Page 161 - Managing Change in Organizations

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Chapter 8 ■ Sustaining organizational effectiveness

Operations
director
General manager
(Northern)

Procurement Projects Accounting Engineering Sales Administration
manager manager manager manager proposals and personnel

Construction Project Project
managers and services
project manager
enquiries cost council
time control
planning
estimating

Civil Piping Mechanical Electrical Process Computer-aided
design
Figure 8.8 Regional decentralization: regional structure

new skills. Performance appraisal is needed to support these changes. New technological
disciplines will be needed. We can readily see from Figure 8.6 how all these changes are
intended to move International Engineering to a more adaptive structure. We will be
returning to this case study in later chapters to discuss various aspects of these changes
and their implementation.

The innovative organization

To what extent does effectiveness include innovation? A number of management
books dealing with innovation have been published since the early 1980s. Peters
and Waterman (1982) attracted particular attention. They identify the following
eight characteristics of an innovative organization:
1 Bias to action.
2 Proximity to the customer/client.
3 Autonomy.
4 Productivity through people.
5 ‘Hands-on’ management.
6 Concentration on strengths.
7 Simple structures.
8 Centralization of core issues and decentralization of actions/implementation
and day-to-day control.

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