Analyze what it means to say managers should organize for both exploration and exploitation

Instructions

Supporting Lectures:

Review the following lectures:

Introduction

Organizations can manage their day-to-day work with ease. It is what they know and what they do best. Change, however, is more difficult to manage and coordinate. Anytime you make a change to one aspect of running a business, you discover that you must also make changes elsewhere within the organization.

Tasks

Explain how the underlying values of organization development compare to the values underlying other types of change.
Analyze what it means to say managers should organize for both exploration and exploitation.
Evaluate when a company might be better off taking a more limited approach to open innovation.
Identify how designing organization structure can improve market success.

To support your work, use your course and textbook readings and also use the South University Online Library. As in all assignments, cite your sources in your work and provide references for the citations in APA format.

Submission Details

Create a 3–5-page Word document.
Name your file as SU_HRM5090_W4_Project_LastName_FirstName.

Small vs. Large Organizations

The structure and design of an organization is related to the size of the organization. Of course, the size of an organization also in�uences many other things such as the organization’s goals, use of technology, and market, but there are advantages and disadvantages to size. Organizations have always worked hard to grow. The motive for pro�t is a primary driver not only of growth but also of reducing costs, increasing market size, improving customer service, and many other things related to what organizations do to compete.

At the same time, there are pressures to grow. Owners and entrepreneurs of business want to grow fast and grow large. The pressure is for economic gain, prestige, or personal ful�llment. Global competition is another driver of growth. Smaller companies cannot compete with global �rms; so the pressure is there to grow to compete. At the same time, many smaller companies are gobbled up by the larger companies for reasons already discussed. All of these factors together increase the pressure on owners to grow or face stagnation or eventual annihilation. Business is a dog-eat-dog world, and in order to not get eaten, organizations seek (or are sometimes forced) to grow, even if it means a reduced return on investment.

Business owners and managers, therefore, need to adopt the right structure to support the growth and maintain a competitive advantage. This is true, whether the organization has decided on maintaining a small size or has decided on needing to get to a large size. Organizations that decide on a small size may do so to serve a niche market with more �exibility and nimbleness. Small organizations are closer to local markets and can adapt to changes in customer preferences or other market dynamics. Larger organizations are generally focused on economies of scale and scope to compete globally.

Additional Materials

From your course textbook Organization Theory and Design, read the following chapter:

Organization Size, Life Cycle, and Decline