Reframing Organizations. Lee G. Bolman
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Название: Reframing Organizations

Автор: Lee G. Bolman

Издательство: John Wiley & Sons Limited

Жанр: Управление, подбор персонала

Серия:

isbn: 9781119756842

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СКАЧАТЬ and shipped. Work is fast‐paced, intense, and often strenuous. Amazon's warehouse workers have been known to say they are “treated like a piece of crap” (Soper, 2011, p. 1), but Zappos makes working conditions a primary concern. The warehouses are air‐conditioned, and lunch breaks are embellished with free food, video games, and karaoke—the equivalent of adding several dollars to the hourly rate. One employee summed it up: “It's a hot boring job, and we may not get paid top dollar, but with our benefits and free food, it really makes a difference.”

      In 2013, Hsieh concluded that Zappos was developing too much bureaucracy and proposed a “holacratic” form that eliminated jobs and the organization chart. Managers were replaced by “lead links” of self‐managing teams, and individuals were charged to use the “Role Marketplace” (Bernstein et al., 2016, p. 10) to look for work that interested them and needed to be done. The new system turned off some employees, and Zappos lost almost a fifth of its workforce. The transition to holacracy required major investments of time and energy as everyone struggled to figure out how the new system was supposed to work. Things got worse before they got better, as is typical of structural change. Most efforts fail. But, working within the holacracy framework, by 2015, Zappos achieved a 75 percent year‐over‐year increase in profits (Bernstein et al., 2016). The long‐term impact on Zappos' free‐wheeling culture remains to be seen, and Zappos has modified the model to make it more consistent with the company's human values, but this experiment may turn out to be less crazy than critics expected (Groth, 2020).

      Zappos and Amazon achieve customer satisfaction through entirely different structural arrangements. What makes the story even more interesting is that Amazon paid over $1 billion to buy Zappos in November 2009. More than a year later, Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh sent a memo to employees saying the culture was still intact, Zappos was still in charge of its own destiny, and business was better than ever (Lashinsky, 2010). That was still true a decade later in 2020.

Dimension Structural Implications
Size and age Complexity and formality typically increase with size and age
Core process Structure must align with core processes or technologies
Environment Stable environment rewards simpler structure; uncertain, turbulent environment requires a more complex, flexible structure
Strategy and goals Variation in clarity and consistency of strategy requires appropriate structural adaptations
Information technology Information technology permits flatter, more flexible, and more decentralized structures
Nature of the workforce More educated and professional workers need and want greater autonomy and discretion

      Structural Imperatives

      Size and Age

      Size and age affect structural shape and character. Problems crop up if growth (or downsizing) occurs without fine‐tuning roles and relationships. A small, entrepreneurial organization typically has simple, informal architecture. Growth spawns formality and complexity (Greiner, 1972; Quinn and Cameron, 1983). If carried too far, this leads to the suffocating bureaucratic rigidity often seen in large, mature enterprises.

      The concept took off when Ray Kroc arrived on the scene. At the time, he was selling milk shake machines to restaurants with modest success. When many of his customers began to ask for the McDonald's milk shake mixer, he decided to visit the brothers. Seeing the original stand, Kroc realized the potential: “Unlike the homebound McDonalds, Kroc had traveled extensively, and he could envision hundreds of large and small markets where a McDonald's could be located. He understood the existing food services businesses, and understood how a McDonald's unit could be a formidable competitor” (Love, 1986, pp. 39–40). Kroc persuaded the McDonald brothers to let him take over the franchising effort. The rest is history (or Hollywood, which tells its version of the story—an unflattering portrayal of Ray Kroc—in the 2016 film, The Founder).

      Core Process

      Structure forms around an organization's basic method of transforming raw materials into finished products. Every organization has at least one core technology that includes raw materials, activities that turn inputs into outputs, and underlying beliefs about the links among inputs, activities, and outcomes (Dornbusch and Scott, 1975).

      Core technologies vary in clarity, predictability, and effectiveness. Assembling a Big Mac is relatively routine and programmable. The task is clear, most potential problems are known in advance, and the probability of success is high. Its relatively simple core technology allows McDonald's to rely mostly on vertical coordination.

      In contrast, Harvard's two core processes—research and teaching—are far more complex and less predictable. Teaching objectives are knotty and amorphous. Unlike hamburger buns, students are active agents. Which teaching strategies best yield desired results is more a matter of faith than of fact. Even if students could be molded predictably, mystery surrounds the knowledge and skills they will need to succeed in life. This uncertain technology, greatly dependent on the skills and knowledge of highly educated professionals, is a key source of Harvard's loosely coordinated structure.

      Some organizations are more susceptible than others to outside influences. Public СКАЧАТЬ