Presented by J. B. Nangpuhan II (MPA Student) for the class (Organizational Design) of Dr. S. K. Kim at Chonnam National University, South Korea. 2010
SUMMARY
KEY
TERMS:
·
Operating adhocracy –운영 adhocracy
·
Administrative adhocracy – 행정 adhocracy
·
Innovation – 혁신
·
Problem-solving – 문제 해결
·
Sophisticated – 복잡한
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
Prime Coordinating
Mechanism: |
Mutual Adjustment |
Key Part of Organization: |
Support staff (in the Administrative Adhocracy; together with
the operating core in the Operating Adhocracy) |
Main Design Parameters: |
Liaison devices, organic structure, selective decentralization,
horizontal job specialization, training, functional and market grouping
concurrently |
Situational Factors: |
Complex, dynamic, (sometimes disparate) environment; young (especially Operating Adhocracy); sophisticated and often automated technical system (in the Administrative Adhocracy); fashionable |
Adhocracy is capable of sophisticated innovation in which the other configurations have the limited capability to become. This kind of structure can be found in a space agency, avant-garde film company, factory manufacturing complex prototypes, and integrated petro-chemicals company. Adhocracy is a problem-solving structure, to invent new ones. On the other hand, Simple Structure can innovate but on a certain limited and simple level. Machine and Professional Bureaucracies are performance structures, designed to perfect standard programs. Divisionalized Form resolves inflexibility in the Machine Bureaucracy, focusing on control by standardizing outputs.
Adhocracy (a term from Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock) is an ideal structure for
sophisticated innovation, one that is able to fuse experts drawn from different
disciplines into smoothly functioning ad hoc project teams. Adhocracy structure
is the most complex structure among the five, yet it is not highly ordered
unlike Machine Bureaucracy, Professional Bureaucracy, and Divisionalized Form.
It is the newest of the five.
I.
DESCRIPTION OF THE BASIC STRUCTURE
A. The Design Parameters
Adhocracy is a highly
organic structure with little formalization of behavior. It has high horizontal
job specialization based on formal training, a tendency to group the
specialists in functional units for housekeeping purposes but to deploy them in
small, market-based project teams to do their work. It relies on the liaison
devices to encourage mutual adjustment – the key coordinating mechanism within
and between these teams. There is selective decentralization to and within
these teams which are located in various places in the organization and involve
various mixtures of line managers and staff and operating experts.
To innovate means to break
away from established patterns, so the innovative organization cannot rely on
any form of standardization for coordination. It avoids all the trappings of
bureaucratic structure such as sharp divisions of labor, extensive unit
differentiation, highly formalized behaviors, and emphasis on planning and
control systems. It is also flexible allowing the organization to change its
structure as many times as possible to serve any useful purposes. Of all the
configurations, adhocracy shows the least reverence for the classical
principles of management, especially unity of command. The adhocracy must hire
and give power to experts – professionals whose knowledge and skills have been
highly developed in training programs. However, it does not rely on the
standardized skills of these experts to achieve coordination; rather it must
treat existing knowledge and skills merely as bases on which to build new ones.
The basis for grouping
experts in this structure is based on specific project of innovation. This can
be done by using the functional and market bases for grouping concurrently in a
matrix structure. The experts are grouped in functional units for housekeeping
purposes – for hiring, professional communication, and the like – but then are
deployed in project teams to carry out their basic work of innovation.
Integrating managers and liaison positions are established to coordinate the
efforts among and between the functional units and project teams; the teams themselves
are established as task forces. Thus, managers abound in the Adhocracy –
functional managers, integrating managers, project managers. Project managers
are numerous since the project teams must be small to encourage mutual
adjustment among the members. Each team designates a leader (or manager) but
not to manage or control the team; instead to do liaison and negotiating jobs,
coordinating the work laterally among the different teams and between them and
the functional units.
The decentralization of the Adhocracy is
what we labeled as selective in
Chapter 5, in both horizontal and vertical dimensions. Decision-making power is
distributed among managers and nonmangers at all the levels of the hierarchy,
according to the nature of the different decisions to be made. No one on the
Adhocracy monopolizes the power to innovate.
Two
Types of Adhocracy
1. The Operating Adhocracy
This type of Adhocracy
innovates and solves problems directly on behalf of its clients. Its
multidisciplinary teams of experts often work directly under contract, as in
the think-tank consulting firm, creative advertising agency, or manufacturing
of engineering prototypes. In some cases, there is no contract like the
film-making agency or theater company.
For every Operating
Adhocracy, there is a corresponding Professional Bureaucracy, one that does
similar work but with a narrower orientation. Faced with a client problem, the
Operating Adhocracy engages in creative efforts to find a novel solution; the
Professional Bureaucracy pigeonholes it
into a known contingency thinking to which it can apply a standard program. The
Operating Adhocracy engages in divergent thinking aimed at innovation while
Professional Bureaucracy engages in convergent thinking aimed at perfection.
A key feature of the
Operating Adhocracy is that their administrative and operating works tend to
blend into a single effort. That is, in ad hoc project work, it is difficult to
differentiate the planning and design of the work from its execution. Both
require the same specialized skills, on a project-by-project basis. Figure 12-1
on page 258 of our reference book shows a typical organigram for a classic
Operating Adhocracy taken from the National Film Board of Canada.
2. The Administrative
Adhocracy
This type also functions
with project teams, but towards a different end. In Operating Adhocracy, it
undertakes projects to serve its clients; in Administrative Adhocracy, it
undertakes projects to serve itself. In here, there is sharp distinction
between its administrative component and operating core. The operating core is
truncated – cut right off the rest of the organization – so that the
administrative component that remains can be structured as an Adhocracy.
This truncation may take
place in a number of ways: First, when an intense organization has a special
need to be innovative, perhaps because of intense product competition or a very
dynamic technology, however, its operating core must be machine bureaucratic,
the operating core may be established as a separate organization; Second, the
operating core may be done away with altogether – in effect, contracted out to
other organizations; Third, when the operating core becomes automated, enabling
the operating core to run itself, free from direct supervision or other control
mechanisms from the administrative component. The third one can structure
itself as an Adhocracy, concerned with change and innovation, with projects to
bring new operating facilities on line.
Figure 12-2 on page 260
shows a typical organigram of an Administrative Adhocracy, from one oil
company.
B. The Administrative
Component of the Adhocracies
In both types of
Adhocracy, the relationship of both is different to any other configuration. In
the Administrative Adhocracy, the operating core is truncated and becomes
unimportant part of the organization; in the Operating Adhocracy, the two merge
into a single entity. In both types, the managers become functioning members of
the project teams, with special responsibility to effect coordination between
them. Also, the distinction between line and staff blurs. The support staff
plays a key role in the Adhocracy; in fact, it is the key part of the
Administrative Adhocracy, where this configuration houses most of the experts
on which it is so dependent.
The administrative
component of the Adhocracy emerges as an organic mass of line managers and
staff experts (with operators in the Operating Adhocracy), working together in
ever-shifting relationships on ad hoc projects. Figure 12-3 shows the symbolic
illustration of Adhocracy.
C. Strategy Formation in the
Adhocracy
Control of the strategy
formulation process in the Adhocracy is not clearly placed, at the strategic
apex or elsewhere. The process is best thought of as strategy formation, because strategy in these
structures is not so much formulated consciously by individuals as formed
implicitly by the decisions they make, one at a time.
Since Adhocracy’s central
purpose is to innovate, the results of its efforts can never be predetermined. But
when its strategy stabilizes, the structure ceases to be Adhocracy. In the case
of Operating Adhocracy, the structure never quite sure what it will do next,
that depends on the conditions of the project. In the case of Administrative
Adhocracy, the structural system of work constellations can be most possible,
each located at the level of the hierarchy commensurate with the kinds of
functional decisions it must make.
D. The Roles of the Strategic
Apex
The top managers of the
strategic apex of the Adhocracy may not spend much time formulating explicit
strategies, but they must spend a good deal of their time in the battles that
ensue over strategic choices, and in handling the many other disturbances that
arise all over these fluid structures. It combines organic working arrangements
instead of bureaucratic ones, with expert power instead of formal authority.
Thus, the top managers as well as those in its middle line must be masters of
human relations, able to use persuasion, negotiation, coalition, reputation,
rapport, or whatever to fuse the individualistic experts into smoothly
functioning multidisciplinary teams.
The top managers must also
devote a good deal of time to monitoring the projects. Perhaps the most
important single role of the top management of Adhocracy (especially Operating Adhocracy)
is that of liaison with the external environment.
II. CONDITIONS OF THE
ADHOCRACY
A. Basic Environment
The conditions of the
environment are the most important ones for this configuration; specifically,
the Adhocracy is clearly positioned in an environment that is both dynamic and
complex. We find Adhocracies wherever the conditions of dynamism and complexity
together prevail, in organization ranging from guerilla units to space
agencies.
Research-based
organizations – whether laboratories that do nothing else, or corporations in
high-technology industries that are heavily influenced by their research
efforts – are drawn to the Adhocracy configuration because their work is by its
very nature complex, unpredictable, and often competitive. Even hospitals and
universities are drawn to Adhocracy when they do truly innovative research so
as to create new knowledge and skills.
B. Disparate Forces in the
Environment
Hypothesis 13 of Chapter 6
indicated that disparities in an organization’s environment encourage it to
decentralize selectively to differentiated work constellations – in other
words, to structure itself as an Administrative Adhocracy. The organization
must create different work constellations to deal with different aspects of its
environment and then integrate all their efforts. This seems to have happened
recently in the case of a number of multinational firms having problems on
interdependences across product lines. Those multinational firms with
interdependencies among their different product lines, and facing increasing
complexity as well as dynamism in their environment, will feel drawn toward the
divisionalized adhocracy hybrid, which is called divisionalized adhocracy. This is also possible to non-commercial
organizations, an example is UNICEF as it requires more mutual adjustment among
divisions rather than direct supervision or control.
C. Frequent Product Change
A number of organizations
are drawn toward Adhocracy because of the dynamic conditions that result from
very frequent product change. This
condition is prevalent in the case of a unit producer and other small high-technology
firms. Thus, the structure emerges as a hybrid between Operating Adhocracy and
Simple Structure, which we call the entrepreneurial
adhocracy. When the market is so competitive, like in the case of
manufacturers of consumer goods, we call it competitive
adhocracy.
D. Youth as a Condition of
the Adhocracy
A number of
nonenvironmental conditions are also associated with Adhocracy. One is age – or
more exactly, youth – since Adhocracy is not a very stable configuration. All
kinds of forces drive the Adhocracy to bureaucratize itself as it ages. Also,
according to Hypothesis 1, young organizations tend to be structured
organically, since they are still finding their way and also since they are
typically eager for innovative, ad hoc projects on which to test themselves. So
we can conclude that the Adhocracy form tends to be associated with youth, with
early stages in the development of organizational structures.
The Operating Adhocracy is
particularly prone to a short life. Some Operating Adhocracies have short lives
either because they fail or succeed. Administrative Adhocracies typically live
longer, but as they age, they feel the pressure to bureaucratize leading many
to try to stop innovating or to innovate in stereotyped ways. There are also
instances of forming temporary adhocracy,
drawing together specialists from different organizations to carry out a
project and then it disbands. A related variant is the mammoth project adhocracy, a giant temporary adhocracy that draws
on thousands of experts for anywhere from a year to a decade to carry out a
single task.
E. Technical System as a
Condition of the Adhocracy
Technical system is
another important condition in certain cases of this configuration. Many
organizations use the Administrative Adhocracy because their technical systems
are sophisticated and perhaps automated as well. This was emphasized in
Hypothesis 7 of Chapter 6 requiring specialists who have the knowledge, power,
and flexible working arrangements to cope with it. Automation of a
sophisticated technical system evokes even stronger forces in the same
direction, we call it the automated
adhocracy. Automation is common in process industries, such as
petrochemicals and cosmetics.
F. Fashion as a Condition of
the Adhocracy
Power itself is not a
major condition of the Adhocracy. But fashion is a condition of Adhocracy. If
Simple Structure and Machine Bureaucracy were yesterday’s structures, and
Professional Bureaucracy and the Divisionalized Form are today’s, then
Adhocracy is clearly tomorrow’s. Yet despite this, Adhocracy seems to be in the
new industries of our age – aerospace, electronics, think-tank consulting,
research, advertising, filmmaking, petrochemicals – virtually all the
industries that grew up since World War II.
III. SOME ISSUES ASSOCIATED
WITH AHOCRACY
A. Human Reactions to
Ambiguity
Adhocracy is the only
configuration for those who believe in more democracy with less bureaucracy.
However, according to
Reeser (1969), human problems arise specifically on structural ambiguities.
Ambiguities such as anxiety related to the eventual phaseout of the projects;
confusion of members as to who their boss is, whom to impress to get promoted;
low sense of member loyalty owing to frequent transfers between project
organizations; lack of clarity in job definitions, authority relationships, and
lines of communication; random and unplanned personal development because of
the short time under any one manager; and intense competition for resources,
recognition, and rewards. The last point results to another problem of
ambiguity, Adhocracy emerges as the most politicized of the five
configurations.
Conflict and
aggressiveness are necessary elements in the Adhocracy; management’s job is to
channel them toward productive ends.
B. Problems of Efficiency
No structure is better
suited to solving problems, ill-structured problems than that of Adhocracy.
None can match it for sophisticated innovation.
Unfortunately, it is not
an efficient structure. It is not competent at doing ordinary things; rather it
is designed for the extraordinary.
The root of its inefficiency is the Adhocracy’s high cost of communication.
People talk a lot in these structures; that is how they combine their knowledge
to develop new ideas. A further source of inefficiency is the unbalanced
workloads. There are times that they are so busy, there are also times they’re
not.
C. The Dangers of
Inappropriate Transition
One solution to the
problems of ambiguity and inefficiency is to change the structure. The
employees no longer able to tolerate the ambiguity and customers fed up with
the inefficiency so they try to drive the structure to a more stable,
bureaucratic form.
That is relatively easily done in the
Operating Adhocracy. But the transition into bureaucracy is not always
appropriate. The organization came into being to solve problems imaginatively,
not to apply standards indiscriminately. The Administrative Adhocracy runs into
more serious difficulties when it succumbs to the pressures to bureaucratize.
It exists to innovate for itself, in its own industry. The Administrative
Adhocracy cannot often select new clients yet remain in the same industry.
CONCLUSION
To reiterate a central theme of our
discussion throughout our reference book: in general, there is no one best
structure; in particular, there may be as long as the design parameters are
internally consistent and together with the situational factors form a coherent
configuration. We have delineated five such configurations in the last section
of the book; their dimensions are summarized in Table 12-1 on pages 280 to 281.
Reference: Mintzberg, H. (1993). Structure in Fives: Designing Effective
Organizations. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc. 253-282
No comments:
Post a Comment