Designing Effective Organizations

'Goold and Campbell, leading thinkers on corporate-level strategy, have turned their attention to corporate-level organization design. They bring a rigor to this topic that will help managers wrestling with multiple reporting dimensions, decentralization and cross-unit co-ordination.' Professor Gary Hamel, London Business School. Author of Competing for the Future and Leading the Revolution. 'Campbell and Goold are renowned for discovering entirely new and useful dimensions to seemingly familiar business issues. This book is another shining example. It allows executives to replace politics and personality as the rationales for an organizational design with clear, effective logic and experience.' Thomas H. Davenport, Director, Accenture Institute for Strategic Change. Author of Process Innovation and Working Knowledge. 'A "must read" for managers and consultants. Redesigning the organization is the most powerful and fastest means for aligning decisions and behavior with strategic objectives. Goold and Campbell provide the best and most comprehensive framework for developing and testing the validity of an organizational structure I have seen in recent years. Based on years of research and experience they offer clear principles and a process to guide managers in the many design decisions and trade-offs involved in developing a more effective organization.' Professor Michael Beer, Harvard Business School. Author of The Critical Path to Corporate Renewal. 'Books on organization design tend to fall into one of two categories: those that provide interesting concepts but not help on how to implement them and those that are full of check lists on implementation, based on sterile and over-simplified ideas. Michael Goold and Andrew Campbell have written perhaps the finest example of an exception I have ever seen - a very practical book, with detailed guidelines on implementation, yet based on a rich and sophisticated understanding of the real challenges of organization design. It will be of immense use to all careful readers.' Professor Sumantra Ghoshal, London Business School. Author of The Individualized Corporation and Managing Across Borders. 'As companies search for all sources of competitive advantage, many are discovering that the ability to organize and execute complex strategies is an important one. Campbell and Goold have again provided us with a good process through which leaders can give organizing its deserved focus.' Professor Jay Galbraith, author of Designing the Global Corporation. 'Campbell and Goold bring much needed clarity and precision to the language of organizational design and show how this can help managers avoid the misunderstandings and differing interpretations that frequently undermine new organization structures.' Paul Coombes, Director, Organization Practice Area, McKinsey & Company. 'Organization change is close to the top of many companies' agendas. Goold and Campbell's book equips you with ideas and frameworks to take on the journey. The real-world examples help make it both pragmatic and readable.' Steve Russell, Chief Executive, The Boots Company plc. 'An impressive work. The taxonomy of organizational units and organigram symbols will be especially useful to managers working on structures.' Philip Sadler, Patron, The Centre for Tomorrow's Company. Author of The Seamless Organization. 'Incredibly relevant in helping to pull together a complicated structure based around the dimensions of channels, products, customers and geography - immensely clear and valuable.' David Roberts, Chief Executive, Personal Financial Services, Barclays plc. 'A welcome breakthrough in designing more effective corporate organization structures. The nine design tests of Goold and Campbell are a valuable addition to an otherwise sparse toolkit.' Jim Haymaker, Vice President, Strategy & Business Development, Cargill Inc. ...

This book on organization theory adopts a distinctive stance. In contrast to the traditional rational approach, it develops a transformational perspective which focuses on the organizational world as a projection of each organizational member's consciousness. While covering all the basic topics of organization theory, the author's approach reflects today's changing management paradigms.

Here's a guide that shows managers how to choose the best organizational design for their business from five basic structures identified by the author. In it readers will discover how to avoid typical mistakes, especially those pertaining to conflict among different divisions.

Many organizational designs are possible, and some are better than others. An effective organization produces excellent results by any standard measure while enhancing the energy and commitment of its members. In the past 40 years, sociotechnical organizational development has proven more successful than any other system in improving bottom-line organizational effectiveness while also paying attention to human values. This book brings together information found scattered throughout the literature and in unpublished documents. Presenting a coherent, jargon-free account of successful sociotechnical design of organizations, it addresses the often difficult prospect of organizational change and presents numerous real-life examples.

Organization structures do not fail, says Jay Galbraith, but management fails at implementing them correctly. This is why, he explains, the idea that the matrix does not work still exists today, even among people who should know better. But the matrix has become a necessary form of organization in today's business environment. Companies now know that if they have multiple product lines, do business in multiple countries, and serve many customer segments through a variety of channels, there is no way they can avoid some kind of a matrix structure and the question most are asking is "How do we learn how to operate the matrix effectively?" In Designing Matrix Organizations That Actually Work, Galbraith answers this and other questions as he shows how to make a matrix work effectively.

This second edition is a leader's concise guide to the process of creating and managing an organization that will achieve competitive advantages and be poised to respond effectively and rapidly to customer demands.

Praise for Leading Organization Design "Sheds light on the challenges of organization design in a complex enterprise and more importantly provides an insightful and practical roadmap for business decisions." —Randy MacDonald, SVP, human resources, IBM "Designing organizations for performance can be a daunting task. Kesler and Kates have done an admirable job distilling the inherent complexity of the design process into manageable parts that can yield tangible results. Leading Organization Design provides an essential hands-on roadmap for any business leader who wants to master this topic." —Robert Simons, Charles M. Williams Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School "Kesler and Kates have encapsulated their wealth of knowledge and practical experience into an updated model on organizational design that will become a new primer on the subject." —Neville Isdell, retired chairman and CEO, The Coca-Cola Company "In today's world of global business, organizational design is a critical piece of long-term success. Kesler and Kates have captured multiple approaches to optimize global opportunities, while highlighting some of the keys to managing through organizational transition. A great read for today's global business leaders." —Charles Denson, president, Nike Brand "Leading Organization Design has some unique features that make it valuable. It is one of the few and certainly only recent books to take us through an explicit process to design modern organizations. This is accomplished with the five-milestone process. The process is not a simple cookbook. Indeed, the authors have achieved a balance between process and content. In so doing, Kesler and Kates show us what to do as well as how to do it." —Jay Galbraith, from the Foreword

Here's a guide that shows managers how to choose the best organizational design for their business from five basic structures identified by the author. In it readers will discover how to avoid typical mistakes, especially those pertaining to conflict among different divisions.