Designing Organizations

This unit’s readings have mainly focused on designing organizations. The Galbraith (2002) text presents different forms of structure and how they relate to a business’s strategy. Reading this text gives some perspective into how real-life businesses are run. Most importantly, it has helped me to understand the steps I can take to develop my own business. This reflection presents some of the key points I can pick up from the unit’s texts and my thoughts on how they affect or relate to real life.

In my opinion, Galbraith (2002) has critical information for understanding how an organization can be designed. Through this text, I have understood the concept of a business strategy. In my understanding, a strategy is a specific technique that a business wants to use to achieve its goals and objectives. For example, if a business’s product mainly targets women, then its strategy may sell in places mostly visited by women, such as hair shops. This is the master plan that a business uses to gain a competitive spot in the market, attract customers, and achieve its ultimate productivity and sales goals. The way that this text defines strategy makes it easy to connect these concepts to real experiences with real organizations.

This text has helped me think deeper about the strategies of the organizations I have interacted with. For example, I buy natural food products at Whole Foods. In my understanding, this business aims to gain a competitive advantage in health and wellness; as a result, its strategy is to sell solely organic products. I use an iPhone, which Apple produces. In my understanding, the company’s strategy is creating high-premium phones to attract people in the high-end technology market. I have also tried to discuss the understanding of strategy and how it applies to real-life organizations with my colleagues. I remember one gave an example of Colgate, whose strategy is supposedly creating trust among the consumers by claiming that it is the number one recommended toothpaste by dentists.

Aside from understanding strategy, this text has been helpful in enhancing knowledge of the structures of a business. Once a business has developed a strategy, they need to determine the structures that will help to achieve that strategy. Galbraith (2002) extrapolates on the concept of structure and even goes further to explain various forms of business structures. Some of the examples of structures that are explained in the text include functional and lateral structures. However, what I love about the text is that it explains the correlation between strategy and structure. For example, in the text, one can understand how a functional structure best manages a single business strategy. What I appreciate about this part of the text is that it creates knowledge I can use to develop my own business. I have always wanted to develop my own business. With an understanding of organizations and strategy, I feel more confident that I can create a business with the potential to achieve success. This is a text that I think all business owners of starters need to read to have better knowledge of how to go about their management.

References

Galbraith, J. R. (2002). Designing organizations: Strategy, Structure and Process and the Business Unit and Enterprise Levels. 

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u02d1Reading Reflection: Designing Organizations

Reflect on your unit readings. Post your thoughts on the readings in 1-2 page, if 1 page no less than 3 paragraphs.

Designing Organizations

Use this discussion to digest your readings and gather ideas for your reflective paper.

Resources

• Discussion Participation Scoring Guide.

DISCUSSION PARTICIPATION SCORING GUIDE

Due Date: Weekly.
Percentage of Course Grade: 20%.