Dynamic Supply Chains, 3rd Edition

CHAPTER 6

Designing responsive organization structures

How to get people working together, and focused on customers

Of all the internal capabilities in an enterprise, organization design is perhaps the most important, after leadership of course. The structures that we set people to work in have a major influence on the responsiveness of the enterprise. Unfortunately, most contemporary enterprises have fallen behind in their organizational development, and consequently their organization structures are flawed and misaligned with increasingly demanding customers and consumers. In this chapter we go in search of new organization designs to underpin the added dynamism needed to service contemporary customers. We start with conventional wisdom and ...