ABSTRACT
The objective of organization design is to provide, maintain, and develop the organizational structure that can serve as the best vehicle for achieving a company’s strategic goals. The structure selected is aimed at providing a blueprint with which to translate the firm’s vision and strategic
objectives into a workable distribution and dissemination of rights, duties, and responsibilities to each of the various units and individual positions that make up the organizational apparatus. Although organizational structures are driven by strategy, they also drive it. In other words, the structure represents a constraint on the firm’s mode of operations and in turn on its strategic thinking and strategy implementation. For instance, when Japan emerged as an economic power in the 1980s, it was noted that having a Japanese unit report to an Asian-Pacific regional division distracted corporate attention to this market; suggestions have hence been made to separate Japan from the regional division, with direct reporting to corporate headquarters as a way to elevate its strategic visibility. 1 Similar suggestions have been made vis-à-vis China in the new millennium.
