Organizational theory and design - Assignment Example

Organizational Theory and Design Organizational Theory and Design Planning in today’s organizations compares with planning in anorganization twenty five years ago in the sense that it faster. Today, information needed in planning is collected, relayed and interpreted faster than twenty five years ago. Twenty five years ago, planning was limited to an organization’s core service or product but today’s planning goes beyond this to other opportunities that are in line with the organization’s goals.

Today’s planning is more flexible and accurate than planning twenty five years ago. The flexibility and accuracy of today’s planning draws from its openness to new knowledge and experience. In addition, today’s planning enhances quicker decision making than planning twenty five years ago (Amagoh, 2008). In the modern world where everything changes quickly and crises are a regular part of organizational life, I think the importance for planning is increasing. The dynamic of today’s organizational life and the high risk of crises need planning that has the capacity to implement and modify strategies quickly in order to mitigate undesirable outcomes.

In the past, organizations could draw ten years strategic plans but in the highly dynamic and crises-prone organizational life, organizations need planning that will guides their practices on a daily basis. Survival in contemporary organizational life is largely dependent on how effectively an organization adopts planning that helps evaluate and monitor performance and predicts likely occurrences (Miroux, 2008). Changing an organization’s domain is feasible strategy for coping with a threatening environment.

The feasibility of changing an organization’s domain is embedded in the things it enables businesses to do. It helps companies to move to a domain that has little competition and avoid unfriendly government regulation. Changing an organization’s domain helps the organization to move to better customers and suppliers. That notwithstanding, the feasibility of this strategy depends on an organization’s preparedness to adjust to the new domain and to counter unlikely outcomes. Google is an example of a company that changed its domain when it went into advertising.

In 2008, the initiative paid off when Google announced that it had made twenty one billion dollars from advertising. Google’s experience is proof of the feasibility of changing a business’ domain as a strategy for coping with a threatening environment (Sherif, 2006). The learning organization is made up of five elements namely structure, task, systems, culture and strategy. These elements are clearly seen in the transnational model described in chapter six. In terms of structure, the transnational model has flexible and dynamic structures that allows for centralization of functions in some countries and decentralization of other functions among countries.

The transnational model has a corporate culture that draws from a shared understanding from combining diverse employee cultural backgrounds. The strategy of a transnational organization emanates from a combining of innovations and strategies developed by subsidiary managers. The tasks in a transnational model are set up as semi-autonomous units of operations that have the freedom to identify and solve problems unique to their particular settings. A transnational model’s system results from the way the other four elements shape the behavior of employees (Sherif, 2006).

The transnational model is suitable for a huge global firm because it facilitates high global integration and local responsiveness. Transnational model makes up for the limitations of huge global firm’s traditional multi-domestic structure. Using the transnational model, huge global firms are able to manage, integrate, multiply and combine resources, assets and competencies in order to form a network of alliances which facilitate their operations (Amagoh, 2008). The biblical worldview impresses on businesses the need to adopt a way of doing business in a truthful, fair and beneficial way that facilitates goodwill for all stakeholders.

This world view emphasizes the principles of justice and truth in business. The contribution of this worldview to the debate of growth versus no-growth in business is that in either case, businesses should improve the quality of their communities of operations. Biblical worldview teaches businesses that they should exercise prudent stewardship over goods and services because they belong to God (Sherif, 2006). ReferencesAmagoh, F. (2008). Perspectives on Organizational Change: Systems and Complexity Theories.

The Public Sector Innovation Journal, 13(3): 1 – 14. Miroux, A. (2008). Transnational Corporations. TNCs, 17(3): 1 – 109. Sherif, K. (2006). An adaptive strategy for managing knowledge in organizations. Journal of Knowledge Management, 10(4), 72-80.