| Naomi Stanford has produced the consummate guidebook for human resource professionals who are charged with shepherding a complex organization design project through to completion. It is full of useful tools to help manage the tricky but often overlooked softer aspects of organization change programs, such as communication plans, expectation management and rallying important stakeholders.
-Jay R. Galbraith, Senior Research Scientist, Center for Effective Organizations, Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California
Organization Design looks at how you need to change the ways your organization does things in order to increase productivity, performance, and profit. Providing the knowledge and method to handle the kind of recurring organisational change that all businesses face, those which do not involve transforming the entire enterprise but which necessitate significant change at the business unit, divisional, functional, facility or local levels. The problem lies in knowing what needs to change and how to change it. Taking the organisation as a designed system, it describes four major elements of organizations: the work - the basic tasks to be done by the organisation and its parts, the people - characteristics of individuals in the organization, formal organization - structures eg the organisation hierarchy, processes, and methods that are formally created to get individuals to perform tasks, informal organization - emerging arrangements including variations to the norm, processes, and relationships, commonly described as the culture or 'the way we do things round here'. The way these four elements relate, combine and interact affects productivity, performance and profit. Most books on this subject target a wide management audience rather than HR, this is specifically written for HR practitioners and line managers working together to achieve the goal. It clarifies why and how organisations need to be in a state of readiness to design or redesign and emphasises that people as well as business processes must be part of design considerations.
- Demonstrates how HR practitioners can work across the organization to change the shape and structure in order to improve performance
- Provides tools and techniques that HR professionals need to fulfil their emerging role as business partners
- A well-structured approach which provides a tested framework adaptable to a variety of organizational situations
About the Author
Currently consulting in the US. Previously Head of Organisational Development at Marks and Spencer, in this role she was responsible for HR innovation, HR strategy, and assessing workforce capability. She joined in December 2001 from British Airways where she had been an internal consultant specialising in organisation design and development. This followed an earlier career in graduate and post-graduate level business education specialising in management learning, change management and strategic human resource management. Affiliations include Member of the Institute of Management Consultancy, Fellow of CIPD. She has various vocational and professional qualifications including Masters’ degrees in Education and in Human Resource Development and a PhD from Warwick University Business School. |
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