General Articles

The Virtual
Organization

Delegation

Exercise: How are
these companies
organized

Company Profiles

General Articles

Form follows customers by James Champy, Forbes, March 8, 1999 (Forbes requires that you complete a free registration before gaining access to its articles). This article gives a broad and up-to-date perspective on the entire debate about how companies should organize. It covers the limitations of trying to use traditional structures, such as organizing by product, function or geography and recommends that businesses focus more on molding themselves around their customers.

The New Workplace by Joan O'C. Hamilton, BusinessWeek, April 29, 1996. Covers the trend away from traditional office layouts to more flexible, less structured approaches (working anywhere—not just at the office, open workspaces, mobile desks, etc.) and the reasons behind the trend. The article includes lots of examples of what well-known companies are doing, including P&G, Alcoa, IBM, Mobil and Sun Microsystems.

The Externalization Imperative by Dale Kutnick, CIO, January 1, 1999. This quote summarizes the heart of the article: “Companies are rapidly 'devolving' from self-contained, vertically integrated organizations to more virtual entities that rely on business partners to fulfill major parts of their supply chains.” This means that a company will outsource any part of its operations to companies that can more efficiently, reliably and cost-effectively implement the work. For example, most of the components in a Dell computer are made by other companies while Dell focuses on its strengths of marketing, customer support and integration of these components into the final computer products. The extent to which a company externalizes its operations impacts the fundamental way it organizes itself.

The Virtual Organization

Remote Control by William R. Pape, cofounder of Verifone. The author explores the challenges of successfully implementing a virtual organization. Among the five actions he recommends for company managers:

• "Visit your remote offices frequently to "develop and strengthen relationships with staff and customers."
• "Ensuring that remote work environments are conducive to long-term productivity, such as separate home offices that do not overlap with personal use.
• "Find ways to compensate for the loss of daily, face-to-face informal contact."—such as mixing in telephone conversations and online chat areas with E-mail.

Virtual Corporations, Human Issues & Information Technology, Training & Development Magazine's interview with Dr. Yogesh Malhotra, Chairman of @Brint.com. This interview explores the human issues related to a virtual corporation where employees work on their own instead of in a company office. Among the questions asked in the interview:

• "What do virtual companies do about trust? Are managers worried about supervising employees, and if so, how do they go about "monitoring" off-site workers?"
• "Is there a change of power in a virtual organization? In other words, does a company become more or less hierarchical?"
• "How do employees feel about losing real human contact? How can a virtual organization build community?"

For another article on the virtual office, go to our Company Profiles section and find, "The good life found in a virtual office."

Questions: What are the advantages and disadvantages of organizing a virtual company versus a more traditional approach? What types of companies (based on size, industry, products, etc.) would benefit most and least from this type of organization?

Delegation

How to Delegate Work to Other People by Mindtools. Article starts with the reasons why delegation is useful. It then describes practical approaches for delegating jobs: "deciding what to delegate," "delegate complete jobs," "give credit when a job has been successfully completed," etc. The third section explores the reasons why people fail to delegate, such as lack of time, perfectionism and a fear of surrendering authority.