COHR 408 - Organizational Design

Today’s business organizations are facing unprecedented challenges, characterized by rapid technological changes and globalized competition. Technological advantage, financial planning, marketing skills are important for business success, but they must be coupled with skilled organizational design that synthesizes long-term vision, effective strategy, concise structure, leadership, a culture of cooperation and innovation, incentives to recruit and retain talents, among other factors. In this short course, we are going to examine, using a five-step model, the following critical aspects of organizational design:

1. Organizational goals: organization definition, boundary, goals.
2. Organizational strategy: categorization of strategies (e.g., reactor, defender, prospector, and analyzer), environment (calm, varied, locally stormy, and turbulent environments), the fit between goals and strategy.
3. Organizational structure: configuration (e.g., simple, functional, divisional, and matrix) and complexity (e.g., blob, tall, flat, and symmetric), distributed organizations (international, multi-domestic, transnational), fit and misfits between goals, strategy, and structure.
4. Process and people: task design, people, leadership and organizational climate, fit and misfits.
5. Coordination and control: coordination, control and information systems, incentives (e.g., skill pay, bonus-based, profit sharing), fit and misfits of all these elements.

Note: COHR 408 will not be offered in 2023W.

Prerequisite: COMM 203.