"Reengineering"

There are a couple of things I would like to write about this week that I found in chapter 6.  It all falls under the heading of “Reengineering” – Organizations, Leaders, and Managers.  First, I’ll begin by stating that I feel that managing change is one of the most difficult things that top managers are tasked with.  There are two approaches to organizational change.  First, it could be fast and sweeping change.  Usually it is a more gradual change or evolution to what the company is heading to.  A couple of the things that struck me as being especially interesting and relevant in this section of the textbook, are creating fewer, more significant jobs thereby extending span of control and paying more in order to pay less.

Having fewer more significant jobs by combining job duties usually leads to a reduction in the necessary workforce.  This changes the shape of an organization and challenges the way management thinks.

The textbook gives a good example of paying more in order to pay less that was implemented at Taco Bell.  Taco Bell eliminated two layers of management occupied by district and regional managers which in turn enabled them  to hire more highly paid MBAs and eliminate the middle management jobs.  Paying more to pay less in the long run seems to be a good idea as long as it is not taken too far.  I think that it would be counter productive if the higher paid managers were given more of a span of control than they could effectively and efficiently handle.

http://www.uwosh.edu/faculty_staff/wresch/case1a.htm

http://www.progressivepractices.com/articles/reengineering.pdf

Comments

[dcarcole]

Connie, I also think that the approach of Taco Bell to reorganize their management staff is a good idea. It appears that more and more companies are realizing that the companies are overly staffed with managers,portraying these companies of having a whole lot of chief but no indians. Some companies are taking the stand to redistribute the amount of work that managers are responisble for doing, that historically was done by the subordinates. The irony of this is that those manager who were being paid more to do less now feel as though they are not being paid enough. To this I say wake up and smell the roses for years you have been overpaid for the amount of work that was expected, now that you are being manadated to actually work you want to complain.