Reframing Organizations, 7th Edition

Chapter 4Structure and Restructuring

A crisis over journalistic standards ensnared the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in a flurry of parliamentary hearings, resignations, and public recrimination in 2004. The controversy so tarnished the respected institution's reputation that top officials took major steps to ensure that it would never happen again. The bevy of corrective changes included a journalism board to monitor editorial policy, guidelines on journalistic procedures, forms to flag trouble spots that managers were required to complete, and a 300‐page volume of editorial guidelines. The cumulative effect of the changes was a multilayered bureaucracy that limited managerial discretion and fostered a pecking order of approve‐disapprove ...