Problems inside Dynacorp:
When Dynacorp
has changed its structure, there are problems of linkage and alignment
in the light of Strategic Design Lens. According to the new structure,
Research and Advanced Development Group and Business Units (BUs) are in
the back and Customer Operations are in the front to communicate with markets
and customers. Being in the back, the Research and Advanced Development
Group and BUs have almost no relation with customers. As a result, the
fragmentation of technical expertise would be deepened, the integration
between market needs and technology development would be very poor and
the technical support services
are slow. Therefore, enhancing the integration and cooperation between
the front and the back will become a big challenge. On the other hand,
the new structure does not totally solve the alignment problem of
improving performance measurement system
because some branch managers and product managers of BUs are still
spending most of their time worrying about the new performance
measurement system that is based on performance against revenue and
margin goals. In short, the new structure still has weaknesses in
linkage between the back and the front and in alignment.
Problems in the view of Political Lens:
In
light of Political Lens, the new structure is facing the problems of
interest conflicts between BUs and the weak power of executives. As M.
Pauley said, different product team leaders are trying to sell different
types of products depending on their particular product lines.
Moreover, BUs work on their different preferences and compete with each
other to develop products in their interest because each of them focuses on particular product category.
It means that there is still no recognition that interests are very
important for the BUs and their totally different interests and priority
are not yet understood and analyzed. Moreover, while arranging the new
structure, most of the leaders who came from the old engineering
department became the heads of the BUs. As a result, they may have not
yet had full power to control their BUs that consist of people from the
old production, engineering and marketing departments. Therefore, it is
necessary that Dynacorp maps the interests of different BUs, gets
buy-in, builds network among groups and increases power of the heads of
BUs.
Structure change:
Dynacorp
has changed its culture to motivate employees by altering its structure
from the functional to front/back structure in order to bring them
closer through account teams and by putting engineering and
manufacturing functions together, but Dynarcop is still facing a big
problem of creating a new organizational culture
that matches with its new structure. Its people still work in the old
manner and hold old concepts, beliefs, habits, norms, knowledge etc
while the new structure requires new knowledge, skills, concepts and so
forth. Even though the structure has changed for 2 years, its employees
are still in the dark to find out themselves ways to adapt to the new
structure and fulfill their new functions. Therefore, it needs to
provide training to its employees in order for them to get accustomed to
the new working culture and to get new necessary knowledge and skills
to carry out their new responsibilities. At the same time, it needs to
modify the job guidelines and put employees to suitable positions. As M.
Walker noticed, it also needs to replace at leas 25 percent of its
current staff and recruit new employees that fit the requirements of the
new system.
These actions are quite hard to carry out but urgently necessary in
order to change Dynacorp’s culture to match with its new structure.
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