The principal strategic challenge for global companies is the reconciliation of seemingly conflicting goals: thinking long-term while delivering short-term results, developing global scale while being locally responsive, and investing in innovation while increasing operational efficiency. In each aspect of this challenge there is a tension between two necessary but apparently opposing goals, which needs resolution.
The solution to both kinds of tension is to convert the “either-or” dilemma into a “both-and” proposition by looking at the issue in a different way. What would such organizations look like, and how would they function? We don’t have all the answers yet, but we are beginning to understand the questions we should be addressing. Our experience suggests that companies that want to be both innovative and efficient at the same time need to adopt a new and different approach to organizing work and people: an approach we call a “fluid-network organization.”
While our concept of the fluid-network organization is still evolving, we have begun to envision its general outlines in terms of five organization-design variables:
– The “glue” used to bind the organization
– The approach to defining “decision-rights” and “boundaries”
– The choice of “measures”
– The “means of influencing behavior”
– The new “competencies” required of potential leaders
Author: Arun N. Maira
Source: “Prism (Arthur D. Little)”
Subject: Organizational Behavior
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