Date: November 12th 2013

Personal Application Assignment Organization Theory and Design

MGMT 5100 Mr. Bruce Squires

Harshal Naik #100953980

1. How would you diagram your organization? Answer:

DIRECTOR

TECHNOLOGY

CONSULTING

OUTSOURCING

PROJECT LEAD

ENGINEERS SPECIALISTS

CONSULTANTS ANALYSTS

ANALYSTS, ENGINEERS ASSOCIATES

PROJECT LEAD

ENGINEERS SPECIALISTS

CONSULTANTS ANALYSTS

ANALYSTS, ENGINEERS ASSOCIATES

PROJECT LEAD

ENGINEERS SPECIALISTS

CONSULTANTS ANALYSTS

ANALYSTS, ENGINEERS ASSOCIATES

I have worked at Accenture PLC for 4 years. Accenture is a fairly large organization providing services in technology, consulting and outsourcing. I, have had the fortune of being a part of the technology and the consulting division. I have also been an advisor to some of the projects in the outsourcing division. The organization structures that I experienced in these three divisions were distinct. Accenture has been succinct and successful in implementing diverse structures across

the three divisions. However, as one large business entity, like most consulting firms, Accenture operates in a matrix structure.

The first axis is dedicated to the operating groups, or industries of its clients. Broadly, the five Operating Groups are:

Communications, Media & Technology Financial Services Products Resources Health & Public Service.

The second axis is the growth platforms, which broadly refers to the functional or technical domains in which Accenture creates and delivers solutions to clients.

Management Consulting is responsible for the development and delivery of Accenture's strategic, operational, functional, industry, process and change consulting capabilities.

Technology unifies the full range of Accenture's systems integration, technology consulting, and information technology outsourcing capabilities. Most people in the Services and Solutions work forces are aligned under the Technology growth platform.

Business Process Outsourcing focuses on managing specific business processes or functions for clients such as procurement, human resources, finance and accounting, as well as services geared to the needs of specific industries.

2. How would you describe Communication and Co-ordination among different departments of the company? Answer: Each division has different organization structure internally. In the consulting division, the structure is distributed more horizontally than vertically. The logic behind this this way of structuring is that is everyone should be accessible to everyone. The underlying emphasis was that shared communication should lead to improved decision making. Accenture ensures that this structure is functioning efficiently by severely limiting the size of this division. In India, there were only 80 of us in this division. This ensured approachability and hence did not allow much of the disadvantages associated with the horizontal structure such as definition of processes to affect the functioning. Although the technology division was matrix structured formally, it followed a networked organization structure internally. The matrix structure facilitated communication and coordination on the company level, whereas the networked structure added functional breadth to the projects. It enabled sharing of resources and pooling of ideas using mind mapping and co-ordination across various business units. The outsourcing division, on the other hand, followed a hybrid structure combining elements of divisional and functional structure, since the premise of the outsourcing industry is customer/client satisfaction. That said, it allowed reasonable cross-functional breadth and depth, further allowing sub-level movement. While little emphasis was placed on communication across business units of the same project, co-ordination amongst them was paramount. One distinct feature that was notable was that the communication between various teams across different business units in the same project was managed via the client. Although this certainly caused a delay in terms of efficiency and often led to redundant

information, it was important to keep track of changes since the project was a highly sensitive one.

3. How would you diagram the informal structure of your organizations? Answer:

Managers

Leads

Team Leads

Project Group

Client Service Managers

Consultants AClient

Analysts/ Clients

Informal Structure:

However, in the course of time an informal structure developed at Accenture based on of day-today interactions between the members of the organization.

Informal structures were beneficial on many occasions because:

We found different ways of doing things which we found easier and less time consuming

Patterns of interaction were shaped by friendship groups and other relationships

It was easier to work with informal structures.

Sometimes the informal structure would conflict with the formal one. In some cases it adversely affected our efficiency at meeting its stated objectives. There were cases where we were required to follow a rigid path of communication or processing. Many of us would choose the informal paths over formal ones since they were less tedious to follow. However, in most cases the informal structure proved to be more efficient at meeting objectives because the formal structure limited us in meeting our objectives. It often required us to follow a channel which sometime took longer than required. Our managers realized that the informal structure could be adapted to incorporate improvements which result from the day-to-day working of the informal structure. They regularly held skip-level meetings and upheld an open door policy. Our managers nurtured informal groups and molded them into the formal structure to achieve high levels of motivation for the members involved.

4. How does your organization deal with differentiation - integration issue? Answer: Accenture understands their goals and have a clear vision of how to seamlessly integrate to help meet those goals.

Accenture differentiated its employees by combining their assets, skills, alliances to accelerate competitive advantage and deliver high performance. Accenture focused on project variability and problem analyzability.

Accenture is decentralized; decision-making authorities are distributed throughout the hierarchy, and managers assumed the authority to make decisions as project needs dictate. Roles were loosely defined-people perform various tasks and continually develop skills in new activities. Each project member performed two or three tasks, and the result was joint specialization and increased productivity. Employees from different functions or sometimes even different projects worked together to solve problems and become involved in each other's activities. As a result, a high level of integration was required so that employees could share information and overcome problems caused by differences in sublevel orientation. The integration of functions was achieved by creating task forces and teams. Coordination was achieved through mutual adjustment as we worked out role definitions and responsibilities. This way of differentiating and structuring developed personal competence, expertise, and the ability to act in innovative ways. I believe that this provided my managers the ability to provide creative leadership.

5. What are the strengths and weaknesses of your organizational design?

Answer: Employees perform specialized tasks. For example, the mobilization team only contains brand managers who bring clients/business to Accenture. However, sometimes this lead to poor communication within the department and functional groups within the company.

It allowed flexibility in leveraging a wide variety of expertise to accomplish tasks. Employees with specialized knowledge were shared between the various functional units. For example, employees were used in different projects between different groups to provide a larger and in depth knowledge. In addition to this, there were well defined job roles and responsibilities as

well as a clearly defined chain of command. Teams were created, removed, or changed without causing disrupting the project. The structure encouraged peer-to-peer accountability and communication. The structure at Accenture allowed for coordination, motivation, and

communication to enhance. In addition, employees gained self-satisfaction for achieving goals. Most projects need to have a high degree of flexibility and the implemented structure allowed it.

There were a few disadvantages as well. For example, in some projects if one functional unit was responsible for one aspect of the project, and other aspects were performed elsewhere it became difficult to achieve a synergistic environment. Some of the projects implemented a more vertical approach. Functional unit that operated in a vertical structure found it difficult to achieve the goals of the project that were compatible with other projects and address all essential questions pertaining to it. Also, some of the elements of the project were often wrongly recognized as important.

6. What improvements would you suggest? The environment and the organization structure at Accenture is highly conducive to perform efficiently. The informal structure of the company encouraged one to grow personally and professionally. However, one drawback that I noticed at the implemented structure is that there were too many communication channels that often rendered redundant communication. The communication loop has to be modified to filter out redundant communication and thus allow employees to perform robustly. Also the vertical structure for certain complex projects needs to be modified or rather flattened to a horizontal structure in order to decentralize authority and as their trademarked slogan suggests, deliver high performance.

Bibliography:
About Accenture. (n.d.). About Accenture. Retrieved November 12, 2013, from

http://www.accenture.com/us-en/company/Pages/index.aspx