Bridging Organization Design and Performance: Five Ways to Activate a Global Operation Model

Part I

The Right Connections

Organizational hierarchy will soon be history, if we are to believe management futurists. “Modern management is nearing its existential moment,” we are told (Murray 2010). Indeed, traditional, vertically oriented organizations have many limitations in the new work of bridging global and local strategies, and working across functions and businesses to drive innovation and to connect closely to consumers and customers. Digital consumer communities, multichannel marketing, and crowd sourcing have radically altered both the internal and the external connections that companies must create in their interaction with markets. In their book, Wikinomics, Tapscott and Williams predict the rise of “mass collaboration” as an ...