Appunti International organizational design and hrm to china - a.a. 2022/2023

Delegation and Information in Empowerment Content

Delegation and information are two key elements that define empowerment content. When performing a job, it is important to gather the necessary information, seek input from others, and take personal accountability for the results.

In an organization, the hierarchy exists but is not highly relevant, resulting in fewer procedures as people already know how to perform their tasks. Some organizations rely on standardized rules, while others prioritize knowledge.

Horizontal and direct communication is emphasized, with frequent communication between different phases and direct content.

The organization is team-oriented, consisting of multiple teams and task forces.

Vertical Organization

According to this framework, efficiency is achieved through a strong vertical structure characterized by:

• Specialization of tasks and a strong division of labor, with each worker focusing on a specific set of activities.
• Hierarchy, with each level having its own level of authority.
• Rules and procedures.

Vertical communication: the information is flowing according to the hierarchy in your organization.- (Because of specialization) Small number of task forces- Centralized decision-makingCentralization of decision-making: positive and negative sides(+) It makes the job faster and more efficient(-) People in charge for decision making don’t have any information(-) It makes the organization less able to make decision, so no problem-solving capability(-) People get less and less part of the organization: low involvement of people.Following this framework, the main question is: how strong are the need for being efficient vs. the need to beflexible and to learn? In order to be competitive what is more relevant? It’s a sort of strategy. In many cases,we need to be both, even though we must have a dominant one.Organizational International StructureThe Organizational Chart – part 1Remember that when you look at organizational chart, there is always a boss, and thenyou've levels. A vertical line means that there is a hierarchical relationship. A horizontal line is usually used to indicate staff units. Each staff unit has a boss, but it does not control the other unit. Boxes are the jobs, that can have more than one boss. When you look at the organization chart, first of all you need to consider how many levels the company has to understand the level of vertical specialization (a management style in which one manager has authority over another). The second thing that you've to see is centralization of decision making: so, where decisions are made inside the organization. Going back to the framework we've seen about horizontal and vertical, we can come to some conclusions. Structures and Efficiency vs Learning Framework – part 1 In this framework different types of structures are added. So, moving from vertical to horizontal, moving from efficiency to learning and flexibility, we need also to think about the needs for changing the.organization from functional to modular structure. The framework says, for example, if your problem is just efficiency takes a functional structure (which is composed of functions, so specialized departments). This functional structure seams a good way for efficiency in this framework. We’ve strong specialization that pops out experts always in the same function. However, the framework also says that sometimes this functional structure shows some limitations: the functions are specialized, have almost the same type of orientation inside, work according to a set of very precise behaviour that is expected, have the same knowledge, and work on the same type of processes. When we start for putting together people coming from different functions, sometimes companies need to add cross-functional teams (integrators), doing some integration, thus modifying the functional structure by adding some integrators or some integrations mechanism. In case of diversification, we need to think about a different ingredients. I've a couple of questions for you, let's imagine that we read this article Supply-Chain Decoupling From China Gets Sharper Teeth. Just look at the title, what is one of the four ingredients that seems to be more involved in this title? INTERDEPENDENCE maybe we need to go hierarchical and see if there are some changes in the flow of activities among different companies, maybe they want to be more interdependent. The second element that come up with interdependence is COORDINATION. So, the organization mindset says we're a company economic system, we try to do this, maybe we need to pay attention to the flow, maybe we move the manufacturing from one country to another. Maybe there are some effects on internal demand and something like that, but we can try to describe the process and see what the implications in terms of coordination are. If I go into diversity, what is the variables that emerge? Orientation means differentiation, when you measure.

Orientation: what you want to measure is the level of differentiation. The second variable is integration. You look at this article you see that there is no differentiation. There are no differences in orientation.

Positive and negative effects of integration:

• (+) Integration means in order to find a consensus, an agreement with this group, people have exactly the same priorities, objectives, they're so similar so integration is something that is very easy to achieve.
• (-) Negative side is probably maybe the third orientation doesn't fit with the task they've first of all.
• (-) Without differentiation we don't have innovation, there are no variety of ideas.

Interdependence calls coordination; differentiation in terms of orientation calls integration.

Efficiency versus Learning Outcomes 2 dimensions: horizontal and vertical and 2 outcomes expected: the first one is flexibility and learning; the other is efficiency. To be more innovative, more able to learn, to be flexible.

youneed to work on the horizontal dimension. Second,if you want to achieve more efficiency the dominantstructural approach that you have to apply is morevertical. Each time you move towards horizontalsolutions you are increasing the probability to havelearning, flexibility, adaption and vice versa; eachtime you move towards vertical probably you're improving the level of efficiency inside the organization.

Horizontal Features

• Shared tasks, empowerment
• Relaxed hierarchy, few rules
• Horizontal, face-to-face communication
• Many teams and task forces
• Decentralized decision making

Vertical Features

• Specialized tasks
• Strict hierarchy, many rules
• Vertical communication and reporting systems
• Few teams, task forces and integrators
• Centralized decision making

Structures and Efficiency vs Learning - part 2

Horizontal and vertical related to different types of structures. We have: functional structures; functional with cross functional teams and integrators; divisional structure; divisional

1. structure;matrix structure; horizontal or modular structure.
2. These are all pure structures that you can find in a company.
3. In many cases global companies try to implement hybrid forms, so a mix of different pure organizational structures.
4. Remember that we can move from one structure to another, from vertical/horizontal and vice versa because we've identified some very specific objectives like efficiency and learning.
5. Organizational Charts / Centralization - part 2
6. This organizational chart gives a precise set of information about the type of structure of the company.
7. There are 2 things when you look at the organizational chart.
1. Number of levels: you can count how many levels you have in the organizational chart picture. This is a sort of proxy of the centralization process.
2. Centralization means the degree to which decision-making formal authority is concentrated in one area or level of the organization. A high degree of centralization means that a lot of decisions are

made at the top of the organization; decentralization when moving decision making below the first level and people are directly involved in decision making. The first thing that you have to consider is the number of levels and how tall or flat the organization is. There are many implications. The second dimension is the criteria applied in the division of labor. This refers to how work units are grouped or aggregated. Different criteria create different organizational structures such as functional, divisional, matrix, and so on. So, the second dimension is how the company is organized (by department, units) and what criteria differentiate one unit from another. What are the levels of specialization in that specific company? Organizational Structures There are different types of organizational structures. Some are more hierarchical, while others are based on a flatter organization with fewer levels.

they’re organized in teams, group of people. Moreover, in case of a flat hierarchy people must be flexible, moving from one job to another one. Each structure has some positive (+) and negative (-) elements.

Functional structure Example of functional structure. By analysing the organizational chart, we can see the president or the CEO of the company, while below there is the Vice President. The two are linked by vertical line that means hierarchical relationship. If we look at the criteria of division at first level, what we see that there is a Vice President for marketing, one for engineering, one for manufacturing, for finance and below these positions we’ve substructures, such as a marketing, engineering, manufacturing and plant, finance, HR department, legal office.

Functional structure is based on functions, such as manufacturing, engineering, finance. Why they are functional? Because they have at least 2 elements: (1) There is a precise criterion of specialization in each

all the people that work