You have been hired by a website design, production, and hosting company whose new animated website designs are attracting a lot of attention and a lot of customers. Currently, employees are organized into different functions such as hardware, software design, graphic art, and website hosting, as well as functions such as marketing and human resources. Each function takes its turn to work on a new project from initial customer request to final online website hosting. The problem the company is experiencing is that it typically takes one year from the initial idea stage to the time that the website is up and running; the company wants to shorten this time by half to protect and expand its market niche. In talking to other managers, you discover that they believe the company’s current functional structure is the source of the problem—it is not allowing employees to develop websites fast enough to satisfy customers’ demands. They want you to design a better one.
Questions
1. Discuss ways in which you can improve how the current functional structure operates so that it speeds website development.
2. Discuss the pros and cons of moving to a (a) multidivisional, (b) matrix, or (c) product team structure to reduce website development time.
3. Which of these structures do you think is most appropriate, and why?