Читать книгу Reframing Organizations - Lee G. Bolman - Страница 88

Eventually, internal or external changes force every structure to adjust, but structural change is rarely easy. When the Roman Catholic Church elevated a new pope, Francis I, in March, 2013, many hoped that he would represent a breath of fresh air after the troubled reign of his predecessor. But a well‐placed insider noted how difficult this would be, even for a supposedly‐absolute ruler: “There have been a number of Popes in succession with different personalities, but the structure remains the same. Whoever is appointed, they get absorbed by the structure. Instead of you transforming the structure, the structure transforms you” (Donadio and Yardley, 2013).

When the time for restructuring comes, managers need to take account of tensions specific to each structural configuration. Consultants and managers often apply general principles and specific answers without recognizing key differences across architectural forms. Reshaping an adhocracy, for example, is different from restructuring a machine bureaucracy, and reweaving a web is very different from nudging a professional bureaucracy. Falling victim to the one‐best‐system or one‐size‐fits‐all mentality is a route to disaster. But the comfort of a well‐defined prescription lulls too many managers into a temporary comfort zone. They don't see the iceberg looming ahead until they crash into it.

Mintzberg's imagery depiction suggests general principles to guide restructuring across a range of circumstances. Each major component of his model exerts its own pressures. Restructuring triggers a multidirectional tug‐of‐war that eventually determines the shape of the emerging configuration. The result may be a catastrophe, unless leaders recognize and manage various pushes and pulls.

The strategic apex—top management—tends to exert centralizing pressures. Through commands, rules, or less obtrusive means, top managers continually try to develop a unified mission or strategy. Deep down, they long for a simple structure they can control. By contrast, middle managers resist control from the top and tend to pull the organization toward balkanization. Navy captains, school principals, plant managers, department heads, and bureau chiefs become committed to their own domain and seek to protect and enhance their unit's parochial interests. Tensions between centripetal forces from the top and centrifugal forces from middle management are especially prominent in divisionalized structures but are critical issues in any restructuring effort.

The technostructure exerts pressures to standardize; analysts love discipline and hate anarchy. They want to measure and monitor the organization's progress against well‐defined criteria. Depending on the circumstances, they counterbalance (or complement) top administrators, who want to centralize, and middle managers, who seek greater autonomy. A college professor who wants to use a web‐based simulation game, for example, may find that it takes weeks or months to negotiate the rules and procedures that the university's information technology units have put in place. Issues that seem critical to IT may seem like trivial annoyances to the professor, and vice versa. Technocrats feel most at home in a machine bureaucracy.

The support staff pulls in the direction of greater collaboration. Its members usually feel happiest when authority is dispersed to small work units. There they can influence, directly and personally, the shape and flow of everyday work and decisions. In one university, a new president created a new governance structure that, for the first time, included support staff along with faculty and administrators. The staff loved it, but when they came up with a proposal for improvements to the promotion and tenure process, the faculty was not amused. Meanwhile, the operating core seeks to control its own destiny and minimize influence from the other components. Its members often look outside—to a union or to their professional colleagues—for support.

Attempts to restructure must acknowledge the natural tensions among these competing interests. Depending on the configuration, any component may have more or less influence on the final outcome. In a simple structure, the boss has the edge. In machine bureaucracies, the techno structure and strategic apex possess the most clout. In professional bureaucracies, chronic conflict between administrators and professionals is the dominant tension, while members of the techno structure play an important role in the wings. In the adhocracy, a variety of actors can play a pivotal role in shaping the emerging structural patterns.

Beyond internal negotiations lurks a more crucial issue. A structure's workability ultimately depends on its fit with the organization's strategy, environment, and technology. Natural selection weeds out the field, determining survivors and victims. The major players must negotiate a structure that meets the needs of each component and still enables the organization to survive, if not thrive.