tailieunhanh - Resizing The Organization 38

Resizing The Organization 38. This book seeks to provide executives with useful insights, tools, guidelines, principles, and lessons learned about organizational transition and change. | Organizational Adaptability 351 Restructuring On the matter of absolute size adaptable companies strategically restructure their business units. For example rather than making broad-based cutbacks Tenneco adopted a strategy of shrink-and-grow reducing head count aggressively in units and functions where opportunities for growth were limited and maintaining and often adding staff in areas with brighter prospects. Firms that have followed the dictums of reengineering typically streamlined work flows reduced staff in noncore work areas and outsourced in functions where human capital was not a distinct source of competitive advantage for the firm. American Express Hewlett-Packard Microsoft Procter Gamble and many other large organizations outsource activities that in the past would have been accomplished by their human resource and public relations departments. Siemens Business Services a wholly owned subsidiary of Siemens AG has announced an outsourcing agreement whereby AT T will manage its information technology network. Strategic alliances and joint ventures between firms are more dramatic means of resizing and reshaping organizational structure to gain competitive advantage. Another structural change involves delayering. General Electric as one storied example successfully eliminated between three and eight layers of management in its various businesses and saw its rates of productivity grow. Atlas Copco the parent company for Rental Service Corporation plans to remove layers of management that are reportedly slowing the company s ability to react to change. The rationale for delayering is that it forces upper management to focus on strategic longer term needs and empowers subordinates down the line to take charge of their work. We also believe that companies can more successfully resize when they have an adaptable organization structure. One such structure identified by Handy 1989 is in the form of a shamrock with three leaves of employees. The first leaf .