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EXECUTIVE DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME 2010 TITLE: MANAGEMENT AND ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOUR AUTHOR’S NAME: APPLEBY FADZANAYI KATIYO Management and Organisational Behaviour Assignment Select an organization of your own choice but make sure it is a Matrix Organisation. Briefly relate its history and the emergence of the Matrix organization. Discuss the benefits and problems perceived by members of the organization in their use of the Matrix Organisation. Evaluate whether the Matrix Organisation is ideal for this organization. History
Kohler Engineering is a large corporate that was formed in 1996 and is based in Harare . It specializes in the manufacturing and repair of trailers and agricultural implements. It has a huge customer base in Zimbabwe as well as the Southern Africa Region. Some of the industries it serves include, transport, agriculture and mining. It started as small organization with a few equipment and less than ten employees. During those years there were no proper management structure as this organization was being run as a family business.
Due to the high quality of their products, the company grew from being a family business to a large corporate. As a result of the expansion, the management engaged the services of a consultant firm to evaluate the organizational structure. Since the company has both functional and project processes the Matrix Organisational Principle was chosen as the most appropriate management structure. They selected the Matrix Organizational Structure because it allows the company to address multiple business dimensions using multiple command structures.
The company is now using a basic Matrix structure with two dimensions i. e. function and product. This type of organizational structure combines the advantages of the pure functional structure and the product organizational structure. The matrix allows managers to harness the services of employees irrespective of their function to work collaboratively on key projects. As per Matrix Organisational chart below, a manager can pool the necessary resource in order to achieve what from the strategic objective, is the overriding priority. It draws on the full potential of the Human Resource.
CEO ENGINEERING SALES& MKT FINANCE PRODUCTION PROJECT A PROJECT B PROJECT C Figure 1 Matrix Organisation as it is implemented at Kohler Engineering Benefits and Problems Perceived by Members of the Organisation. Although the Matrix Organisational Structure was implemented, like in any other model of organizational design, the Matrix model has its own advantages and disadvantages. In the use of this structure the benefits have been detailed as below. Achievement of coordination necessary to meet customer demands through regular meetings.
Employee access to information has become greater than needed, which has guaranteed that they have access to information to the full spectrum of required information. Employee perception of the work environment has greatly improved. Information sharing has also aided in creating an environment that fosters innovation since employees post their ideas and are publicly credited, they have the satisfaction of being recognized for their work. This has resulted in the company being able to meet the demands of their customers.
Employees are empowered because they have a sense that they are trusted with the information generated by the firm and they are contributing to the productivity of the firm. Creativity has been fostered because the level of recognition received is a positive reinforcement. Since human resources can be shared across the products, there is reduction of labour costs. The same employees who perform their normal functional duties are the same that are also transferred to work on projects. Stress is also distributed among the team.
There is total labour utilization. The company relies on project based products and the Matrix Organisational structure is best suited for this organization as it allows free flow of personnel from the functional assignments to projects without any hussles. The employees report to the functional managers who assign them to projects that are run by project managers. The functional managers also control their project assignments. The employees have developed useful skills as most of the projects come with training programmes before implementation.
Some of them have been attached to international companies (technical partners) for training as part of projects implementation. It has been proven that a firm can gain knowledge through the organizational learning process, which consists of dissemination, interpretation and storage of knowledge. This knowledge is contained in a number of places including computer storage systems, employee memory, employee skills and media (paper, video and audio). The Matrix structure has a high level complexity which meets the requirements of complex environment conditions of the present. e managing projects on one side and on the other doing normal functional duties. The problems encountered are as detailed below. Due to the complexity of the Matrix Organizational Structure, the implementation was difficult as some members had to adapt to reporting to colleagues rather than superiors. Project Managers were selected from the skilled personnel that were available. This meant that an engineer would report to another engineer (Project Manager) on a project and then both of them reporting to Engineering Manager in their functional duties.
Sometimes there are problems with communication system as there may be confusion as the communication lines are not properly structured. Information relating to projects was channeled directly to engineers by the Engineering Manager instead of going through the Project Managers and then downwards to the engineers for execution. Dual authority is also another problem with Matrix Organisational Structure. Sometimes the staff members feel like they are under many bosses as this structure promotes dual authority. They are in a position which could be termed “a many bosses employee”.
Most problems are as are result of the managers’ contradictory instructions and because of the fact that employees get confused about whose instructions to follow. This situation creates “the curtain effect “which enables the employees to make use of the conflicting and confusing situations by avoiding the obligations and making excuses for not following managers’ instructions. Meetings to resolve conflicts have become a norm. The other problem refers to the incapability of management of the company to use the matrix potentials in everyday work because of the lack of changes in their interpretative schemes.
The management is simply unable to view the company from all the two aspects and manage them simultaneously. Evaluation of the Matrix Organisation The Matrix Organisational Structure is ideal for this organization as it relies more on projectised products. It is highly recommended that successfully utilization of the matrix organization is established in all of the five organizational components strategy,structure,systems,people and processes. The full utilization of the these components should be done in phases .
There should be total change in all the components to effectively eliminate inefficiencies. The matrix organization allows the company to leverage vast resources while staying small and task oriented. The matrix encourages innovation and fast action and speeds information to those who use it. Although it has flaws they must continue using it because the strengths outweigh the flaws. It allows the company to focus on multiple business goals, facilitates the management of information, enables the company to establish economies of and speeds response to environmental demands.
This matrix organization encourages creativity among employees because innovation is rewarded by recognition of their peers as well as management. The company benefits from the increased innovation and creativity and increased openness and sharing as well as reduced stress. And more importantly the customers will benefit from the effectiveness and efficiency of the company by getting the right product, right quality, right price and at the right time. References Management-James A F Stoner Edward Freeman Management and Organisational Behaviour –Module MGT101-DJ Nduna, P Nyamuda, E K Nyatanga. Management and Organisational Behaviour -Mullins