Organizational Collaboration

In some ways, teamwork seems to me to be an ideal organizational design concept. I cannot help but be swayed by when I think of all the possibilities generated by working together as a member of a team. With all the pooled energy, ideas and talents that could come out of group work, why wouldn’t an organization promote teamwork? Still, one of the things that I’ve learned from this week’s reading is that the decision to structure collaboration into an organization’s design is not a simple one.

Let’s imagine for a moment that an organization knows that changes are needed to its structural design and that that the organization’s leadership has already taken the requisite steps of examining the strategy, culture, and the internal and external forces at work in the organization (Goold & Campbell, 2002). Then, upon review of their functional departments, they determine that, as Goold & Campbell state, “some collaboration among them is likely to be necessary” (2002, p. 8).

What should they do next? To whom should the organization’s leadership look for advice? Nohia suggests that consideration should be given to the complexity of the organization’s need for collaboration (1995, p. 2). Perhaps leadership should also take into advisement that collaboration is sometimes managed perfectly well when left to the discretion of individual departments (Goold & Campbell, 2002, p. 8).

Or, maybe leadership will come to the same conclusion as Walczak, who “proposes a knowledge-based management structure that facilitates the development and maintenance of an organizational knowledge culture” (2005, p. 331).  Walczak suggests that today’s organizations can set themselves up for success if they establish effective ways for information to be shared throughout the entire organization. This knowledge-based system outlined by Walczak is aided by the creation of groups of knowledgeable individuals, “knowledge workers,” from pre-established “cross-functional areas of the organization” (2005, p. 333).

The idea presented by Walczak of “knowledge teams” appears to be similar in scope to Daft’s idea of teams (2007, p. 97). In discussing ways to increase the dissemination of information across an organization, Daft indicates that the creation team is the most exhaustive method (2007, p. 97). However, while teams are great tools for information sharing, Daft also makes it clear that the creation of teams is both costly in terms of the time they require and efforts to the effort on the part of human resources (2007, p. 99).

Ultimately, it’s likely that the leadership of our imaginary organization will have a lot of deliberation ahead of them.  And as for me, I’m taking away that there are no “fast track” options when it comes to making organizational changes. As Goold and Cambell say “To get the best design, you need to take the broad view, working step-by-step through the myriad trade- offs” (2002, p. 11).

References

Walczak, Steven (2005). Organizational knowledge management structure. The

Learning Organization, 12(4), 330-339.  Retrieved February 11, 2012, from ABI/INFORM Global. (Document ID: 891977651).

Nohria, N. (1995). Note on organizational structure. Harvard Business School.

Goold, M. & Campbell, A. (2002) Do you have a well designed organization? Harvard

Business Review.

Daft, R. (2007). Fundamentals of organizational structure. Organization Theory

            and Design (9th ed.), pp. 88-125 (Chapter 3)