change is rarely easy. When the Roman Catholic Church elevated a new pope, Francis I, in March, 2013, many hoped that he would represent a breath of fresh air after the troubled reign of his predecessor. But a well‐placed insider noted how difficult this would be, even for a supposedly‐absolute ruler: “There have been a number of Popes in succession with different personalities, but the structure remains the same. Whoever is appointed, they get absorbed by the structure. Instead of you transforming the structure, the structure transforms you” (Donadio and Yardley, 2013).
When the time for restructuring comes, managers need to take account of tensions specific to each structural configuration. Consultants and managers often apply general principles and specific answers without recognizing key differences across architectural forms. Reshaping an adhocracy, for example, is different from restructuring a machine bureaucracy, and reweaving a web is very different from nudging a professional bureaucracy. Falling victim to the one‐best‐system or one‐size‐fits‐all mentality is a route to disaster. But the comfort of a well‐defined prescription lulls too many managers into a temporary comfort zone. They don't see the iceberg looming ahead until they crash into it.
Mintzberg's imagery depiction suggests general principles to guide restructuring across a range of circumstances. Each major component of his model exerts its own pressures. Restructuring triggers a multidirectional tug‐of‐war that eventually determines the shape of the emerging configuration. The result may be a catastrophe, unless leaders recognize and manage various pushes and pulls.
The strategic apex—top management—tends to exert centralizing pressures. Through commands, rules, or less obtrusive means, top managers continually try to develop a unified mission or strategy. Deep down, they long for a simple structure they can control. By contrast, middle managers resist control from the top and tend to pull the organization toward balkanization. Navy captains, school principals, plant managers, department heads, and bureau chiefs become committed to their own domain and seek to protect and enhance their unit's parochial interests. Tensions between centripetal forces from the top and centrifugal forces from middle management are especially prominent in divisionalized structures but are critical issues in any restructuring effort.
The technostructure exerts pressures to standardize; analysts love discipline and hate anarchy. They want to measure and monitor the organization's progress against well‐defined criteria. Depending on the circumstances, they counterbalance (or complement) top administrators, who want to centralize, and middle managers, who seek greater autonomy. A college professor who wants to use a web‐based simulation game, for example, may find that it takes weeks or months to negotiate the rules and procedures that the university's information technology units have put in place. Issues that seem critical to IT may seem like trivial annoyances to the professor, and vice versa. Technocrats feel most at home in a machine bureaucracy.
The support staff pulls in the direction of greater collaboration. Its members usually feel happiest when authority is dispersed to small work units. There they can influence, directly and personally, the shape and flow of everyday work and decisions. In one university, a new president created a new governance structure that, for the first time, included support staff along with faculty and administrators. The staff loved it, but when they came up with a proposal for improvements to the promotion and tenure process, the faculty was not amused. Meanwhile, the operating core seeks to control its own destiny and minimize influence from the other components. Its members often look outside—to a union or to their professional colleagues—for support.
Attempts to restructure must acknowledge the natural tensions among these competing interests. Depending on the configuration, any component may have more or less influence on the final outcome. In a simple structure, the boss has the edge. In machine bureaucracies, the techno structure and strategic apex possess the most clout. In professional bureaucracies, chronic conflict between administrators and professionals is the dominant tension, while members of the techno structure play an important role in the wings. In the adhocracy, a variety of actors can play a pivotal role in shaping the emerging structural patterns.
Beyond internal negotiations lurks a more crucial issue. A structure's workability ultimately depends on its fit with the organization's strategy, environment, and technology. Natural selection weeds out the field, determining survivors and victims. The major players must negotiate a structure that meets the needs of each component and still enables the organization to survive, if not thrive.
WHY RESTRUCTURE?
Restructuring is a challenging process that consumes time and resources with no guarantee of success, as the BBC case at the beginning of the chapter illustrates. Organizations typically embark on that path when they feel compelled to respond to major problems or opportunities. Various pressures can lead to that conclusion:
The environment shifts. For Ma Bell (American Telephone & Telegraph), once the telephone company for most of the United States, a mandated shift from regulated monopoly to a market with multiple competitors required a massive reorganization that played out over decades. When AT&T split off its local telephone companies into regional “Baby Bells,” few anticipated that eventually one of the children (Southwest Bell) would swallow up the parent and appropriate its identity.
Technology changes. The aircraft industry's shift from piston to jet engines profoundly affected the relationship between engine and airframe. Some established firms faltered because they underestimated the complexities; Boeing rose to lead the industry because it understood the issues (Henderson and Clark, 1990).
Organizations grow. Digital Equipment thrived with a very informal and flexible structure during the company's early years, but the same structure produced major problems when it grew into a multibillion‐dollar corporation.
Leadership changes. Reorganization is often the first initiative of new leaders. It is a way for them to try to put their stamp on the organization, even if no one else sees a need to restructure.
Miller and Friesen (1984) studied a sample of successful as well as troubled firms undergoing structural change and found that those in trouble typically fell into one of three configurations:
The impulsive firm: A fast‐growing organization, controlled by one individual or a few top people, in which structure and controls have become too primitive and the firm is increasingly out of control. Profits may fall precipitously, and survival may be at stake. Many once‐successful entrepreneurial organizations stumble at this stage because they have failed to evolve beyond their simple structure.
The stagnant bureaucracy: An older, tradition‐dominated organization with an obsolete product line. A predictable and placid environment has lulled everyone to sleep, and top management is slavishly committed to old ways. Management thinking is too rigid or information systems are too primitive to detect the need for change, and lower‐level managers feel ignored and alienated. Many old‐line corporations and public agencies fit into this group of faltering machine bureaucracies.
The headless giant: A loosely coupled, divisional organization that has turned into a collection of feudal baronies. The administrative strategic apex is weak, and most of the initiative and power resides in autonomous divisions. With little strategy or leadership at the top, the firm is adrift. Collaboration is minimal because departments compete for resources. Decision making is reactive and crisis‐oriented. WorldCom is an example of how bad things can get in this situation. CEO Bernie Ebbers built the company rapidly from a tiny start‐up in Mississippi to a global telecommunications giant through some sixty‐five acquisitions. But
for all its talent in buying competitors, the company was not up to the task of merging them. Dozens of conflicting computer systems remained, local network systems were repetitive and failed to work together properly, and billing systems were
