Changes in Organizational Design - Culture And Change

Question: Discuss about theChanges in Organizational Design, Culture And Change. Answer: Introduction: Change is an intrinsic requirement for survival. As in the natural word, corporate and businesses too need to constantly innovate their products, services and practices in order to remain competitive and continue generating profit. Changes are the result of internal or external factors that influence the organization. Change may be inculcated in the design or structure of the organization, its work culture and ethics, and so on. Regardless of the area of change, there remains an effect either major or minor that effects the organization as a whole. It has been noticed that many of the changes that are happening in businesses during the last decade are in no small part due to the socio-political and economic changes happening across the world. Interestingly most of the changes are piecemeal rather than an overall change and are a direct offshoot of the manner in which organizations have shifted focus from markets to factors like competitors and product differentiation (Corkindale, 2012). A notable factor influencing organizational change is the emphasis placed on Corporate Social Responsibility. CSR has brought about several changes in the manner in which businesses function. The changes can be seen not only in the end product, but in the process as well as the manner in which the organization interacts with its peers, customers and suppliers. Important considerations like reducing carbon footprints and achieving carbon neutrality is important for helping to shape the CSR principles of organizations, thus often creating changes in all aspects relation to the organization including its design, hierarchy and manner of functioning. Organizational design maybe considered to be a formal, all inclusive process of creating a permanent link between all concerned parties (Junaid, 2013). Furthermore it is seen that this change may also bring about a change in the organizational culture as well strategic business Units are now replacing traditional departments and this has created a significant shift in the organizational structure. The traditional roles of top and middle management as well as other staff are now replaced with SBU chiefs who are tasked with the management of the departments. Interestingly, the departments too are now decentralized and the onus of performance rests solely on individual players. While team efforts are important, the individuals who make up the tea are equally responsible for the output of the team. This concept along with the increasing reliance on virtual teams and contractual employees has lead to the downsizing of the actual team size. The actual team comprises of persons related to the core functions of the business enterprise and does away with many of the supplementary departments like HR. Functions like payroll processing, network administration and HR, to name just a few are now outsourced to a large extent. This new organizational structure of business without an HR or a minimal number of employees in HR and finance has lead to the blossoming of large organizations with fewer core members. This organizational design is small and the organizational culture teds to be informal with most employees including the top management being close knit and on first name terms thus helping to streamline the organization as a whole, but allowing the business to concentrate on its core areas of functionality. Yet another new concept in organizational structure is called matrix structure. Under this structuring, each department is represented in the team that works on a project, this structure is typically preferred by software companies as they tend to assign a specific project to a team. The team members would include a representative from the finance, HR and marketing division in addition to the programmers who would be working o the project. A project manager would be responsible for synchronization among the team members. It would therefore be accurate to conclude that the changes that are seen in organizational design and culture are largely due to the changes in the core thinking of top management who look at enhancing the efficiency of the core tem in the best possible manner. References Corkindale, G. (2012). The Importance of Organizational Design and Structure. Harvard Business Review. Junaid, M. R. (2013). Collapse of giants: Conceptualizing trust as a metaphysical imperative in organization infrastructure. African Journal of Business Management, 2926-2937.