Global Organization Design

Global Organization Design

Introduction

Any organization in the process of globalization has to establish a model of open systems, which maintains contact with local and global environment, these are dynamic organizations that receive energy from the environment in terms of resources or information, which is processed and returned to the environment. The organizational structure should be contingent on the environment where there are organizational goals, technology, size and corporate culture (Roberts, 2004).

Another aspect is the global organizational structure, which is defined as the sum total of the ways in which an organization divides its work into several tasks. This consists of two elements differentiation and integration, while the first work involves fractionating a set of tasks, the second makes coordination required between them. The choice of the organizational structure of firms is determined by three key strategic factors (Jones, 2007):

how to encourage the organization, which operate mainly in the country, to make full use of growth opportunities available abroad;

how to most effectively use the knowledge of products and different geographical regions in order to coordinate the business activities at the international level;

how to coordinate the activities of foreign branches and firms in many countries, while retaining their own identity.

Similarly, any organization with a tendency to globalize must incorporate the information technology and communication as network integration / interconnection between different departments locally or globally, enabling it to have real time information, streamlining international operations and decision making in a decentralized manner. Information is power and knowledge, and every organization must have a high information culture in the service of their competitiveness, enabling it to manage information (Das, 1998). The information do become strategic resources and processors of these societies, the same as capital and labor has been in industrial society

The world is getting ambiguous, changing, complex , random, and often unpredictable, therefore, the effectiveness of the marketing managers of organizations depend on the effectiveness of the management of information technology and communication as the wisdom to use it in making decisions in a global world.

Discussion

Following are the four types of global organization design (Brown, 2009):

Product

Area

Functional

Customer

Global Product Design

Under this model, different assignments and responsibilities are assigned to the managers of different division of specific products. This model is particularly successful in situation where the organization owns or deals in a number of product or services or in situation where the product is sold to diverse markets (Burton, 2011).

With reference to Global Product Design, the organization, dealing in international market, usually adapt two kind of product design.

M-form design

H-form design

M-form design

M-form design, typically known as multidivisional design, is implemented in organizations where the products being offered are related.

H-form design

H-form design, also known as holding company design, is usually successful in organizations where the products are unrelated.

In the real world, Unilever is the prime example which follows Global product design. The purpose of implementing this model is to bring specialization and expertise in all aspects of a Unilever's product or product division since Unilever's division focus on a single product or product ...