Kerry's Alternate Week 11 - Interview

Interview with Alta Office Services

Well, I encountered a similar situation to John's this week...my first interview FINALLY came through! I had already submitted a post, but since this person was kind enough to take the time to respond I thought I should include it as well. 

To learn a bit more about organization structure, I submitted the questions below to Phil Steuber, Managing Partner of Alta Office Services and third-generation Trojan.

1. Throughout most of the twentieth century, the predominant organization structure was one in which the CEO (or other top executive) was placed at the top of the organizational chart and everyone else was arranged in layers below. The decision-making was done by those at the top and the actual work was performed by employees organized into distinct functional departments. Would you say this is an accurate representation of your organization's structure? Why or why not?
   
   Yes, this is the case although there are deviations. This structure probably varies depending on the industry and what product or service they are trying to deliver the customer. We are distribution company with a service so it is heavy on operations. This requires strict adherence to processes and procedures and thus relies on a hierarchical decision making structure.


2. In our readings for this course, we learned that a vertical structure such as the one described above can be less effective in organizations that need to be “built-to-change.” For that reason, many organizations have begun to develop other structural designs aimed at increasing horizontal coordination and communication, and encouraging adaptation to external changes. Would you say that this characterizes your organization's current attitude towards its organization structure? Why or why not?
   
   Yes, regarding customer related issues that require quick decisions, we want our employees to cross-communicate and make decisions. Currently we are working on establishing more guidance on this matter so they feel better empowered to make these types of time-sensitive decisions.


3. Besides vertical and horizontal hierarchies, most organizations adopt either a centralized decision-making process where problems and decisions are funneled to top levels of the hierarchy for resolution, or a decentralized decision-making process where authority is pushed down to lower organizational levels. Where would you say your organization falls on this scale and why?
   
   Yes and no, we try to empower our branch managers to solve problems at their levels. Certain level of problems require a higher-level of involvement but that is exception. Overall I would say we lie in the middle.


4. Now let’s focus on communications. Obviously, organization design should facilitate communications among employees and departments to the degree necessary to accomplish an organization’s overall task. Vertical information linkages are used to coordinate activities between the top and bottom of an organization whereas horizontal information linkages overcome barriers between departments and provide opportunities for coordination among employees. Most organizations probably use some combination of both vertical and horizontal linkages. Can you give me an example of how you think your organization shares information utilizing both vertical and horizontal linkages?
   
   There are no restrictions on communications in any direction. We have an open-door policy for the most part and our employees are continuously cross-communicating either by face-to-face, voice, or email. We encourage cross-communication between similar departments across our company.


5. We also learned in our reading that there are seven different organization structures: 1) functional; 2) divisional; 3) hybrid; 4) geographical; 5) matrix; 6) horizontal; and 7) virtual network. For this interview, we’ll focus on the first three, which are the most common approaches. For the purposes of definition, a functional structure groups activities by common function from the bottom to the top of the organization. A divisional structure is one where grouping is based on organizational outputs. Finally, a hybrid structure is one that combines characteristics of more than one of the six other approaches based on an organization’s specific strategic needs. Which organization structure would you say most closely aligns with your organization? Do you think it’s the best approach or would another type of structure be better? Why or why not?
   
   I do not know which one we fall into but I will describe our structure.
   
   (1) Corporate element containing just bare staff
   
   (2) Branches which each contain their own administrative staff, sales staff, warehouse, distribution, equipment, and customer relations staff.
   
   In other words, outside of key corporate functions, we want each branch to function independently with their respective departments cross-communicating with other like-departments at other branches. As well, we encourage a lot of vertical communication within the branch but we do want our managers overseeing certain key functions such financial and human resources.
   
   We could save money by consolidating certain functions and reducing the independence of our branches but the trade-off is more work and labor at the corporate level.