fundamental changes to business structures, or adapt and implement
high-level designs developed by others.
This textbook introduces concepts and frameworks for designing complex
organizations.
It starts by outlining some of the key concepts that serve as a foundation to
understanding how the theory applies in practice. It also reviews the status of
organisation design - as a field of research and as a practical discipline - both its
achievements, and some of its challenges and limitations. It then discusses how the field
can develop to ensure that it provides research-based and useful knowledge that
contributes to enhancing the effectiveness of organizations.
Table of Contents
About the author
Publisher’s acknowledgements
Preface
Chapter 1 Why design matters
Chapter 2 Organisational complexity
Chapter 3 Managing the organisation design process
Chapter 4 Designing multidimensional organisations
Chapter 5 Designing sub-units
Chapter 6 Structuring vertical layers
Chapter 7 Configuring interfaces
Chapter 8 Rooting out complexity
Index
288 pages, Paperback