Mattel and Corporate Reorganization

The result can be a more supple, flexible, and efficient organization. However, the entire "process culture" within which decisions are reached at Mattel must change if the firm is to achieve the benefits of the new organizational structure. If people bring old habits into the new structure, the organizational restructuring will not only fail to achieve its potential, but will become a source of conflict, miscommunication, and inefficiency. It is therefore essential that everyone in Mattel management, at every level, understand the new environment in which they will be working.

The old organizational structure at Mattel has, in general been a "tall" one. In a tall structure, instead of a number of functional areas reporting directly to senior management, sub-groups of operating divisions report through layers of intermediate management. Tall structures are characteristically authoritarian in their process culture. Decision-making in a tall structure tends to be centralized at the top, with

. . .
sks. The change to a flat organizational structure thus offers a number of important potential advantages. Layers of intermediate management are reduced, bringing top management into closer direct relationship with the operating divisions of the firm. Divisional managers find themselves with greater freedom of action to introduce innovations in products and procedures, while top management gets a stronger sense of what is going on at the operational level, unfiltered by intermediate management layers. The Need For Cultural Change A flat organizational structure also has potential pitfalls, however. As the span of control of top management is broadened, senior executives will find more issues reaching their desk, and will have less time to devote to each of them. Like the hypothetical flat office building, with its executive suite in the middle of the operating divisions, the flat organization is a noisy, bustling place, with top management and operating management thrust together cheek-by-jowl. Thus, a flat structure at once produces the temptation toward greater micro-management of the operating divisions and makes such micromanagement less practical. Top management is right at hand, confronted with everything hap
. . .

Some common words found in the essay are:
Flat Structures, Cultural Change, Mattel USA, Change Change, Kast Rosensweig, Change Cultural, top management, operating divisions, organizational structure, flat organization, flat organizational, intermediate management, divisional managers, cultural change, operating managers, flat organizational structure, Executive Summary, Contingency Approach, James Rosenzweig, layers intermediate management, divisions flat, operating divisions flat, York McGraw-Hill, management reduced bringing, intermediate management reduced,
Approximate Word count = 1416
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

More Essays on Mattel and Corporate Reorganization