Page 74 - Managing Change in Organizations

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The value-added organization

CASE
STUDY British Petroleum Engineering

Quinn Mills (1991) suggests that a cluster organization makes the boxes and lines of a
typical organization chart irrelevant. They are replaced by circles each representing a
semi-autonomous cluster (Figure 3.7).

Managing
director

Engineering Business
resources services

16 clusters of
senior engineers

Technology
development
Figure 3.7 BPE organization (after Quinn Mills, 1991)

In essence, at the heart of the structure there are 16 clusters of engineers through
which BPE meets client needs. The outer circle comprises three hierarchically organized
activities – engineering resources, business services and technology development. These
units work to ensure that BPE has the necessary engineering resources and technology
and that it meets client needs. Thus, for example, business services seeks to fit client
needs to the cluster’s outputs, securing an agreed programme measuring performance
as the programme unfolds. Business services therefore acts as an account manager. The
managing director and the three general managers (of engineering resources, business
services and technology development) form a core team. The hierarchical relationship is
between that core team and the resources in the cluster. The focus of the organization
is on how those resources can be configured to meet varying client needs, rather than
on who is reporting to whom!
Another interesting point to note is that the role of the three ‘departments’ is con-
figuring resources to meet either customer needs or development (i.e. acquiring the right ➔

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