Organizational restructuring

In 1970, Citibank’s services rated poorly when compared with other banks’. In response, management ordered an overhaul of the services area and brought in managers with experience in manufacturing environments to make the services more efficient. That program succeeded in ensuring new processing efficiency and management control; yet it did not go far enough in […]

They keep things fresh and fair.

Lessons from the Special Forces and Blockbuster.

Nowhere in a company is the need for coordination more acute than between the people who are responsible for product design and those responsible for manufacturing. As Daniel E. Whitney argued in these pages recently (“Manufacturing by Design,” July–August 1988), most companies have operated for years in an environment where design and manufacturing communicate infrequently, […]

IT, finance, HR, and marketing can lose their way. Here’s how to keep them focused.

What do IBM, Texas Instruments, Owens Corning, and Duke Power have in common? They’re all redesigning their organizations around their core processes—and reaping enormous benefits as a result.

Like manufacturers, service organizations find operational economies of scale in investments in fixed facilities, inventories, and transportation. It’s generally advantageous to centralize these operations, as in the following cases. Some repair facilities cut costs by limiting the number of spare parts and field service locations, or at least by limiting the stocking locations for low-demand […]

In 1978, before restructuring was a common boardroom term, Jewel sold its Turn-Style discount department store business to the May Department Store Company. Because May could not immediately use many of the Turn-Style stores outside metropolitan Chicago, Jewel closed them. This meant that almost 3,000 full-and part-time employees were no longer needed. We in Jewel’s […]

Dynamic Manufacturing: Creating the Learning Organization, Robert H. Hayes, Steven C. Wheelwright, and Kim B. Clark (New York: Free Press, 1988) 429 pages, $24.95. American Business: A Two-Minute Warning, C. Jackson Grayson, Jr. and Carla O’Dell (New York: Free Press, 1988) 368 pages, $24.95. In the fall of 1911, Frederick Winslow Taylor rushed into print […]

The Dayton Hudson Corporation is known for its profitable growth as a diversified retailing company, for its merchandising strategy, for its objective to be premier in every facet of its business, and for its detailed attention to issues of management and governance. Its former chairman describes here the role of a strong board in making […]

Three years ago, 70-year-old Hill-Rom Inc. was in a position familiar to many mature businesses: The company was strong but needed to be stronger. It...

There is such a thing as an organization that’s too responsive.

Companies have been doing this since the 1920s.

Manufacturers are delegating too much power to top-tier suppliers, undermining their own ability to innovate, cut costs, and manage risk.

No org structure is without flaws, but matrices don't deserve their bad reputation.

People in business are constantly being told to move beyond formal strategy, structure, and budgets—in short, to operate in the organizational whitespace where speed and flexibility reign. But when should you jump into that amorphous territory—and how? The results of a unique research project provide guidance.

Decentralized companies take twice as long to pull the plug.

The CEO should make the human resources leader a true partner.

Executives must carefully consider the timing and pacing of these changes.

And productivity is suffering.