Team-Based Organizational Design: Enhancing Integration

1. Organizational Design, Diagnosis, and Development Session 8 Team-Based Designs

2. Objectives • To contrast team-based designs with divisional and mixed structures • To review the history of team-based designs • To examine: liaison roles, cross-functional teams, matrix structures, and cluster and network organizations

3. Team-Based Designs • What are they: A design technique to achieve lateral integration across functional areas. • Integration is across functional areas around a specific product or service • Team-based designs are simultaneous structures • They are used early in a product cycle to facilitate development

4. Varieties of Team-Based Designs • Liaison roles: Someone who is the interface between two departments that need to work together • Cross-functional teams:These structures give leadership responsibility but formal authority is lacking • Matrix organization: Formal authority rests both with functional heads and with team or project leaders • Cluster and Network organizations: These are advanced matrix structures with investments in information systems to provide enhanced integration.

5. Value of Team-based Designs • Advantage: these structures were designed and bring enhanced flexibility, communication quality, and product focus • Disadvantage: these structures bring a host of management problems

6. Liaison Tasks • Advance communication between departments • Smooth work flow • Interpret corporate policy • Limitations of the role: limited by status and authority. • Limited when there is more than one department

7. Cross-functional Teams • Features • do not function at high levels • members are permanently part of the functional group but temporarily part of the team • are usually short-lived

8. Team Leadership • A dominant department or functional area • Department most affected by the outcome of the team’s activity • Rotate leadership • Project manager from outside the functional areas

9. Leadership Influence • Position: No direct authority, only indirect • Knowledge: Strong technical knowledge of project and overall knowledge of organization • Budget

10. Matrix Structure R & D Engineering Manufact’ing Product A Product B Product C

11. Key Roles in the Matrix Structure • CEO • Project Manager • Functional Manager • Project members

12. Limitations of the Matrix Structure • Power struggles • Confusion and ambiguity • Demoralized project members • Organizational gridlock

13. Cluster & Network Organizations • Video and voice conferencing replace face to face meetings • Telecommunications allow projects and data to be transferred to all members easily. • Projects can be jointly shared and worked on using asynchronous technologies such as Lotus Notes or other groupware. • Decision support systems assist in making judgments about projects. Voting systems help winnow down alternatives to a management few.

14. Backwards & Forwards • Summing up: Today’s session looked at the liaison role, the cross-functional team, the matrix organization and the cluster or network organization. Each succeeding design increases the ability to integrate across functional areas, each has drawbacks. The most recent design of networked organizations is a reincarnation of the cross functional team which uses information technology to integrate personnel and projects. • Looking ahead: Next time we examine interorganizational designs looking at both joint ventures and virtual organizations