Strategy for the Corporate Level: Where to Invest, What to Cut Back and How to Grow Organisations with Multiple Divisions, 2nd Edition

Chapter Eleven Structuring the Organisation into Businesses and Divisions

Throughout the first two parts of this book, we have used the terms business division, business unit or operating unit to describe a part of the organisation that is semi-autonomous, performance accountable and largely self-managing. It has been important to make a distinction between these semi-autonomous divisions and the corporate headquarters because

• if business divisions are semi-autonomous and self-managing, there is a need to justify the existence of corporate headquarters: an alternative would be for the business divisions to be independent organisations
• without the existence of “something above the level of the business division”, there would be no need ...