Page 23 - Articles Written by JGJ EF DPS

PARAGRAPH 2

For years the company had been organized along functional lines, with
directors in charge of finance, marketing, production, personnel,
purchasing, engineering, and research and development. In its growth,
the company had expanded its product lines beyond its original product of
Network Systems, Satellite Communications Systems, Network
applications. However, concern had arisen that its organization structure
did not provide for profit responsibility below the office of the CEO, did not
appear to fit the product or geographic dispersion of its businesses, and
seemed rather to accentuate the "walls" impeding effective communication
and coordination between the functional departments of marketing,
finance, production, personnel and Research & Development; there
seems to be too many decisions that could not be made at any level lower
than the CEO.

Paragraph 2 allows the class to draw out elements of strategy, structure
and growth and allows the lecturer to augment a number of the
implications of these identified elements (Board 6).

Asking the question about the type of growth implied in paragraph 2
should lead to discussion about diversification and geographic growth and
the advantages and problems associated with such.

This paragraph also raises questions about responsibility and
accountability and where they lie. The lecturer acting as the CEO and
pointing the finger at a student and telling him that he is the marketing
director and that he is fired because revenue has fallen by 10% should
illicit from the student that it is not his fault rather it is productions fault as
they failed to produce the products in time (Board 7). The lecturer then
turning to another student and saying that she is the director for production
and that she is fired will probably get a similar response from her in that it
is not her fault but rather R&D’s as they have not produced new innovative
products to sell and so it goes on with no director accepting responsibility
for the fall in sales and revenue but blaming another director.

Initiating a discussion on the appropriateness of the functional structure
will lay the foundation for the actions subsequently taken by the CEO. It
can be argued that the structure is late functional early divisional when,
given its size, it ought to be multi-divisional. Consequently, structure does
not support strategy