AN EMERGING ORGANIZATIONAL-STRUCTURE - A STUDY OF LEVELS AND INFORMATION NEEDS

The increasingly competitive nature of business is causing firms to rethink the manner in which they are organized, while the availability of more advanced information technologies are enabling significant organizational change tot take place. One change is the compression of organizational structures towards four basic hierarchical levels. Each level requires information specific to its unique orientation and related activities. To meet this requirement three types of support will be needed: intelligence support, which provides information on the internal and external environments of the organization; decision support, which organizes the information and facilitates the decision-making process; and technical support, which enables a sharing of the organization's information. A study of the procurement areas in several firms in a single manufacturing industry found that the areas appear to be moving towards the four-level organizational structure. However, they are doing so without recognition of the orientation and activities associated with the various levels. Also, none of the firms have gone beyond developing minimal intelligence support capability. This study indicates that systems thinking is not driving the organizational structure in the procurement areas, which may be indicative of other functional areas in the firm. Such systems thinking must come about if each functional activity is to contribute to the competitive capabilities of the firm.