Designing organizations

About this book

Designing Organizations is a leader's concise guide to the process of creating and managing an organization - no matter how complex - that will achieve unique competitive advantages impossible to duplicate without the strategies Jay Galbraith describes. Drawing on over ten years of research, Galbraith presents a wealth of rich examples from such successful companies as Apple Computer, MCI, McDonald's, and Pizza Hut to show how organizational design can support policies, behaviors, and performance - and he describes what leaders can and must do to effect the change process. Galbraith analyzes the four key forces shaping today's organizations - buyer power, variety, change, and speed - and shows how to design a state-of-the-art organization that responds effectively and rapidly to customer demands. Effective organizational design, the key responsibility of leaders, begins with strategy, which determines direction. The rewards system produces the motivation to perform. And the people practices (human resources) influence, and often define, employees' mind-sets and skills. Galbraith provides executives, managers, and consultants with the concrete tools necessary to select and implement an efficient design that creates superior and more competitive organizations.