Giant Steps in Management: Innovations That Change the Way We Work

Chapter 4. Internal structures

What is the most effective way of organizing a large company? And how should the various parts of the company be related to one another? The purpose of innovations in internal structures is to improve communication and information flows to ensure that the whole is more than the parts.

Introduction

There are entire libraries of books concerned with various aspects of organization structure. In one famous book by Gareth Morgan, Images of organization, metaphors as diverse as a machine, a brain, a living organism, and an iron cage are used to shed light on the way work is conducted inside the firm. Thankfully, however, ...