Convenience

Hybrid Designs
Some organizations use a design that represents a hybrid of two or more of the
common forms of organization design.
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For example, an organization may have
five related divisions and one unrelated division, making its design a cross between
an M form and an H form. Indeed, few companies use a design in its pure form;
most firms have one basic organization design as a foundation for managing the
business but maintain sufficient flexibility so that temporary or permanent modifica-
tions can be made for strategic purposes. Ford, for example, used the matrix
approach to design the Focus and the newest Mustang, but the company is basically
a U-form organization showing signs of moving to an M-form design. As we noted
earlier, any combination of factors may dictate the appropriate form of design for any
particular company.
Chapter 6:
Organization Structure and Design
1 8 1
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EMERGING ISSUES IN ORGANIZATION DESIGN
In today’s complex and ever-changing environment, it should come as no surprise that
managers continue to explore and experiment with new forms of organization design.
Many organizations are creating designs for themselves that maximize their ability to
adapt to changing circumstances and to a changing environment. They try to accomplish
this by not becoming too compartmentalized or too rigid. As we noted earlier, bureau-
cratic organizations are hard to change, slow, and inflexible. To avoid these problems,
then, organizations can try to be as different from bureaucracies as possible—relatively
few rules, general job descriptions, and so forth. This final section highlights some of
the most important emerging issues.
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