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What do you mean by organizational structure? Acknowledging and harmonizing differences and commonalities in three prominent perspectives

• Point of View
• Open access
• Published: 11 October 2023
• Volume 13 , pages 1–11, ( 2024 )

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• Daniel Albert   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3888-1643 1  

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The organizational design literature stresses the importance of organizational structure to understand strategic change, performance, and innovation. However, prior studies diverge regarding the conceptualizations and operationalizations of structure. Organizational structure has been studied as an (1) arrangement of activities, (2) representation of decision-making, and (3) legal entities. In this point-of-view paper, the three prominent perspectives of organizational structure are discussed in terms of their commonalities, differences, and the need to study their relationship more thoroughly. Future research may not only wish to integrate these dimensions but also be more vocal about what type of organization structure is studied and why.

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Introduction

An important area of research in the organization design literature concerns the role of structure. Early research, including work by Chandler ( 1962 , 1991 ) and Burgelman ( 1983 ), has studied how strategy execution depends on a firm’s structure, and how that structure can influence future strategies. Moreover, prior work has explored organizational structure and its connection to strategic change (Gulati and Puranam 2009 ), performance (Csaszar 2012 ; Lee 2022 ), innovation (Eklund 2022 ; Keum and See 2017 ) and internal power dynamics (Bidwell 2012 ; Pfeffer 1981 ), among others.

What is surprising is the divergence in understanding what constitutes and defines organizational structure. This becomes particularly apparent when considering how structure has often been operationalized in prior studies. While there are a variety of conceptual and empirical approaches to organizational structure, this point of view paper focuses on three particularly prominent perspectives. Scholars of one stream of operationalization have argued that structure is how business activities are grouped and assessed in the form of distinct business units (or divisions) (Karim 2006 ; Mintzberg 1979 ), which may represent a company’s operating segments for internal and external reporting (Albert 2018 ). In another stream of operationalization, scholars argue that structure is inherent in the organizational chart, specifically, the chain of command and the allocation of decision-making responsibilities. Often, a simple yet powerful proxy has been to consider the roles assigned to the top management team members (Girod and Whittington 2015 ). Finally, a third type of operationalization of structure is the composition and arrangement of legal entities (Bethel and Liebeskind 1998 ; Zhou 2013 ), specifically, discrete subsidiaries constituting an organization’s business activities. This may be the most consequential understanding of structure as it relates to the containment of legal responsibilities.

These three perspectives overlap in some cases but may also characterize organizational structure differently in important ways. In a clear-cut case, a firm may consist of a top management team that perfectly reflects its business divisions and units, reported by consolidated but legally distinct entities. However, when examining the financial filings of different corporations, a different picture emerges as such clean alignment is often not the case. Not only are well-studied differences in the corporation's legal form (such as holding versus integrated) present, but top management responsibilities and reporting of business divisions often show that structure is indeed a multi-dimensional phenomenon in organizations.

To illustrate how different perspectives may lead to varying conclusions about organizational structure, two companies, the financial service firm Citigroup and the automotive company Ford Motor, are briefly discussed with respect to each perspective. Both Citigroup and Ford Motor are interesting cases, as they are large organizations with diversified business operations across various industry segments and a presence in multiple geographical markets. This complexity in business operations underscores the necessity of an organizational structure to implement and execute the firms' respective strategies.

The objective of this point of view is to emphasize and discuss the co-existence of fundamentally different measures and their underlying assumptions of organizational structure. These three perspectives highlight different aspects of organizational structure and can help reveal important nuances idiosyncratic to specific organizations. That is, complementing one perspective with one or two other perspectives can paint a more holistic picture of firm-specific structural designs. The “arrangement of activities” perspective provides generally a measure that captures sources of value creation, that is, the groupings of economic activities and knowledge. The “decision making representation” perspective provides generally a measure of hierarchical allocation of decision rights and has been likened to the level of centralization, that is, which responsibilities are specifically assigned to the highest level of decision-making. The “legal entities” perspective often captures decentralization as "truly" autonomous activities that can render integration more difficult and, therefore, imposes greater decentralization among such units.

A follow-up goal of this point of view paper is to discuss the implications and future research opportunities of clearly distinguishing between these perspectives in organizational design studies. A completely new area of research constitutes the inquiry of the relationships between these perspectives and whether and when alignment between the perspectives is enhancing or hindering performance, innovation, and strategic change. It is important to note that this point of view paper is not meant to provide an exhaustive list of perspectives of organizational structure, but to spark a constructive discussion around the theoretical and operational differences and commonalities between the arguably most prominent perspectives. Additional perspectives of organizational structure are discussed in the limitations section.

Three perspectives of structure

Structure as arrangement of activities.

This perspective suggests that groups of economic activities, managed and reviewed together, make up departments, units, and divisions that form the organizational structure (Joseph and Gaba 2020 ; Mintzberg 1979 ; Puranam and Vanneste 2016 ). In the middle of the twentieth century, Chandler ( 1962 ) observed that large American corporations not only diversified into a greater number of different business activities but also started to organize business activities into separately managed divisions, which are typically overseen by a corporate center unit. The organization of activities into compartments is often nested, that is, activities within a given compartment are further organized into subunits and so on. In a more general sense, such compartmentalization constitutes the division of labor (or specialization) in an organization, which can be organized along various dimensions. The most prevalent dimensions along which activities are organized into units include customer segments, products, geography, and functional domains, such as research and development, marketing, and sales activities (Puranam and Vanneste 2016 ).

The way activities are organized has been often related to archetypical designs, such as a more homogenous organization that is organized along functions and multi-divisional corporations that are more heterogenous in the activities making up business divisions (e.g., Raveendran 2020 ). The corporate center is often considered as a distinct unit of activities that holds the design rights of the organization, allowing it to organize these activities (Puranam 2018 ). The center may also play a coordinating role in the management of interdependencies between divisions to ensure alignment with corporate-level goals (Lawrence and Lorsch 1967 ) and foster value creation (Foss 1997 ).

Scholars of this perspective have studied how the arrangement of activities into compartments is associated with the propensity and type of reorganization (e.g., Karim 2006 ; Raveendran 2020 ), as well as its association with innovation outcomes (e.g., Karim and Kaul 2014 ). These two outcomes of interest are closely related, as compartments consist of employees and resources that constitute a source of knowledge that may be rearranged or combined with other units to address a (changing) market in novel and more efficient ways. Hence, this perspective may help to understand the sources of performance and innovation.

Illustration of arrangement of activities perspective

Figure  1 shows Citigroup’s operating business segments, which are in line with accounting regulations that require businesses to disclose operations in the way in which activities are managed internally and held accountable for cost and revenues (see Financial Accounting Standards No. 131). Accordingly, Citigroup operates three business segments, “Institutional Clients Group (ICG)”, “Personal Banking and Wealth Management (PBWM)” and “Legacy Franchises”, which are predominantly groupings of economic activities based on customer segments (i.e., institutional clients, private clients, and consumer clients). These groupings encompass various activities around this customer segment and the relevant product offerings. For example, the division Personal Banking encompasses activities for retail clients, such as Citibank’s physical retail network and online banking as well as private wealth operations for high-net-worth individuals. The respective segments may be understood as the organization’s business divisions, whereas further, nested, groupings exist within these divisions (e.g., U.S. Personal Banking constitutes a subunit with further subgroupings into Cards and Retail Banking operations). Supporting activities and operations that are not part of one of the three divisions are managed by the corporate center unit.

Citigroup’s operating business segments. This figure is the author’s own drawing but entirely based on Citigroup’s 2022 10-K report (page 2)

In Table 1 , the operating business segments are shown for the automotive company Ford. Accordingly, Ford operates six main segments (and one reconciliation of debt segment), “Ford Blue”, “Ford Model e”, “Ford Pro”, “Ford Next”, “Ford Credit”, and “Corporate Other”. These groupings encompass various product and customer segment activities, such as the “Ford Blue” legacy business of internal combustion engine automotives, under the Ford and Lincoln brands. Electric vehicle-related activities are grouped under “Ford Model e”, whereas “Ford Pro” groups activities to address corporate clients who seek to optimize and maintain fleets. Noteworthy is also the segment “Ford Next”, which is a grouping of investment activities into emerging business models. While these segments (i.e., divisions) encompass various activities, information is limited with respect to any nested groupings within these segments (or a potential lack thereof).

Structure as decision making representation

This perspective suggests that the job roles in the top management team (TMT) are reflective of the organizational structure, as executives are charged to oversee certain activities (Girod and Whittington 2015 ; Guadalupe et al. 2013 ). At first glance, this understanding is fairly similar to that of the arrangement of activities. At a closer look, however, the TMT structure perspective is more indicative of an information processing perspective. At the center of the information processing perspective lies hierarchy as a mechanism to cope with information uncertainty and resolve conflicts (Galbraith 1974 ). Moreover, information processing has long been considered as the way in which key decision-makers can ensure coordination and integration of units (Joseph and Gaba 2020 ). That is, the top management roles may in fact extend beyond the formal task structure and include the reintegration and coordination of activities more broadly.

The assignment of decision-making responsibilities can reveal how the organization “thinks” about interdependencies, such as the need to coordinate resources, the potential to leverage synergies and so forth. For example, roles that largely define autonomous areas of business allow managers to make decisions more independently from one another. In contrast, roles that are focused on dedicated functions, such as research and development, marketing, and finance often require greater coordination among managers (e.g., Hambrick et al. 2015 ). Hence, the decision-making representations in the top management team may be understood as a hierarchy mechanism to manage and even create interdependencies between activities. A case in point is the deliberate assignment of creating synergies between otherwise standalone units, for example, in the form of executives holding multiple roles that span several divisions.

While the assignment of decision-making responsibilities clearly relates to efforts of coordination and integration, it can also explain the emergence of internal power and politics dynamics (Cyert and March 1963 , Pfeffer 1981 ). For example, Romanelli and Tushman 9/14/2023 7:00:00 PM suggest that top management turnover is a measure of power dynamics in organizations and treat this as entirely distinct from organizational structure. Moreover, the upper echelons perspective has proposed that organizational choice and strategic outcomes are, at least in part, a direct reflection of the backgrounds of the leadership's individuals (Hambrick and Mason 1984 ), which suggests that design choices, such as organizational structure are decided under the auspice of the very same individuals (Puranam 2018 ) that researchers have used as a proxy to measure organizational structure. This emphasizes the importance of considering the TMT as a structure of decision-making representation rather than a measure of division of labor.

Perhaps it is this representational role of the TMT as a potential liaison between activity arrangements and decision-making, which Gaba and Joseph ( 2020 ) discuss as information processing, that has led some of the prior research argue that structure influences how decisions come about. Accordingly, decisions of reorganization and internal resource allocation are the result of a political negotiation process (Albert 2018 ; Bidwell 2012 ; Keum 2023 ; Pfeffer 1981 ; Pfeffer and Salancik 1974 ). Hence, this perspective may help understand the role of structure as a process that shapes decisions (Burgelman 1983 ).

Illustration of decision-making representation perspective

Table 2 shows Citigroup’s executive leadership team with each member’s specific job title that reflects the decision-making responsibilities. The team is made up of executives responsible for specific business divisions (e.g., one member carries the title CEO of Legacy Franchises), some members oversee particular geographical regions (e.g., one member carries the title CEO of Latin America), other members represent specific subsidiaries (e.g., one member carries the title CEO of Citibank N.A.), and again others are in charge of corporate functions (e.g., one member carries the title Head of Human Resources).

Table 3 shows Ford’s executive leadership team. The team is made up of executives responsible for business divisions, such as “President Ford Blue”, “CEO, Ford Pro” and “CEO, Ford Next”. In addition, executives represent particular activities of these divisions, such as “Chief Customer Officer, Ford Model e” and “Chief Customer Experience Officer, Ford Blue”. Similar to Citigroup, at Ford executives also represent geographical activities and various functional activities. Moreover, one executive represents a legal entity (Ford Next LLC), which is also a business segment (activity grouping).

Structure as legal entities

This perspective suggests that structure is delineated by legal boundaries, such as discrete subsidiaries that make up an organization’s operating units. This may constitute the most consequential understanding of structure as it relates to containment of legal responsibilities.

Thus, empirical studies have operationalized legal entities as a proxy for divisionalization in organizations (Argyres 1996 ; Zhou 2013 ) and degree of decentralization of research and development responsibilities (Arora et al. 2014 ). The way organizations are legally organized may be motivated by liability concerns, tax advantages, shareholder voting rights, as well as international law and compliance consideration (Bethel and Liebeskind 1998 ). Nevertheless, organizing into legally separate units can have important consequences for the management of the organization, such as limited economies of scope (see ibid.). For example, Monteiro et al. ( 2008 ) describe how subsidiaries in multinational corporations can become “isolated” from knowledge sharing with the rest of the organization. This isolation from intra-firm knowledge flows leads these subsidiaries to more likely underperform compared to less isolated subsidiaries.

It is important to note that legal structure is not always at the discretion of the organization. For example, the financial and economic crisis of 2007/8 has led legislators in some countries to introduce laws that require system-relevant banks to organize certain activities and assets into separate legal entities that contain losses and allow quicker resolvability in case the government decides to step in and take ownership stakes of affected units (Reuters 2014 ).

Legal structures, specifically in the context of multi-national organizations, have been studied with respect to decentralized decision-making, local market adaptation, and dynamics between subsidiaries and the headquarters (Bouquet and Birkinshaw 2008 ). Another aspect of studying legal entities in organizational design relates to internal reorganization. Legally separated activities are not only more straightforward to evaluate (i.e., greater transparency) as they typically maintain their own balance sheets and income statements, but they may also be easier to divest or spin-off, which provides the organization with greater flexibility. For example, the legal reorganization of Google into Alphabet in 2015 legally separated Google’s activities from all its “other bets”, which were run as their own legal organizations, with the goal for greater transparency and accountability (Zenger 2015 ). Moreover, the separation of activities into legal entities may also affect how easy or difficult it is for the organization to endorse cross-unit collaboration and execute internal reorganization without changing legal forms. Coordination cost between separate legal entities are greater, as more formal and legally binding contracts may need to be set.

Illustration of legal entities perspective

Figure  2 shows Citigroup’s legal structure. Accordingly, the organization is at the highest level a Bank Holding Company, which legally owns two (intermediate) holding entities, “Citigroup Global Markets Holdings Inc.” and “Citicorp LLC”. Each of these two entities owns additional subsidiaries, which are largely organized by region (these may hold additional subsidiaries). This structure is quite different from Citigroup’s management of operating activities as none of the business divisions is reflected in the legal structure.

Citigroup material legal entities. This figure is the author’s own drawing and a slight adaptation rom Citigroup’s publicly available presentation material via https://www.citigroup.com/rcs/citigpa/akpublic/storage/public/corp_struct.pdf , accessed on March 23, 2023. The dark blue boxed refer to operating material legal entities. The four boxes that are within the grey dashed rectangle are branches of Citibank N.A

Table 4 shows a list of legal entities reported by Ford in its annual report. Many of these subsidiaries are focused on regional activities and/or credit-related activities, which may be due to regulatory requirements of operating consumer financing activities. The legal entity Ford Next LLC is also its own business segment (i.e., an arrangement of activities reported as a managed division) and directly represented in the executive team. The Ford example does not provide much detail on the exact ownership structure among subsidiaries, which generally is indicative of a legal hierarchical structure of the respective legal entities. However, Ford European Holdings Inc. appears to own European subsidiaries, such as Ford Deutschland Holding GmbH, which in turn is the legal entity that owns subsidiaries in Germany and so on.

A path forward

The study of the commonalities , differences , and relationships between the three perspectives of organization structure—i.e., structure as arrangement of activities, decision-making representation, and legal entities—offers great potential for the field of organizational design. Previous research has often focused on one of these dimensions at a time to study organizational structure, but each perspective plays an important role in organizing and influencing decision-making.

Commonalities

All three perspectives share central ideas of organizational design. First, there is the notion that tasks are grouped and kept separate . The arrangement of activities perspective suggests that economic processes are managed and carried out together when these influence one another. Thus, this perspective stresses the grouping of tasks most forcefully of all the perspectives. However, the two other lines of research also reflect groupings of tasks. The decision-making representation perspective considers job titles and decision-making authority assigned to distinct members of the executive team to generally be related to how tasks are structured. Decision makers, therefore, oversee a particular task environment. The legal entity perspective proposes legal boundaries as delineations of responsibility and accountability. That is, legal separation and containment of financial accountability constitute somewhat binding modularity.

The three views also embrace the concept of hierarchy , albeit manifested differently. The arrangement of activities captures hierarchy by stressing that activity groups (i.e., units) can be nested, that is, a division is made up of several sub-units with own task responsibilities. Hierarchy in decision-making representation is captured by reporting lines and may be more focused on hierarchy as a means of conflict resolution and the diffusion of top-down ideas. The legal entity view shares similarity with the arrangement of activities perspective in that nested structures of subsidiaries can exist, but the “mechanism” of hierarchy is the ownership structure.

Differences

While the three perspectives have obvious similarities and overlap—after all, that is why scholars rely on one or the other perspectives to proxy organizational structure—these perspectives also capture distinct elements and, therefore, draw attention to different theoretical aspects of organization structure. The arrangement of activities perspective draws attention to the locus of value creation and innovation associated with structure. The grouping of activities influences whether synergies can be realized, goals achieved more quickly (Raveendran 2020 ) and whether knowledge can be recombined to seize innovation opportunities (Karim and Kaul 2014 ). The representation of decision-making perspectives draws attention to the top management team as structural authority to resolve conflicts between lower-level decision makers, and lobby for distinct operating activities in the organization. Moreover, top management plays a crucial role in the restructuring of the arrangement of activities and decisions with respect to changing the composition of legal entities. For example, political power of executives has been argued and shown to affect division reorganization decisions (Albert 2018 ) and allocation decisions of internal non-financial resources (Keum 2023 ). Finally, the legal entities perspective draws attention to structure as legal accountability and draws a sharp line between what is truly separate and what is more ‘loosely’ integrated. Consequently, arranging activities as legally separate entities often requires more costly coordination measures, such as formal contracts.

Theoretical and empirical questions around these differences may investigate the following claims.

A research focus on organizational structure as arrangement of activities may be of particular interest for the aim of understanding performance and innovation outcomes as economic activities are directly related to the process of value creation.

A research focus on organizational structure as decision-making representation may be of particular interest for the aim of understanding how strategic goals are formed, with respect to change and associated corporate reorganizations.

A research focus on organizational structure as legal entities may be of particular interest for the aim of understanding barriers to integration and realization of synergies as well as flexibility with respect to changes in corporate scope.

However, these preliminary statements about the different perspectives on organizational structure are not meant to encourage researchers to keep them strictly separate. Instead, future studies can explore these perspectives' theoretical relationships, offering wonderful opportunities for new insights, as will be discussed next.

Relationships

By investigating underlying connections between the different perspectives, future research may surface important insights about organizational design that can open up entirely new research programs. An essential theoretical question involves whether there are any directional relationships between specific perspectives. For example, when does top management team structure induce or follow other changes (in divisions and legal structure)? Karim and Williams ( 2012 ) show that changes in executives’ division responsibilities helps predict subsequent reorganizations in the respective units. Another question is how the legal structure may affect the arrangement of activities over time. The greater cost of integration of legally separate entities may imply that greater autonomy is more likely to follow, which future research may want to investigate.

Moreover, it would be useful for the field of organizational design to better understand when potential structural changes in divisions and legal entities trigger in turn a reorganization of leadership responsibilities. The legal structure may change much more slowly than the other two types, because of regulatory and other legal reasons. Nevertheless, the legal structure can play an essential role in how the organization lays out its strategic priorities, is internally managed, and evaluates its performance. At least, these appear to be the main reasons of notable reorganization that lead to an overhaul in legal structure. Recent examples include the already mentioned case of Google’s legal reorganization into contained group subsidiaries under the Alphabet umbrella, Facebook’s legal reorganization into the corporation Meta (Zuckerberg 2021 ), and Lego’s reorganization into the Lego Brand Group (LEGO Group 2016 ). The question remains whether the legal reorganization is a means to enable better top management and divisional structures or whether the top management structure, for example, motivated such legal changes for better alignment.

Finally, a completely novel question that acknowledges the multifaceted perspectives of organizational structure emerges. What are the performance, innovation, and strategic change consequences for organizations when these different perspectives are aligned or misaligned? Are there specific “archetypes” organizational structures along these dimensions?

Implications

It is important to stress that in some cases it may be necessary to draw upon two or all three to gain a more holistic picture of organizational structure and important nuances that may be highly specific to a particular organization. Whereas the arrangement of activities provides an overview of distinct operating units, such as divisions and subunits, this perspective alone does not capture complex interrelationships with respect to who reports to whom. This becomes most critical in cases of a matrix organization, where, for example, a segment is guided by a product goal as well as some geographical goals.

Moreover, a comparison of some of the organizational structure characteristics between Citigroup and Ford demonstrates how important, potentially strategy-influencing differences exist when consulting all three perspectives. For example, the fact that Ford’s executive team is in part made up of executives who represent a specific legal entity, which is its own reporting segment, suggests that legal structure, decision-making and value creation for certain parts of the organization go hand in hand. In contrast, Citigroup’s legal structure bears little to no resemblance to its operational structure. This may suggest that in Citigroup’s case legal entities play a very different role for organizational design purposes, such as containing legal regulatory requirements and legal containment of liability, whereas its management of value creating activities and decision-making responsibilities is guided across these legal boundaries. Concluding that the legal structure is a reflection of operational and strategic design may be somewhat misdirected with respect to product-market operations but more reflective of risk and geographical profiles in Citigroup’s case. Future research is encouraged to explore such differences in more detail.

Limitations

Before concluding this point of view paper, it is important to acknowledge that there are other important attributes of organizational design and structure that should be considered. For example, the leadership perspective of structure may be extended or complemented by considering the structure of corporate governance and its effects on organizational changes (Castañer and Kavadis 2013 ; Goranova et al. 2007 ). Moreover, the arrangement of activities into departments, units, and divisions determines the formal structure of the organization. Employees who belong to the same department (and work on the same task) often work in the same physical location and, therefore, are more likely to interact (including outside their formal task) and form (informal) networks with those close to them (Clement and Puranam 2018 ). As such, the structure of tasks can affect the emergence of networks in the organization. Organizational changes to the arrangement of activities may consequently conflict with the informal structure that has formed over time (Gulati and Puranam 2009 ). Informal networks in the organization may, therefore, constitute another “measure” of structure, but this paper takes the perspective that networks are a more likely to be a consequence of organizational structure (albeit one that may affect future structures).

Finally, organizational design can exceed a focal firm’s boundaries. Partnerships, such as alliances, joint ventures, and meta-organizations (Gulati et al. 2012 ), pose additional challenges in determining the actual structure of an organization. Future research is advised to study how different dimensions of organizational structure extend to and impact such boundary-spanning multi-organization designs.

The divergence in prior literature with respect to conceptualizing and operationalizing organizational structure reveals that this construct has more facets to it than sometimes acknowledged. Studying the alignment and divergence of these three characteristics of structure within organizations has potential to qualify and complement prior theories and generate new insights with respect to nuances of organizational design that we may have overlooked in prior work. It is important to consider that focusing only on one of these dimensions at a time for studying structure can indeed be sufficient. However, the field of organizational design may wish to be more concise in which perspective is chosen and why, when building, testing, and extending theory. Highlighting what is not measured following a particular perspective can already enrich our understanding of the role of organizational structure in novel and impactful ways.

Data availability

Data used in this manuscript are publicly accessible through regulatory filings and company Investor Relations websites.

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Albert, D. What do you mean by organizational structure? Acknowledging and harmonizing differences and commonalities in three prominent perspectives. J Org Design 13 , 1–11 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41469-023-00152-y

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The role of organizational research in implementing evidence-based practice: QUERI Series

Elizabeth m yano.

1 Veterans Affairs (VA) Health Services Research and Development (HSR&D) Center of Excellence for the Study of Healthcare Provider Behaviour, VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System, Sepulveda, CA, USA

2 Department of Health Services, UCLA School of Public Health, Los Angeles, CA, USA

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Health care organizations exert significant influence on the manner in which clinicians practice and the processes and outcomes of care that patients experience. A greater understanding of the organizational milieu into which innovations will be introduced, as well as the organizational factors that are likely to foster or hinder the adoption and use of new technologies, care arrangements and quality improvement (QI) strategies are central to the effective implementation of research into practice. Unfortunately, much implementation research seems to not recognize or adequately address the influence and importance of organizations. Using examples from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Quality Enhancement Research Initiative (QUERI), we describe the role of organizational research in advancing the implementation of evidence-based practice into routine care settings.

Using the six-step QUERI process as a foundation, we present an organizational research framework designed to improve and accelerate the implementation of evidence-based practice into routine care. Specific QUERI-related organizational research applications are reviewed, with discussion of the measures and methods used to apply them. We describe these applications in the context of a continuum of organizational research activities to be conducted before, during and after implementation.

Since QUERI's inception, various approaches to organizational research have been employed to foster progress through QUERI's six-step process. We report on how explicit integration of the evaluation of organizational factors into QUERI planning has informed the design of more effective care delivery system interventions and enabled their improved "fit" to individual VA facilities or practices. We examine the value and challenges in conducting organizational research, and briefly describe the contributions of organizational theory and environmental context to the research framework.

Understanding the organizational context of delivering evidence-based practice is a critical adjunct to efforts to systematically improve quality. Given the size and diversity of VA practices, coupled with unique organizational data sources, QUERI is well-positioned to make valuable contributions to the field of implementation science. More explicit accommodation of organizational inquiry into implementation research agendas has helped QUERI researchers to better frame and extend their work as they move toward regional and national spread activities.

Health care organizations exert significant influence on the quality of care through an array of factors that directly or indirectly serve as the context in which clinicians practice and patients experience care [ 1 ]. A greater understanding of this context can be important in closing the gap between research and practice. Each health care setting into which innovations are introduced represents its own organizational milieu, such as the structure and processes that comprise how an organization operates and behaves. Individually or in combination, these structures (e.g., size, staffing) and processes (e.g., practice arrangements, decision support) have the potential to foster or hinder discrete steps in the adoption and use of new technologies, care arrangements, and quality improvement (QI) strategies. Fixsen and colleagues describe such variables as being "like gravity...omnipresent and influential at all levels of implementation" [ 2 ]. Unfortunately, much implementation research has failed to fully recognize or adequately address the influence and importance of health care organizational factors, which may compromise effective implementation of research into practice [ 3 ].

Evaluating the organizational context for delivering evidence-based practice is a critical adjunct to efforts to systematically improve quality. This paper uses the context of and examples from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Quality Enhancement Research Initiative (QUERI) to illustrate a framework for fostering the integration and evaluation of health care organizational factors into the planning and study of the implementation of evidence-based practice within the context of the six-step QUERI model. Based on implementation experiences since QUERI's inception, we describe the role of organizational research using a series of QUERI-specific applications. We also briefly examine the contributions of organizational theory and environmental context to the organizational research framework.

This article is one in a Series of articles documenting implementation science frameworks and approaches developed by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Quality Enhancement Research Initiative (QUERI). QUERI is briefly outlined in Table ​ Table1 1 and is described in more detail in previous publications [ 4 , 5 ]. The Series' introductory article [ 6 ] highlights aspects of QUERI related specifically to implementation science and describes additional types of articles contained in the QUERI Series .

The VA Quality Enhancement Research Initiative (QUERI)

Using the six-step QUERI process as a foundation (Table ​ (Table1), 1 ), we designed an organizational research framework to help improve and accelerate implementation of evidence-based practice into routine care. We reviewed organizational research from specific QUERI Centers, culling and summarizing the organizational measures they included and the methods used to apply them to different implementation research efforts. We describe these applications in the context of a continuum of organizational research activities to be conducted before, during and after implementation.

Role of organizational factors in the QUERI model of implementation research

Evaluation of the influence of organizational characteristics on the quality of care has gained in its salience and value, as efforts to implement evidence-based practice into routine care have grown [ 7 ], although with mixed results [ 8 ]. As interventions to improve quality through structured implementation programs have moved from relatively homogenized "ideal" clinical settings to more diverse clinical environments, where tight research controls may be replaced by handoffs to hospital and practice teams, the organizational context becomes increasingly central to our understanding of what works and does not work in implementing research-defined structures and processes into operational realities [ 9 , 10 ]. Historically, since most clinical and delivery system interventions have been tested in a single or small number of institutions, within which the efficacy of the intervention has been evaluated and honed, organizational conditions have been either ignored (since they assumedly did not vary) or somehow controlled for. As a result, relatively few linkages between organizational structure and quality (either processes or outcomes of care) have been demonstrated [ 11 ]. However, as these clinical and delivery system interventions are implemented in more organizations in diverse settings and in different locales, the ability to implement them in the manner in which they were originally defined and demonstrated to be effective will continue to decline without better and more explicit integration of an organizational research framework into implementation research agendas [ 12 ]. As the need to adapt implementation efforts to local circumstances is increasingly recognized, the value of collecting advance information about structural and process characteristics in target institutions also has become more prominent [ 13 ].

The mechanisms by which organizational structures and processes may influence quality operate at many levels, and as a result, conceptualizations of what is meant by the organization of a health care system, setting or practice vary [ 14 ]. The diversity of how health care organizational factors are framed and defined complicates their measurement and the ability to easily integrate them into efforts to improve quality of care. How individual organizational constructs are conceptualized and measured in relation to implementation research efforts depends, in large part, on the following:

• The conceptual model and organizational theory (or theories) underlying the research [ 15 ];

• The nature of what is known and/or being hypothesized about the organizational structures and processes underlying evidence-based care for each condition under study [ 16 ];

• The size and complexity of the organization itself, such that it is clear whether we are talking about a team, a practice, a network of practices, a system of multiple networks, or some other organizational configuration;

• The timing or stage of implementation during which organizational research is being conducted (i.e., as part of planning, during implementation to support adaptation and midcourse corrections, or after implementation in support of interpretation of findings, sustainability and spread) [ 13 ]; and,

• The nature of the study designs and evaluation methods needed to demonstrate implementation effectiveness and foster sustainability and spread at the organizational level.

Organizational theory and conceptual frameworks

To date, the use of organizational theory in the design and deployment of evidence-based practices into routine care has been highly variable and generally under-used [ 17 ]. The dilemma for many implementation researchers is the absence of clear guidance on the nature of key theories and how best to use them [ 18 ]. QUERI is no different in this regard. Thus far, QUERI researchers have chiefly adopted useful heuristic models and conceptual frameworks (e.g., Greenhalgh's model, PRECEDE-PROCEED, RE-AIM, Chronic Care Model, complex adaptive systems), organizing measures around general constructs – but not necessarily grounding them in organizational theory [ 19 - 23 ]. New paradigms are needed that integrate salient psychological and organizational theories into a uniform model and make them accessible to implementation researchers [ 24 , 25 ]. In the absence of such paradigms, implementation researchers should capitalize on the contribution of organizational theories already contributed by psychology, sociology, management science and other disciplines in order to be explicit about the anticipated mechanisms of action at the organizational level. For example, these include diffusion theory, social cognitive and influence theories, the theory of planned behaviour, as well as institutional, resource dependency, and contingency theories [ 24 , 26 - 28 ].

What is known about organizational structures and processes underlying evidence-based practice

The Cochrane Effective Practice and Organization of Care (EPOC) group has conducted systematic reviews of a broad array of organizational and related professional practice interventions [ 29 ]. While there is a relative plethora of strategies, programs, tools and interventions in the literature about ways to improve quality, the evidence base for systematically transforming care using established interventions is actually relatively poor [ 30 ], particularly in relation to the "black box" of organizational attributes. Outside of QUERI, organizational strategies for hospital-based quality improvement (QI) have included data systems for monitoring, audit-and-feedback, and decision-support functions; financial support for QI; clinical integration; information system capability such as electronic medical records; [ 31 ], as well as compensation incentives [ 32 ]. Organizational culture as an intervening attribute has had mixed results, with greater influence on the effect of organizational strategies [ 33 ], and limited if any influence in physician organizations [ 34 ]. Practice individuation or tailoring also has had variable success [ 35 - 37 ].

Timing of organizational research applications before, during and after implementation

When to introduce organizational research applications as an adjunct to implementation efforts also has not been well-described. First, organizational factors may be broadly applied as a pre-step to the design of QI interventions by elucidating organizational precursors of high and low performance [ 37 ], or more narrowly applied in preparation for refining an implementation strategy in one or more specific facilities via needs assessment [ 13 ]. During implementation, attention to local organizational structures and processes enables systematic assessment of their influences on fidelity to the evidence (e.g., is the care model being deployed in ways consistent with the evidence base?). Such assessments may be accomplished through qualitative and quantitative methods. Such organizational assessments are sometimes used as an integral function of evaluating implementation in real time to enable mid-course corrections through audits, feedback, and adjustment of intervention elements (formative evaluation) [ 38 ], and other times as post-implementation appraisals.

If done iteratively, as in the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycles of individual quality improvement (QI) projects, local adaptation and resolution of implementation problems at the organizational level may be accelerated. Traditionally applied in continuous quality improvement (CQI), PDSA cycles are generally designed to take a single or few patients or providers through a series of processes underlying a proposed QI activity to iteratively test what works or does not work before investing in widespread policy or practice change [ 39 ]. Each process is refined, and new elements are added or others subtracted until the complete set of actions is found to be effective in a particular setting. In implementation research, PDSA cycles offer the same opportunity to hone implementation strategies in diverse settings. The system level PDSA occurs when the PDSA cycles move from implementation within a single organization to a set of organizations that may or may not be similar in characteristics to the original institution [ 13 ]. Such system-level PDSA cycles are consistent with Phase 2 (i.e., modest multi-site evaluations) or Phase 3 (i.e., large-scale adoption programs) implementation projects in the QUERI pipeline [ 6 ]. Not all QUERI Centers have relied on PDSA approaches for their implementation efforts. However, as more of them move to multi-site implementation trials or are engaged in regional or national spread initiatives, we anticipate that greater appreciation of the details needed to adapt evidence-based practices to different organizational contexts will be helpful.

After implementation ends, traditional process and outcomes evaluations may be augmented with analyses of organizational variations in implementation strategies and outcomes (e.g., system-level effectiveness or costs) and the degree to which organizational factors influence sustainability and spread. Examining the impacts of the newly implemented evidence-based care on the organization as a whole is also an essential evaluation component as they begin to form the foundation for a business case for quality improvement for health care managers. Such a business case might include changes in performance measures, employee satisfaction/retention, or evidence for the organizational return-on-investment associated with changes in care [ 40 , 41 ]. Systematic collection, analysis and reporting of detailed organizational data may then contribute to updated guidelines that integrate effective adaptations for different organizational characteristics.

Study designs and evaluation methods supporting implementation effectiveness

Achieving study designs and methods that produce credible evidence with relevance to "real world" settings is challenging, especially when aiming to evaluate population-based or practice-level interventions [ 42 , 43 ]. Balancing the needs of internal and external validity, pragmatic clinical trials offer participating sites an opportunity to modify the intervention to a degree that is likely to mirror what would happen under routine-care implementation [ 44 , 45 ]. Rather than open the "black box," these trials assume that the known (and unknown) variables are randomly distributed between intervention and control sites. Systematically assessing organizational factors through qualitative or quantitative methods may nonetheless provide a useful empirical complement to our use of pragmatic clinical trials. This is especially true in circumstances when researchers have reason to believe the variables of interest are not, in fact, randomly distributed. These types of data also are likely to improve our understanding of factors that influence provider or site participation [ 46 , 47 ] and the nature of modifications that worked in different organizational contexts [ 48 ].

Ensuring integration of rigorously designed and well-conducted organizational research to the mix will require not only broader recognition of its contribution to the goals of implementation science, but also an organizational research framework, like the one proposed here, that guides researchers to the types of organizational research they ought to be considering each step along the way. We posit that collecting and using organizational data will increase what we are able to learn about what settings, arrangements and resources foster or hinder adoption, penetration, sustainability and spread beyond the trial or implementation process. As Green and Glasgow suggest, "If we want more evidence-based practice, we need more practice-based evidence" [ 49 ].

Common concepts representing health care organizational factors

Several common concepts have been used to describe the characteristics of health care organizations (Table ​ (Table2). 2 ). For the purposes of generally classifying different types of organizational attributes related to quality of care, we delineate them along the lines of Donabedian's structure, process and outcome framework [ 50 ].

Common measures of the characteristics of health care organizations

Organizational structures tend to focus on static resources, whether they are related to the physical plant (e.g., amount of clinical space); the functions of care incorporated into the physical plant (e.g., types of specialized units); the equipment they contain (e.g., availability of laboratory or diagnostic equipment, machinery, computers); or the people employed to deliver services (e.g., staffing levels, skill mix) [ 50 ]. These facets may be described as the health care infrastructure, and while they can be changed, they are not typically as mutable as other characteristics [ 51 , 52 ]. Governance, managerial or professional arrangements for overseeing, managing and delivering services (e.g., corporate leadership structures, types of health plan, service lines, and health care teams) also represent structural measures [ 53 - 55 ]. The diffusion of innovation literature portrays these measures as "inner context," pointing to greater assimilation of innovations in organizations that are large (likely a proxy for slack resources and functional differentiation), mature, functionally differentiated (i.e., divided into semi-autonomous departments or units), and specialized (i.e., sufficient complexity representing needed professional knowledge and skill-mix) [ 19 ].

Organizational processes may be distinguished from the classical interpretation of Donabedian's process of care measures by virtue of their role in supporting the actions between provider and patient at a given encounter [ 50 ]. While they are influenced by organizational structure, they tend to be more mutable as they refer to practice arrangements, referral procedures, service coordination, and other organizational actions. Using electronic medical records (EMRs) as an example, the number of computer workstations and types of software may be described as elements of organizational structure, but the ways in which they are used to deliver care (e.g., decision support capacities, communication processes between providers) represent organizational processes underlying health information technology [ 56 ].

The role of culture and relationships as organizational attributes also are important to health care redesign and implementation of evidence-based practice [ 57 ]. Schein has defined culture as a pattern of shared basic assumptions that groups learn as a function of the problems they solve in response to external adaptation and internal integration [ 58 ]. When these group assumptions have worked well enough to be considered valid, they are taught to new members as the correct way to think and feel in relation to those problems (i.e., "This is how things are done around here") [ 58 , 59 ]. As is often the case, evidence-based practice is likely to reflect a new way of doing things, and thus may come into conflict with the prevailing culture of a practice.

There are, however, highly divergent views on how to study culture [ 59 , 60 ]. Culture encompasses a wide range of concepts that capture attitudes, beliefs and feelings about how the organization functions or the role of the individual (or team) within the organization (e.g., leadership, practice autonomy, quality improvement orientation, readiness to change) [ 61 , 62 ]. Culture has been classified as both a structural feature or measurable organizational average that characterizes context or an explicit trait to accommodate, and an organizational process or symbolic approach for viewing the organizational life of an institution [ 57 , 63 ]. Integral to the evaluation of and adaptation to local culture is the need to understand and appreciate the dynamics of relationships within and outside health care organizations that influence the adoption and use of innovations [ 64 , 65 ]. These dynamics may include consequences of political and social ideologies that may exert themselves on what is acceptable organizational behaviour [ 63 ]. Organizational culture is hypothesized to influence operational effectiveness, readiness to adopt new practices, and professional behaviour and style, and is considered by many to be a critical determinant of organizational performance [ 33 , 37 ]. Thus, culture change is commonly treated as an explicit (or implicit) part of efforts to implement evidence-based practice, insofar as QI interventions aim to change business as usual [ 66 - 68 ]. Despite substantial interest in the potential of culture as an organizational attribute, there is no widely agreed upon instrument to measure culture – and no consensus on how best to analyze or apply findings from these data to improve implementation of evidence-based practice. Also, organizational culture as measured among VA employees has been fairly consistent over time, raising issues about its mutability and the measures' sensitivity to change.

Organizational outcomes are akin to other measures of quality at the provider or patient level, with the exception that they are best expressed as the aggregation or roll-up of processes or outcomes at the organizational level. While the unit of analysis may differ (e.g., team, clinic, practice, hospital, system), organizational outcomes are often reflected as performance measures or practice patterns that serve as summary measures of process quality (i.e., the percentage of eligible diabetics receiving foot sensation exams) or intermediate outcomes (i.e., glycemic control among all diabetics in the entire practice). Other outcomes include disease-related outcomes (e.g., complication rates, disease-specific morbidity and mortality), practice-level or population-based measures of effectiveness (e.g., ambulatory care sensitive admission rates, functional status), utilization patterns and costs. Many trials and observational studies of the implementation of evidence-based practice continue to focus on "enrolled" populations rather than the entire practice that would be likely to experience the new care model or practice intervention under routine conditions. Organizational outcomes are distinct only insofar as they represent what the entire practice or institution would experience as a whole once implementation is complete, and are thus inter-related to other evaluation activities.

The role of organizational research in the QUERI model

One of the foundations of QUERI has been to help operationalize the "interdependent relationships among clinicians, managers, policy makers, and researchers" [ 69 ].

The VA QUERI program's progress in conducting a series of progressively larger, multi-site implementation studies brings the nature and importance of organizational factors and the need for related planning into rapid relief. While most efforts outside the VA have focused on only a few and often immutable organizational parameters, such as size, QUERI studies have been able to uniquely capitalize on the size and diversity of the VA health care system to integrate organizational research more systematically. Therefore, the role of organizational research is both to understand the changeability of organizational attributes and, when fixed, to integrate them as modifiers in analyses of the effectiveness and impact of implementation efforts.

In the following sections, we describe the organizational research considerations that parallel the QUERI steps (Table ​ (Table3) 3 ) and describe examples of QUERI applications for each step (Table ​ (Table4 4 ).

The role of organizational research in QUERI

Examples of QUERI organizational research findings and their application in QUERI implementation research

Evaluate disease burden and set organizational priorities (Step #1)

In a national health care system like the VA, conditions have been chosen on the basis of nationally prevalent conditions (e.g., diabetics, depression) or those associated with high treatment costs (e.g., HIV/AIDS, schizophrenia). Target conditions also have been updated periodically to accommodate changes over time (e.g., additional focus on hepatitis C added to the QUERI-HIV/Hepatitis Center's mission and scope).

On a national level, all VA facilities have commonly been held to the same performance standards regardless of organizational variations in caseload or resources. In smaller systems or independent health care facilities, organizational priorities should be established based on ascertainment of disease burden at the appropriate target level (e.g., individual practices or clusters of practices). At this step, it is important to determine how salient target conditions are among member organizations or individual practices by evaluating the range or variation in disease burden or performance. Modified Delphi expert panel techniques have been useful in establishing consensus among various organizational stakeholders in order to set institutional priorities [ 70 ]. These techniques entail advance presentation of the evidence base for a particular condition or setting (e.g., compendium of effective interventions based on systematic reviews) [ 71 , 72 ], as well as stakeholders' pre-ratings of their perceptions of organizational needs and resources, followed by an in-person meeting where summary pre-ratings are reviewed and discussed. Participants then re-rate and prioritize planned actions with the help of a trained moderator.

Many QUERI efforts have benefited from inclusion of QUERI-relevant measures in the national VA performance measurement system (e.g., glycemic control, colorectal cancer screening). This alignment of QUERI and national VA patient care goals fosters research/clinical partnerships in support of implementing evidence-based practice. For those QUERI centers whose conditions fall outside the national performance measurement system (e.g., HIV/AIDS), alternate strategies, such as business case modelling (i.e., spreadsheet-type models summarizing operational impacts of deploying a new care model or type of practice), have anecdotally met with some success.

Identify evidence-based practice guidelines and clinical recommendations (Step #2)

Organizational attributes have come into play at Step #2 in QUERI, when established guidelines assume access to or availability of certain organizational resources to accomplish them (e.g., specialty access, equipment availability). Many guidelines do not contain recommendations that consider organizational factors. It is thus essential to begin to consider the implications of the differences between the characteristics of the health care organizations in which efficacy and effectiveness have been established vs. those in which the evidence-based practices will subsequently be applied in order to improve their reach and adoption [ 73 ].

For example, for the Colorectal Cancer QUERI, VA and the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) guidelines for colorectal cancer screening were updated with recommendations for direct colonoscopy as the screening test of choice. Implementation of evidence-based practice in these circumstances would require different approaches in VA facilities with adequate in-house gastroenterology staffing compared to those where specialty access required referral to another VA facility or to community resources to accomplish the same goal. Anecdotally, in the face of limited specialty resources, some VA facilities adapted guideline adherence policies by fostering primary care-based sigmoidoscopies. In contrast, the U.S. Public Health Service smoking cessation guidelines relied on by researchers in the Substance Use Disorders QUERI offer a more explicit roadmap that includes adaptive changes to health care settings to promote adherence, with options for actions within and outside of primary care [ 74 ]. However, even they are limited in terms of their guidance on how best to accommodate different organizational constraints.

Measure and diagnose quality/performance gaps (Step #3)

The inclusion of organizational research in Step #3 has had particular value. For example, Colorectal Cancer QUERI researchers have evaluated the organizational determinants of variations in colorectal cancer screening performance as an early step prior to designing implementation strategies [ 75 ]. They also assessed system capacity to determine how implementation strategies might need to be adapted to deal with specialty shortages or referral arrangements [ 13 ]. Therefore, organizational knowledge from Step #3 studies may be used to facilitate planning for Step #4 implementation efforts.

Several QUERI centers have capitalized on existing organizational databases, while others have collected their own QUERI-specific organizational structure and process data for these purposes. These efforts have enabled QUERI researchers to document variations in how care is organized across the system, benchmark it with other systems, elucidate organizational factors associated with adoption of guidelines and quality improvement activities, and explicitly integrate these local variations into the design and conduct of implementation approaches (Table ​ (Table4) 4 ) [ 76 - 82 ].

Implement quality improvement (QI) interventions (Step #4)

Organizational factors come into play throughout the process of developing, adapting and implementing QI strategies for implementing research findings into routine care (Table ​ (Table4). 4 ). They provide a framework for diagnosing critical local conditions; developing a general implementation strategy; creating specific accommodations for different organizational contexts; and informing the design of subsequent evaluation studies. For example, in preparing to implement evidence-based interventions, it is important to assess local needs and capacities. Such needs assessments include appraisals of organizational readiness to change and diagnosis of system barriers and facilitators to the adoption of evidence-based practice at target sites [ 13 ].

The degree to which QUERI researchers have used information about organizational variations in the design and implementation of QI interventions has varied (Table ​ (Table4). 4 ). Organizational factors sometimes informed site selection for participation in large-scale implementation studies (e.g., Mental Health QUERI) [ 77 , 83 , 84 ]. They also were used as a foundation for the accommodation of local organizational characteristics through adaptation of intervention components (i.e., addition, elimination or modification).

Few large-scale experimental trials of the effects of specific adaptations to local organizational context that may be incorporated in Step #4 implementation efforts have been conducted. Recruitment of a sufficient number of organizations with the characteristics of interest typically requires dozens of health care settings, adding to the size, expense and complexity of cluster randomized trials [ 85 ]. Therefore, adaptation or tailoring of an implementation strategy's components to local organizational context commonly occurs as extrapolations from associations identified in quantitative cross-sectional analyses – or through application of qualitative data (Table ​ (Table4). 4 ). It is important that the level of evidence supporting on-the-ground changes in implementation protocols and procedures from site-to-site be clearly described. Otherwise, our ability to evaluate their deployment of these adaptations is limited.

Evaluate quality improvement (QI) interventions (Steps #5–6)

Consideration of organizational factors should explicitly shape the evaluation methods used in Steps #5 and #6 (Table ​ (Table4). 4 ). Methods used for assessing organizational factors in these types of evaluations use multi-method techniques, commonly combining qualitative inquiry (e.g., semi-structured interviews of key informants or focus groups of providers) and quantitative data collection (e.g., through surveys of leaders, providers or patients).

Unlike the organizational variations studies described for Step #3 or the adaptation or addition of program components that address organizational context in Step #4, QUERI studies in Steps #5 and #6 explore the organizational factors associated with adoption, implementation and impacts of the targeted QI intervention (Table ​ (Table4). 4 ). These studies may be distinguished from the pre-implementation organizational research (which is chiefly cross-sectional) in that implementation researchers aim to evaluate organizational predictors of quality improvement (i.e., changes in quality post-implementation). This is related to the more action-oriented research where fewer organizational factors are controlled for and also to pragmatic randomized trials where sufficiently large samples of organizations are included to enable subgroup analyses, as with different practices. Here, organizational evaluation may be formative (i.e., iterative component of practice redesign efforts) and outcomes-oriented (e.g., cluster randomized trials of implementation strategies or new policies or procedures designed to improve care); within QUERI, these evaluation approaches co-occur [ 45 , 85 , 86 ]. They also may focus on the organizational factors associated with adoption, penetration, sustainability or spread of interventions that have already been shown to be efficacious under ideal circumstances and effective in different types of settings.

Organizational research at Steps #5–6 has focused either on explicit integration and evaluation of organizational factors within the QI strategy itself (e.g., adding organizational supports as recommended in the U.S. Institute of Medicine [IoM] report) [ 87 ], or evaluation of organizational influences on how well a QI strategy performed across intervention sites (Table ​ (Table4). 4 ). Understanding site-level effects and provider variation similarly enable refinement and improved fit of the evidence to local organizational and practice issues [ 88 - 90 ].

Several QUERI examples apply. For example, in the Substance Use Disorders (SUD) QUERI, a process evaluation of organizational barriers in a multi-state group randomized trial of evidence-based quality improvement strategies for implementing smoking cessation guidelines led to a redesign of key intervention components (Table ​ (Table4). 4 ). During the trial, qualitative evaluation of organizational processes identified patient reluctance to attend smoking cessation clinics, inconsistent provider readiness to counsel in primary care, and variable ease in referral and capacity in behavioural health sessions [ 91 ]. Quantitative surveys and analysis of the organizational factors (e.g., formulary changes, smoking cessation clinic availability) influencing smoking cessation clinic referral practices across the 18 participating sites also were conducted [ 92 , 93 ]. The new implementation strategy – deployed in a subsequent trial – replaced the need for multiple in-person counselling sessions with EMR-based referral to telephone counselling. The Mental Health QUERI has used similar methods to implement depression collaborative care in increasingly diverse practices. With a parallel focus on schizophrenia, the Mental Health QUERI also has done extensive work using EMR automated data to monitor antipsychotic prescribing as a tool for QI evaluation in different locales [ 94 ]. Each QUERI center is working through these types of organizational research issues as implementation efforts accelerate throughout the VA.

We posit that a better understanding of the organizational factors related to implementation of evidence-based practice is a critical adjunct to efforts to systematically improve quality across a system of care, especially when the evidence must be translated to increasingly diverse practice settings. Specifically, more explicit accommodation of organizational inquiry into implementation research agendas has helped QUERI researchers to better frame and extend their work as they move toward regional and national spread activities. While some QUERI researchers have used traditional or pragmatic randomized trials, they also have worked to integrate complementary evaluation methods that capture organizational attributes in ways that enable them to open the "black box" of implementation, and in turn help inform and accelerate adoption and spread of evidence-based practice in each successive wave of practices. We argue for the value of casting organizational research as one of several lenses through which implementation research may be viewed.

Systematically integrating organizational research applications into implementation research is not without its challenges. Organizational research comes with its own methodological challenges in terms of appropriate study designs, adequate statistical power at the organizational unit of analysis, and multi-level analytical issues that require attention. Integrating organizational factors into empirical research has been daunting for most researchers given the logistical difficulties and costs of working with large numbers of hospitals or practices [ 95 ]. However, even in smaller studies, it is not uncommon for researchers to describe the effectiveness of interventions, such as reminders or audit-and-feedback, without describing the organizational supports or other contextual factors influencing their success [ 3 ]. No less important, the ability to study and manipulate organizational factors is confounded by sample size requirements of traditional research designs, invoking serious limitations in the conduct of most organizational research. Measurement of organizational constructs also can be difficult and requires identifying appropriate data sources (e.g., administrative data, practice checklists, surveys) and the right respondent(s) at one or more levels of the organization as key informants, if primary data are to be collected. Just as research at the patient or provider level tends to disregard organizational factors, organizational research also should adequately account for the contribution of patient characteristics (e.g., socio-demography, health status, clinical severity, co-morbidity) and provider characteristics (e.g., knowledge, attitudes, behaviour), where possible. Unfortunately, patient-level data clustered within providers and their respective organizations are not commonly available, creating built-in limitations in the interpretability of organizational research.

While this paper focuses on the influence of internal organizational characteristics on implementation of evidence-based practice, recognition of the importance of context requires brief mention of environmental factors (i.e., characteristics external to the organization). Environmental factors, defined as characteristics external to the organization, include geography (e.g., region, state, urban/rural location), area population characteristics (e.g., population density, socio-demography, community health status), area resources (e.g., numbers of health care providers per 1,000 residents), and other relevant area characteristics (e.g., managed care penetration, regulatory environment). Such factors may influence how health care organizations are structured, though organizational factors also may serve to mediate the impact of environmental factors on care processes and patient outcomes. For example, higher primary physician-to-patient staffing ratios in rural VA facilities appear to offset local gaps in specialty access and are associated with comparable quality [ 96 ]. Not surprisingly, deployment of system interventions into urban vs. rural facilities, often dictates different organizational adaptations to account for area resources. Explicit acknowledgment and planning for these influences ahead of implementation efforts is arguably a better approach than post-hoc reactions once in the field. The key is that context matters and requires continual evaluation to determine how context may constrain or create opportunities for improving implementation [ 97 ].

The VA's investment in QUERI has helped advance knowledge about the role of organizational factors in implementation. For example, organizational size appears to operate differently for different types of QI interventions. While organizational size is a positive factor for less complex QI interventions (i.e., where slack resources may be brought to bear), medium-sized facilities appear to be more nimble when facing the challenges of implementing more complex organizational changes (e.g., introduction of a new care model). In contrast, if practices were too small, they suffered from inadequate staffing and limited local autonomy for decision-making (i.e., had to wait for direction, were not able to identify a local champion). If they were too large, they suffered organizational inertia or required more organizational supports for coordination across departments or services. These barriers were sometimes overcome with sufficient leadership support and allocation of additional resources. Organizational control of those resources also is important. In the VA, like other large health care systems, resource control was sometimes one or more levels above the practice in which the QI intervention was being implemented. This required negotiation with senior leaders with varying levels of awareness and understanding of frontline needs or culture, and repeated marketing messages to different stakeholders at each level. Control of how care was organized also was important but did not always operate in expected ways. Practice autonomy emerged as a facilitator of more rapid implementation (i.e., faster penetration among providers in a practice); however, their speed appeared to undermine sustainability. Further work is needed to validate these findings for more QUERI conditions among increasingly diverse practice settings and in organizations outside the VA. For example, do the same findings hold true for depression as they do for diabetes? Varying levels of supporting evidence were noted for many organizational structures and processes in relation to quality of implementation. While the VA is most generalizable to large health systems, including U.S. regional systems like Kaiser Permanente and national health systems, such as those in the UK and Australia [ 98 ], many of the organizational factors studied also have correlates in smaller practices.

At this juncture, QUERI implementation research studies are progressing from local to regional to national in scope [ 12 ]. In parallel, methodologically – and along the lines of the QUERI steps – they are moving from variations studies to tests of intervention and implementation effectiveness to evaluations of spread, and then to policy development [ 13 ]. It is incumbent on us to contribute to bridging the gap between research and practice by considering the potential for accelerating implementation success by explicitly addressing organizational factors in our work.

List of abbreviations used

VHA: Veterans Health Administration; QUERI: Quality Enhancement Research Initiative; EMR: electronic medical record; CPRS: Computerized Patient Records System; CQI: continuous quality improvement; QI: quality improvement; PC: primary care; GI: gastrointestinal; HIV: human immunodeficiency virus.

Competing interests

The author declares that she has no competing interests.

Authors' contributions

EMY conceived of the content, identified relevant work, and drafted, iteratively revised, and finalized the manuscript and then reviewed and approved the final version.

Acknowledgements

This work was funded by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Veterans Health Administration, VA Health Services Research & Development (HSR&D) Service through the VA Greater Los Angeles HSR&D Center of Excellence (Project #HFP 94-028), the VA HSR&D and QUERI-funded "Regional Expansion and Testing of Depression Collaborative Care" (ReTIDES) (Project # MNT 01–027), and Dr. Yano's VA HSR&D Research Career Scientist award (Project #RCS 05–195). The author also would like to acknowledge and thank the editors and reviewers for their thoughtful critiques and useful input.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

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Perspective article, a flat organizational structure for an inclusive, interdisciplinary, international, and undergraduate-led team.

• Osier Laboratory, College of Natural Sciences, McCombs School of Business, Dell Medical School and School of Nursing, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, United States

Here, we describe our team's approach to fostering an inclusive laboratory culture that executes a study in accordance with funder guidelines and research regulations, as well as provides volunteers with targeted mentorship, skill-development, and leadership opportunities. Our approach is five-pronged: (1) applying the principles of transformational leadership and kaizen, (2) establishing a strong mentor-mentee relationship and fostering community, (3) expanding the role of the research volunteer, (4) identifying volunteer leaders to (a) oversee and work alongside members of existing committees and (b) create new interconnected/interdisciplinary teams, and (5) using technology effectively. Our team is large; at the time of the initial submission we had 104 undergraduate/post-baccalaureate students with no graduate student supervision, and we have since grown to 118 members. Volunteers are diverse and come from 14 countries spanning four continents and numerous intersectional identities. We attribute our rapid expansion and diverse membership to our unique flat organization structure, which allows students from diverse backgrounds to work alongside the PI and contribute to improvements within the team, while fostering their own leadership skills. All volunteers are encouraged to take an active role in the lab, based on their strengths, experiences, and goals, and promote continuous improvement within the organization. Volunteers report feeling valued and have recruited new members from other groups they belong to, creating a self-sustaining system that allows aspiring professionals to learn from and lead their peers.

Transformational Leadership and The Kaizen Philosophy

The two overarching principles that guide our team are those of transformational leadership and the kaizen philosophy; each will be briefly defined here and examples provided surrounding how they are applied within our team. Transformational leadership is a form of leadership in which leaders deeply trust and respect their team members, and work alongside them to accomplish objectives. Specifically, this leadership style is defined by (1) serving as a role model, (2) motivating and inspiring followers, (3) providing a range of ideas and solutions to roadblocks, and (4) mentoring individuals to unlock their full potential ( Asif et al., 2019 ). Moreover, transformational leadership is distinguished by the fact that leaders advocate for the long-term needs of team members and embrace change; this is opposed to transactional leadership in which leaders satisfy the current needs of team members through give-and-take exchanges ( Yammarino et al., 1993 ).

Working alongside a transformational leader, members are encouraged to share their experiences with the PI. These experiences may take the form of acknowledging inefficiencies and can transform into actionable improvement. By uncovering team perspectives on workflow processes, the PI is able to collaborate with the team to make incremental improvements through the kaizen philosophy. The kaizen philosophy was popularized by Japanese theorist Masaaki Imai, and posits that within an organization, continuous improvement can and should occur between all team members and in all areas of operation ( García-Alcaraz et al., 2013 ). Evidence suggests the kaizen implementation increases management skills and participatory problem solving ( Higuchi et al., 2015 ; von Thiele Schwarz et al., 2017 ).

Initially, we implemented the kaizen philosophy through meetings with a Vibe Tribe, a group of individuals tasked with encouraging “positive intergroup relations,” characterized by members of both minority and majority groups having positive experiences working with each other ( Ramarajan and Thomas, 2012 ). The Vibe Tribe provided a platform that directly targeted areas of improvement, in accordance with the Kaizen Philosophy, focusing team culture, and accountability. As our team expanded, and the various tasks became increasingly formalized, additional avenues for promoting the kaizen philosophy were pursued. Working groups were developed and met regularly with specific agendas, including revising SOPs, condensing training materials, and developing new resources (e.g., literature review template). New initiatives arose out of these working groups to address areas of improvement, such as instituting an application system and implementing a volunteer contract. The innovation arising from working groups made the value of developing regular kaizen meetings clear.

Regular kaizen meetings help to address the need for constant organizational improvement, and are where laboratory leaders and newer members work together to evaluate current practices and suggest areas of improvement. Kaizen meetings take place with various goals in mind including, but not limited to, forum-style think tanks, topic oriented working groups, and meetings aimed at updating internal websites and training materials. The outcomes of these meetings vary, but some examples include creating several team calendars to increase accountability and minimize overlap in screening or consenting shifts; redefining roles and responsibilities for various positions within the laboratory; consolidating resources into one central access point within AirTable; and implementing Quick Response (QR) codes for meeting attendance. The kaizen philosophy remains the core foundation of the success of many strategies previously described and makes full use of the value of the flat organizational structure.

We have seen that the transformational leadership style and kaizen philosophy complement each other. Transformational leadership encourages team members to feel wholly committed to the lab and engaged in their work. Deep involvement encourages members to give honest feedback and suggestions, which are heeded to make constant improvements. In turn, implementation of member feedback encourages further involvement and satisfaction.

Establishing a Strong Mentor-Mentee Relationship and Fostering a Community That Values Diversity

Prior to taking on their first volunteer, our principal investigator (PI) spent considerable time reflecting on their own past experiences as both a mentee and a mentor; this information was used to develop and refine their own mentorship strategy and tailor it to best meet individual member needs. New members complete an initial self-assessment and meet with our PI to set goals and establish rapport. The impact that closer, more personable mentorship had on them motivated the PI to use a similar approach on our team. Examples of strategies the PI uses to establish rapport include: encouraging all team members to refer to them by first name, sharing pronouns, as well as paying attention to, and providing recognition of birthdays, milestones, and other noteworthy accomplishments.

While our laboratory's PI does not come from a minoritized racial group, they are a first-generation college student and member of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT+) community. A key component of the initial rapport-building efforts is demonstrating a sincere commitment to an inclusive environment where all members are treated with dignity and respect. As part of the effort, the PI shares their own pronouns in the application materials and solicits volunteer pronouns via an online Google Form; in an effort to respect individual privacy “prefer not to answer” is included as an answer choice. Thus, far, no member has indicated they preferred not to share. All sensitive questions asked of volunteers are done with the promise of full confidentiality unless consent is provided to disclose this information; furthermore, whether this information is solicited using either a google form or other means, sensitive questions are explicitly optional. For example, one question allows students to identify as either cisgender heterosexual individuals, being somewhere on the LGBT+ spectrum, or preferring to NOT answer. Since evidence suggests that discrimination affects the career decisions of LGBT+ people, creating a safe and inclusive environment is imperative ( Schneider and Dimito, 2010 ).

Notably, evidence has shown that a demographic match between the mentor and mentee is less important than shared values ( Hernandez et al., 2017 ). Exploring personality and preferences, providing flexibility, communicating openly, and fostering trust are effective mentorship strategies that turn students into leaders ( Hund et al., 2018 ). Onboarding resources include a map and statistics highlighting our team's diversity (see Figure 1 ). As our laboratory's culture of inclusivity and acceptance attracts diverse members, it has become a part of the lab's foundation to appreciate the differences that make each member unique. In an effort to promote this, all team members are expected to make a conscious effort to learn the correct pronunciation of their teammate's names using the guide in the directory. Additionally, information shared at the initial meeting is used to identify opportunities for volunteers to get involved in the team while waiting on completion of mandatory background checks and regulatory approvals. For example, individuals who share a love of baking are encouraged to make baked goods which are delivered along with a monthly newsletter to be shared with the physicians, nurses, and other hospital staff at the recruitment site.

Figure 1 . Statistics representing the diversity of our team.

Starting from the initial interaction, the PI seeks to embody a transformational leadership style in which the leader works closely with the team to plan, execute, and troubleshoot initiatives. The PI participates, to whatever extent is feasible, in every aspect of the team's research operations, ranging from routine tasks such as de-icing freezers and assembling blood collection kits, to complex tasks such as maintaining regulatory compliance and enrolling participants. Consistent with the kaizen philosophy, the PI also regularly solicits feedback from all team members regarding how to improve their mentorship and research operations.

Expanding Roles of Undergraduate and Post-Baccalaureate Volunteers

Volunteers are given the opportunity to expand their roles in the laboratory and contribute in non-traditional ways that are flexible and allow them to hone transferable skills. These expanded roles are based on individual hobbies and interests which are discussed during onboarding. From graphic design and videography, to creative writing and baking, each individual is encouraged to apply their passions and skills to kaizen some facet of the team's operations. To help ensure members feel valued for their contributions, the significance of these contributions is made clear. Assessing volunteers' self-perceived skillsets led to numerous innovations and improvements, including the development of committees. One example of a committee that arose organically, based on volunteer experience and interest, was the Public Relations Committee. This committee leads numerous initiatives including: managing social media accounts (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn), designing recruitment flyers, distributing a monthly newsletter to clinicians, and developing and updating the official team website.

Our lab recognizes and values proactivity and self-directed initiative. Newly onboarded members are reminded that existing leaders were self-appointed and encouraged to let the PI know when they are ready for a leadership role and what skills they bring to the table and/or hope to further hone. After identifying volunteers who show initiative and leadership skills, the PI gives them more responsibility via a role as a point of contact, trainer, and/or committee chair (see Figure 2 ).

Figure 2 . Visual demonstrating the overlapping roles among the lab's cross-functional committees.

While most laboratory teams consist of graduate students and a select few undergraduates, our team has 118 current active undergraduate and post-baccalaureate volunteers, most who plan on applying to graduate school. Having a large team with a variety of majors and skill sets allows for interdisciplinary collaboration and the capability to take on specialized, non-traditional roles. For example, finance students upkeep the lab expenditures and help with grant applications. Environmental studies students have helped the lab to be more sustainable, by earning UT Green Labs certification. Another initiative was instating an application system to holistically evaluate prospective members. The first application cycle was competitive, with 197 applicants for only 25 spots; the second application cycle received 146 applications and accepted 34 new members. Applicants frequently cite the culture of the laboratory and the depth and variety of opportunities as their motivation joining. Having a large team has facilitated significant improvements and advancements in a short amount of time. In addition to the initiatives described above, availability of personnel allowed us to recruit 85 diverse participants during the first year of the study. On average, each team member spends 7.89 h a week volunteering – more than 2 h greater than contractually required. The laboratory's culture and opportunities for leadership encourage members to work efficiently to make the most of their experiences.

Developing Leadership Skills

Our flat organizational structure contributes to our continued growth and success. The traditional, hierarchical organizational structure does not exist. In its place is a highly interconnected system that allows everyone, from the newest member to the PI, to assume responsibility and contribute to incremental improvement within the organization by applying the kaizen philosophy. There are individuals who serve as points of contact for various tasks within the laboratory, but those individuals work closely with the PI and other volunteers. Every member is given the opportunity to become a leader and is provided with an arena to contribute their unique skills and talents. Laboratory leaders delegate easier tasks (e.g., data entry and inventorying) to newer members, while providing rationale, assistance, and gratitude. One way our PI encourages students to take initiative is through designing laboratory protocols and standard operating procedures (SOPs). When volunteers identify limitations in current SOPs, they take the initiative to revise them and share relevant updates with team members. It is imperative that the laboratory is able to communicate important procedures, to facilitate handoff of leadership positions upon volunteer matriculation. The flat organizational structure allows our laboratory to demonstrate “organizational resilience” by increasing cooperation, flexibility, and ability to act ( Andersson et al., 2019 ).

In our efforts to be interdisciplinary and inclusive, we find that many of our laboratory members join from non-traditional backgrounds and with various talents and skills. Our team presently includes an ex-medical photographer, a physician seeking re-residency in the U.S., and a bartender. When members initially join, the aforementioned onboarding Google Form allows members to indicate demographic data, goals, and unique skills. We utilize this information opportunity to create new leadership roles. For example, in analyzing our data we noticed that many of the participants were Spanish speaking. The Latinx members of our team led a Spanish speaking committee to build trust and mitigate the language and cultural barriers ( Sage et al., 2018 ). These members addressed the underrepresentation of Latinx individuals as both participants and researchers by translating enrollment paperwork and streamlining the communication process for non-Spanish speaking consenters. Allowing minority volunteers to lead is especially important; one study found that a research mentorship program at a Minority Serving Institution increased participation in advanced academic STEM training ( Carpi et al., 2017 ) and professional STEM careers ( Carpi et al., 2017 ; Estrada et al., 2018 ). Another volunteer started a committee focused participant payments and following up when surveys are overdue to reduce attrition. Upon realization of the difficulty in recruiting and retaining participants, several volunteers used their talents to create an official laboratory logo, postcards, and monthly newsletters that allowed the laboratory to gain more attention and awareness at the clinical recruitment site.Volunteers have full control over their own level responsibility they want to take on, thus enabling them to become active members and leaders.

It is crucial that we have accountability protocols to ensure that every member is working during their designated shifts to maximize patient recruitment. When on a screening or consenting shift, volunteers must be in communication not only to alert one another when there is a potential case, but also to support one another during the consenting process. In this way, volunteers are kept accountable for shifts they sign up for. Per laboratory policy, members are allowed up to three exemptions and two strikes for days when they are feeling under the weather or have an emergency; thus over a typical 16 week semester, members are expected to fulfill expectations for at least 11 weeks. This accountability system encourages members to be responsible.

Ultimately, our team develops transformational leaders. Laboratory leaders work alongside other members to take care of administrative duties, maintain operations, and launch new initiatives. Through leading by example, our leaders show the importance of encouraging and enabling members of the team. With the plethora of opportunities available to lead and learn from others, our members acquire leadership skills that will prepare them for their roles as future professionals.

Several technological applications are used to (1) facilitate individual communication, (2) manage team productivity, and (3) provide opportunities to participate remotely. Opportunities for remote engagement have benefitted team members who have pursued study abroad opportunities or graduated but wanted to maintain involvement. Technology allows our PI and other team leaders to communicate with all members en masse, which aligns with evidence indicating that using communication technology cuts costs, improves productivity, and saves time ( Arvanitis and Loukis, 2009 ). Several free applications are used by our team for various purposes. Each will be briefly described below; please note that alternatives are available and the authors report no conflict of interest.

Slack is a business communication platform that allows teams to communicate through channels—collaboration hubs where people can share documents, make announcements, set reminders, and poll team members. The platform can be accessed through a mobile app or the Slack website. While email is used for formal communication, Slack allows volunteers to clarify their doubts with teammates through group messages and message boards; individuals that need the PI's assistance can tag them directly. Many working in academia receive hundreds of emails a day, which contributes to “email stress,” the fatigue associated with high email volume ( Jerejian et al., 2013 ). Taking away the reliance on email is crucial in allowing our PI to manage such a large team effectively, while preserving time for higher-level functions. Moreover, volunteers receive shoutouts for their work on the Slack platform in a dedicated channel (#KaizenKweens), which serves to celebrate team accomplishments and keep members engaged. While several communication platforms exist that serve a similar purpose (e.g., GroupMe, Fuze, Workzone), the ultimate purpose is to streamline communication to allow leaders to respond and reach out to team members in a clear, timely, and direct manner.

Google Forms

Google Forms is a surveying application that automatically compiles responses into a spreadsheet. Our team uses Google Forms for several recordkeeping purposes in the lab, including accountability, onboarding, and clinical engagement. Productivity is managed through a weekly Google Form, created and sent out by the chair of the Accountability Committee. All members fill out the form with hours worked per week, action items for other committee members, and updates/requests for our PI. This system allows for monitoring contract adherence and conveying pressing messages to our PI, with minimal oversight. Most importantly, these surveys play a significant role in adhering to the kaizen philosophy by allowing members to submit feedback and ideas. Ideas that have arisen from survey feedback include developing a form to improve reference letter writing and hosting a resume workshop. Furthermore, all students who screen and consent patients fill out a Google Form after their shift, which is tracked by the Chief Clinical Officer and Data Management Committee as a source of data for future presentations and publications, and to ensure regulatory compliance.

One of the primary challenges in effectively leading large teams is task delegation, which we accomplish through AirTable. This database platform not only serves to itemize the tasks for each committee but is also where volunteers can assign themselves to projects directly posted by the PI. The types of tasks range significantly: from improving social media presence to writing SOPs for grants and publications. These projects allow volunteers to choose their degree of involvement in the lab, beyond the minimum requirements. Not only does this allow members to take leadership in the tasks they are interested in, but AirTable provides clear documentation of individual contributions, which is referenced when nominating students for awards and writing letters of recommendation.

In summary, our team is able to maintain its size because the team embraces technology and continually seeks better ways to use technology as consistent with the kaizen philosophy. Feedback, mentorship, and group communication are facilitated by several apps and tools that allow the PI to practice transformational leadership, by working alongside and directly communicating with team members. Members can access a support network of mentors because everyone is readily accessible on several platforms. Use of electronic collaboration tools allows members to easily provide feedback, update the team regarding their progress, and share barriers that need to be addressed in adherence to the kaizen philosophy.

The two overarching principles that guide our team are (1) transformational leadership and (2) the kaizen philosophy. These interconnected principles have allowed our team to grow into a diverse, inclusive, and productive community. Our flat organizational structure provides direct benefits for both volunteers and the PI. Working alongside the PI provides members with direct mentorship and feedback, while fostering a sense of community. Hearing the experiences of members allows the PI to identify targeted areas for improvements and work with members to apply their skill sets to develop new initiatives. We hope the strategies and methods outlined in this manuscript are useful in helping other PIs and mentors manage and lead their teams more effectively.

Author Contributions

SP wrote the first draft of the abstract and outlined the manuscript. Each of the five sections was expanded upon by all the authors. Establishing a strong mentor-mentee relationship and fostering a community that values diversity was written by NO. Expanding Role of Undergrad Student was written by MN. Developing Leadership Skills was written by SK. Technology was written by SP, and The Kaizen Philosophy was written by AN. All authors provided edits and revisions for the other sections. Additionally, AN, NO, and MN created the two figures for the manuscript.

This study was generously supported by the St. David's Center for Health Promotion and Disease Research (CHPR) Pilot Grant and the Heilbrunn Family Center for Nursing Research Grant. Additional financial support for this project came from the Rising STARs Award from the University of Texas System Permanent University Fund Bond, which was awarded to Dr. Osier.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the Dell Children's Medical Center for allowing us to conduct our study at their facilities, and Kimberly Lewis for helping us obtain site approval. Additionally, we would like to thank the patients and their families who chose to join the study. Lastly, we give our thanks to the members of the Osier Laboratory team, Linda Wasson who recommended volunteers for our team, and Joe Zaghrini who provided consultations on team management and accountability.

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Keywords: flat organization, transformational leadership, student leadership, diversity, inclusivity, team culture

Citation: Palepu S, Nitsch A, Narayan M, Kim S and Osier N (2020) A Flat Organizational Structure for an Inclusive, Interdisciplinary, International, and Undergraduate-Led Team. Front. Educ. 5:102. doi: 10.3389/feduc.2020.00102

Received: 24 August 2019; Accepted: 03 June 2020; Published: 14 July 2020.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2020 Palepu, Nitsch, Narayan, Kim and Osier. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Nicole (Nico) Osier, nicoleosier@utexas.edu

• DOI: 10.30977/etk.2225-2304.2024.43.88
• Corpus ID: 269841736

EVALUATION OF THE ORGANIZATIONAL MANAGEMENT STRUCTURE OF THE ENTERPRISE

• Ya. Velychko , O. Hetman
• Published in Economics of the transport… 25 March 2024

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Organizational Structure

Organizational structure can be defined as a system for outlining management roles and responsibilities to achieve organizational goals. Organizational structure also determines the pattern of information flow within the organization. For instance, in highly hierarchical structures decisions are communicated from top to down, whereas in flat structures the power for decision making is distributed among various levels.

Organizational structure aims to provide efficiency and focus to operations. Appropriate structure should illustrate how the roles and responsibilities of each employee fit within the overall system.

Organizational structure has the following four main elements:

• Chain of command. Illustrating who reports to whom via an organizational chart.
• Defining departments . Clustering tasks, roles and responsibilities into groups and defining connections between various groups.
• Extend of control . Categorizing each and every task into departments to avoid a situation where two or more people do the same task.
• Centralization . Identifying the levels where decisions are made.

There are four main types of organizational structures – functional, divisional, flat and matrix.

Functional Structure

Functional structure is based on specialization of employees and it is the most common organizational structure. It is also referred to as bureaucratic structure and divides company into various departments such as procurement, operations, marketing , finance etc.

Divisional Structure

Divisional structure is also popular and it divides to company into various divisions on the basis of products, projects or subsidiaries.

Flat Structure

Flat structure, also referred to as horizontal structure aims to minimize the chain of command providing employees with autonomy in decision making.  This pattern is popular among startups.

Matrix Organizational Structure

Matrix structure is the most complex and accordingly, the least popular. Matrix structure assigns employees across various divisions and supervisors. Employees in such a structure may belong to more than one divisions and report to several superiors.

In this portal you can find analysis of organizational structure of major international companies.

7 Organizational Structure Types (With Examples)

Updated: May 29, 2024, 5:39pm

Table of Contents

What is an organizational structure, 4 common types of organizational structures, 3 alternative organizational structures, how to choose the best organizational structure, frequently asked questions (faqs).

Every company needs an organizational structure—whether they realize it or not. The organizational structure is how the company delegates roles, responsibilities, job functions, accountability and decision-making authority. The organizational structure often shows the “chain of command” and how information moves within the company. Having an organizational structure that aligns with your company’s goals and objectives is crucial. This article describes the various types of organizational structures, the benefits of creating one for your business and specific elements that should be included.

Employees want to understand their job responsibilities, whom they report to, what decisions they can and should make and how they interact with other people and teams within the company. An organizational structure creates this framework. Organizational structures can be centralized or decentralized, hierarchical or circular, flat or vertical.

Centralized vs. Decentralized

Many companies use the traditional model of a centralized organizational structure. With centralized leadership, there is a transparent chain of command and each role has well-defined responsibilities.

Conversely, with a decentralized organizational structure, teams have more autonomy to make decisions and there may be cross-collaboration between groups. Decentralized leadership can help companies remain agile and adapt to changing needs.

Hierarchical vs. Circular

A hierarchical organization structure is the pyramid-shaped organization chart many people are used to seeing. There is one role at the top of the pyramid and the chain of command moves down, with each level decreasing in responsibilities and authority.

On the other hand, a circular organization chart looks like concentric circles with company leadership in the center circle. Instead of information flowing down to the next “level,” information flows out to the next ring of management.

Vertical vs. Flat

A vertical organizational chart has a clear chain of command with a small group of leaders at the top—or in the center, in the case of a circular structure—and each subsequent tier has less authority and responsibility. As discussed below, functional, product-based, market-based and geographical organizational structures are vertical structures.

With a flat organization structure, a person may report to more than one person and there may be cross-department responsibilities and decision-making authority. The matrix organizational structure described below is an example of a flat structure.

Benefits of Creating an Organizational Structure

There are many benefits to creating an organizational structure that aligns with the company’s operations, goals and objectives. Clearly disseminating this information to employees:

• Provides accountability
• Clarifies expectations
• Documents criteria for promotion
• Designates decision-making authority
• Creates efficiency
• Fosters collaboration

Essential Elements of Clear Organizational Structure

Regardless of the special type of organizational structure you choose, it should have the following components:

• Chain of command
• Roles and responsibilities
• Scope of control
• Decision-making authority
• Departments or teams within the organization

Functional/Role-Based Structure

A functional—or role-based—structure is one of the most common organizational structures. This structure has centralized leadership and the vertical, hierarchical structure has clearly defined roles, job functions, chains of command and decision-making authority. A functional structure facilitates specialization, scalability and accountability. It also establishes clear expectations and has a well-defined chain of command. However, this structure runs the risk of being too confining and it can impede employee growth. It also has the potential for a lack of cross-department communication and collaboration.

Product- or Market-Based Structure

Along with the functional structure, the product- or market-based structure is hierarchical, vertical and centralized. However, instead of being structured around typical roles and job functions, it is structured around the company’s products or markets. This kind of structure can benefit companies that have several product lines or markets, but it can be challenging to scale. It can also foster inefficiency if product or market teams have similar functions, and without good communication across teams, companies run the risk of incompatibility among various product/market teams.

Geographical Structure

The geographical structure is a good option for companies with a broad geographic footprint in an industry where it is essential to be close to their customers and suppliers. The geographical structure enables the company to create bespoke organizational structures that align with the location’s culture, language and professional systems. From a broad perspective, it appears very similar to the product-based structure above.

Process-Based Structure

Similar to the functional structure, the process-based structure is structured in a way that follows a product’s or service’s life cycle. For instance, the structure can be broken down into R&D, product creation, order fulfillment, billing and customer services. This structure can foster efficiency, teamwork and specialization, but it can also create barriers between the teams if communication isn’t prioritized.

Matrix Structure

With a matrix organizational structure, there are multiple reporting obligations. For instance, a marketing specialist may have reporting obligations within the marketing and product teams. A matrix structure offers flexibility, enables shared resources and fosters collaboration within the company. However, the organizational structure can be complex, so it can cause confusion about accountability and communication, especially among new employees.

Circular Structure

Similar to the functional and product-based structure, a circular structure is also centralized and hierarchical, but instead of responsibility and decision-making authority flowing down vertically, responsibility and decision-making authority flow out from the center. A circular structure can promote communication and collaboration but can also be confusing, especially for new employees, because there is no clear chain of command.

Organic Structure

Unlike vertical structures, this structure facilitates communication between and among all staff. It is the most complex, but it can also be the most productive. Although it can be challenging to know who has ultimate decision-making authority, it can also foster a positive company culture because employees don’t feel like they have “superiors.” This structure can also be more cost-efficient because it reduces the need for middle managers.

There is no one “right” organizational structure. When deciding which structure will work best for your company, consider the following:

• Current roles and teams within the company. How are job functions currently organized? Does it foster communication and productivity? Does it impede or encourage employee growth?
• Your strategic plan. What are your company’s goals for the short-term and long-term?
• Feedback from employees, leadership and other stakeholders. What do those within your company say about how the company is structured? What feedback do you have from other stakeholders, such as customers and suppliers?
• Alignment. What structure will best support your strategic plans and address any feedback received?

What is the most common organizational structure?

A functional organizational structure is one of the most common organizational structures. If you are still determining what kind of structure to use, this organizational structure can be an excellent place to start.

What is the difference between an organizational structure and an organizational chart?

An organizational chart is a graphic that depicts the organizational structure. The chart may include job titles or it can be personalized to include names and photos.

What are the four types of organizational structures?

A functional—or role-based—structure is one of the most common organizational structures. The second type—the product- or market-based structure—is also hierarchical, vertical and centralized. Similar to these is the third structure—the process-based structure—which is structured in a way that follows a product’s or service’s life cycle. Lastly, the geographical structure is suitable for businesses with a broad geographic footprint.

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Christine is a non-practicing attorney, freelance writer, and author. She has written legal and marketing content and communications for a wide range of law firms for more than 15 years. She has also written extensively on parenting and current events for the website Scary Mommy. She earned her J.D. and B.A. from University of Wisconsin–Madison, and she lives in the Chicago area with her family.

B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends: Outlook for 2024 [Research]

• by Stephanie Stahl
• | Published: October 18, 2023
• | Trends and Research

Creating standards, guidelines, processes, and workflows for content marketing is not the sexiest job.

But setting standards is the only way to know if you can improve anything (with AI or anything else).

Here’s the good news: All that non-sexy work frees time and resources (human and tech) you can apply to bring your brand’s strategies and plans to life.  

But in many organizations, content still isn’t treated as a coordinated business function. That’s one of the big takeaways from our latest research, B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends: Outlook for 2024, conducted with MarketingProfs and sponsored by Brightspot .

A few symptoms of that reality showed up in the research:

• Marketers cite a lack of resources as a top situational challenge, the same as they did the previous year.
• Nearly three-quarters (72%) say they use generative AI, but 61% say their organization lacks guidelines for its use.
• The most frequently cited challenges include creating the right content, creating content consistently, and differentiating content.

I’ll walk you through the findings and share some advice from CMI Chief Strategy Advisor Robert Rose and other industry voices to shed light on what it all means for B2B marketers. There’s a lot to work through, so feel free to use the table of contents to navigate to the sections that most interest you.

Note: These numbers come from a July 2023 survey of marketers around the globe. We received 1,080 responses. This article focuses on answers from the 894 B2B respondents.

Table of contents

• Team structure
• Content marketing challenges

Content types, distribution channels, and paid channels

• Social media

Content management and operations

• Measurement and goals
• Overall success
• Budgets and spending
• Top content-related priorities for 2024
• Content marketing trends for 2024

Action steps

Methodology, ai: 3 out of 4 b2b marketers use generative tools.

Of course, we asked respondents how they use generative AI in content and marketing. As it turns out, most experiment with it: 72% of respondents say they use generative AI tools.

But a lack of standards can get in the way.

“Generative AI is the new, disruptive capability entering the realm of content marketing in 2024,” Robert says. “It’s just another way to make our content process more efficient and effective. But it can’t do either until you establish a standard to define its value. Until then, it’s yet just another technology that may or may not make you better at what you do.”

So, how do content marketers use the tools today? About half (51%) use generative AI to brainstorm new topics. Many use the tools to research headlines and keywords (45%) and write drafts (45%). Fewer say they use AI to outline assignments (23%), proofread (20%), generate graphics (11%), and create audio (5%) and video (5%).

Some marketers say they use AI to do things like generate email headlines and email copy, extract social media posts from long-form content, condense long-form copy into short form, etc.

Only 28% say they don’t use generative AI tools.

Most don’t pay for generative AI tools (yet)

Among those who use generative AI tools, 91% use free tools (e.g., ChatGPT ). Thirty-eight percent use tools embedded in their content creation/management systems, and 27% pay for tools such as Writer and Jasper.

AI in content remains mostly ungoverned

Asked if their organizations have guidelines for using generative AI tools, 31% say yes, 61% say no, and 8% are unsure.

We asked Ann Handley , chief content officer of MarketingProfs, for her perspective. “It feels crazy … 61% have no guidelines? But is it actually shocking and crazy? No. It is not. Most of us are just getting going with generative AI. That means there is a clear and rich opportunity to lead from where you sit,” she says.

“Ignite the conversation internally. Press upon your colleagues and your leadership that this isn’t a technology opportunity. It’s also a people and operational challenge in need of thoughtful and intelligent response. You can be the AI leader your organization needs,” Ann says.

Why some marketers don’t use generative AI tools

While a lack of guidelines may deter some B2B marketers from using generative AI tools, other reasons include accuracy concerns (36%), lack of training (27%), and lack of understanding (27%). Twenty-two percent cite copyright concerns, and 19% have corporate mandates not to use them.

How AI is changing SEO

We also wondered how AI’s integration in search engines shifts content marketers’ SEO strategy. Here’s what we found:

• 31% are sharpening their focus on user intent/answering questions.
• 27% are creating more thought leadership content.
• 22% are creating more conversational content.

Over one-fourth (28%) say they’re not doing any of those things, while 26% say they’re unsure.

AI may heighten the need to rethink your SEO strategy. But it’s not the only reason to do so, as Orbit Media Studios co-founder and chief marketing officer Andy Crestodina points out: “Featured snippets and people-also-ask boxes have chipped away at click-through rates for years,” he says. “AI will make that even worse … but only for information intent queries . Searchers who want quick answers really don’t want to visit websites.

“Focus your SEO efforts on those big questions with big answers – and on the commercial intent queries,” Andy continues. “Those phrases still have ‘visit website intent’ … and will for years to come.”

Will the AI obsession ever end?

Many B2B marketers surveyed predict AI will dominate the discussions of content marketing trends in 2024. As one respondent says: “AI will continue to be the shiny thing through 2024 until marketers realize the dedication required to develop prompts, go through the iterative process, and fact-check output . AI can help you sharpen your skills, but it isn’t a replacement solution for B2B marketing.”

Back to table of contents

Team structure: How does the work get done?

Generative AI isn’t the only issue affecting content marketing these days. We also asked marketers about how they organize their teams .

Among larger companies (100-plus employees), half say content requests go through a centralized content team. Others say each department/brand produces its own content (23%), and the departments/brand/products share responsibility (21%).

Content strategies integrate with marketing, comms, and sales

Seventy percent say their organizations integrate content strategy into the overall marketing sales/communication/strategy, and 2% say it’s integrated into another strategy. Eleven percent say content is a stand-alone strategy for content used for marketing, and 6% say it’s a stand-alone strategy for all content produced by the company. Only 9% say they don’t have a content strategy. The remaining 2% say other or are unsure.

Employee churn means new teammates; content teams experience enlightened leadership

Twenty-eight percent of B2B marketers say team members resigned in the last year, 20% say team members were laid off, and about half (49%) say they had new team members acclimating to their ways of working.

While team members come and go, the understanding of content doesn’t. Over half (54%) strongly agree, and 30% somewhat agree the leader to whom their content team reports understands the work they do. Only 11% disagree. The remaining 5% neither agree nor disagree.

And remote work seems well-tolerated: Only 20% say collaboration was challenging due to remote or hybrid work.

Content marketing challenges: Focus shifts to creating the right content

We asked B2B marketers about both content creation and non-creation challenges.

Content creation

Most marketers (57%) cite creating the right content for their audience as a challenge. This is a change from many years when “creating enough content” was the most frequently cited challenge.

One respondent points out why understanding what audiences want is more important than ever: “As the internet gets noisier and AI makes it incredibly easy to create listicles and content that copy each other, there will be a need for companies to stand out. At the same time, as … millennials and Gen Z [grow in the workforce], we’ll begin to see B2B become more entertaining and less boring. We were never only competing with other B2B content. We’ve always been competing for attention.”

Other content creation challenges include creating it consistently (54%) and differentiating it (54%). Close to half (45%) cite optimizing for search and creating quality content (44%). About a third (34%) cite creating enough content to keep up with internal demand, 30% say creating enough content to keep up with external demand, and 30% say creating content that requires technical skills.

Other hurdles

The most frequently cited non-creation challenge, by far, is a lack of resources (58%), followed by aligning content with the buyer’s journey (48%) and aligning content efforts across sales and marketing (45%). Forty-one percent say they have issues with workflow/content approval, and 39% say they have difficulty accessing subject matter experts. Thirty-four percent say it is difficult to keep up with new technologies/tools (e.g., AI). Only 25% cite a lack of strategy as a challenge, 19% say keeping up with privacy rules, and 15% point to tech integration issues.

We asked content marketers about the types of content they produce, their distribution channels , and paid content promotion. We also asked which formats and channels produce the best results.

Popular content types and formats

As in the previous year, the three most popular content types/formats are short articles/posts (94%, up from 89% last year), videos (84%, up from 75% last year), and case studies/customer stories (78%, up from 67% last year). Almost three-quarters (71%) use long articles, 60% produce visual content, and 59% craft thought leadership e-books or white papers. Less than half of marketers use brochures (49%), product or technical data sheets (45%), research reports (36%), interactive content (33%), audio (29%), and livestreaming (25%).

Effective content types and formats

Which formats are most effective? Fifty-three percent say case studies/customer stories and videos deliver some of their best results. Almost as many (51%) names thought leadership e-books or white papers, 47% short articles, and 43% research reports.

Popular content distribution channels

Regarding the channels used to distribute content, 90% use social media platforms (organic), followed by blogs (79%), email newsletters (73%), email (66%), in-person events (56%), and webinars (56%).

Channels used by the minority of those surveyed include:

• Digital events (44%)
• Podcasts (30%)
• Microsites (29%)
• Digital magazines (21%)
• Branded online communities (19%)
• Hybrid events (18%)
• Print magazines (16%)
• Online learning platforms (15%)
• Mobile apps (8%)
• Separate content brands (5%)

Effective content distribution channels

Which channels perform the best? Most marketers in the survey point to in-person events (56%) and webinars (51%) as producing better results. Email (44%), organic social media platforms (44%), blogs (40%) and email newsletters (39%) round out the list.

Popular paid content channels

When marketers pay to promote content , which channels do they invest in? Eighty-six percent use paid content distribution channels.

Of those, 78% use social media advertising/promoted posts, 65% use sponsorships, 64% use search engine marketing (SEM)/pay-per-click, and 59% use digital display advertising. Far fewer invest in native advertising (35%), partner emails (29%), and print display ads (21%).

Effective paid content channels

SEM/pay-per-click produces good results, according to 62% of those surveyed. Half of those who use paid channels say social media advertising/promoted posts produce good results, followed by sponsorships (49%), partner emails (36%), and digital display advertising (34%).

Social media use: One platform rises way above

When asked which organic social media platforms deliver the best value for their organization, B2B marketers picked LinkedIn by far (84%). Only 29% cite Facebook as a top performer, 22% say YouTube, and 21% say Instagram. Twitter and TikTok see 8% and 3%, respectively.

So it makes sense that 72% say they increased their use of LinkedIn over the last 12 months, while only 32% boosted their YouTube presence, 31% increased Instagram use, 22% grew their Facebook presence, and 10% increased X and TikTok use.

Which platforms are marketers giving up? Did you guess X? You’re right – 32% of marketers say they decreased their X use last year. Twenty percent decreased their use of Facebook, with 10% decreasing on Instagram, 9% pulling back on YouTube, and only 2% decreasing their use of LinkedIn.

Interestingly, we saw a significant rise in B2B marketers who use TikTok: 19% say they use the platform – more than double from last year.

To explore how teams manage content, we asked marketers about their technology use and investments and the challenges they face when scaling their content .

Content management technology

When asked which technologies they use to manage content, marketers point to:

• Analytics tools (81%)
• Social media publishing/analytics (72%)
• Email marketing software (69%)
• Content creation/calendaring/collaboration/workflow (64%)
• Content management system (50%)
• Customer relationship management system (48%)

But having technology doesn’t mean it’s the right technology (or that its capabilities are used). So, we asked if they felt their organization had the right technology to manage content across the organization.

Only 31% say yes. Thirty percent say they have the technology but aren’t using its potential, and 29% say they haven’t acquired the right technology. Ten percent are unsure.

Content tech spending will likely rise

Even so, investment in content management technology seems likely in 2024: 45% say their organization is likely to invest in new technology, whereas 32% say their organization is unlikely to do so. Twenty-three percent say their organization is neither likely nor unlikely to invest.

Scaling content production

We introduced a new question this year to understand what challenges B2B marketers face while scaling content production .

Almost half (48%) say it’s “not enough content repurposing.” Lack of communication across organizational silos is a problem for 40%. Thirty-one percent say they have no structured content production process, and 29% say they lack an editorial calendar with clear deadlines. Ten percent say scaling is not a current focus.

Among the other hurdles – difficulty locating digital content assets (16%), technology issues (15%), translation/localization issues (12%), and no style guide (11%).

For those struggling with content repurposing, content standardization is critical. “Content reuse is the only way to deliver content at scale. There’s just no other way,” says Regina Lynn Preciado , senior director of content strategy solutions at Content Rules Inc.

“Even if you’re not trying to provide the most personalized experience ever or dominate the metaverse with your omnichannel presence, you absolutely must reuse content if you are going to deliver content effectively,” she says.

“How to achieve content reuse ? You’ve probably heard that you need to move to modular, structured content. However, just chunking your content into smaller components doesn’t go far enough. For content to flow together seamlessly wherever you reuse it, you’ve got to standardize your content. That’s the personalization paradox right there. To personalize, you must standardize.

“Once you have your content standards in place and everyone is creating content in alignment with those standards, there is no limit to what you can do with the content,” Regina explains.

Why do content marketers – who are skilled communicators – struggle with cross-silo communication? Standards and alignment come into play.

“I think in the rush to all the things, we run out of time to address scalable processes that will fix those painful silos, including taking time to align on goals, roles and responsibilities, workflows, and measurement,” says Ali Orlando Wert , senior director of content strategy at Appfire. “It takes time, but the payoffs are worth it. You have to learn how to crawl before you can walk – and walk before you can run.”

Measurement and goals: Generating sales and revenue rises

Almost half (46%) of B2B marketers agree their organization measures content performance effectively. Thirty-six percent disagree, and 15% neither agree nor disagree. Only 3% say they don’t measure content performance.

The five most frequently used metrics to assess content performance are conversions (73%), email engagement (71%), website traffic (71%), website engagement (69%), and social media analytics (65%).

About half (52%) mention the quality of leads, 45% say they rely on search rankings, 41% use quantity of leads, 32% track email subscribers, and 29% track the cost to acquire a lead, subscriber, or customer.

The most common challenge B2B marketers have while measuring content performance is integrating/correlating data across multiple platforms (84%), followed by extracting insights from data (77%), tying performance data to goals (76%), organizational goal setting (70%), and lack of training (66%).

Regarding goals, 84% of B2B marketers say content marketing helped create brand awareness in the last 12 months. Seventy-six percent say it helped generate demand/leads; 63% say it helped nurture subscribers/audiences/leads, and 58% say it helped generate sales/revenue (up from 42% the previous year).

Success factors: Know your audience

To separate top performers from the pack, we asked the B2B marketers to assess the success of their content marketing approach.

Twenty-eight percent rate the success of their organization’s content marketing approach as extremely or very successful. Another 57% report moderate success and 15% feel minimally or not at all successful.

The most popular factor for successful marketers is knowing their audience (79%).

This makes sense, considering that “creating the right content for our audience” is the top challenge. The logic? Top-performing content marketers prioritize knowing their audiences to create the right content for those audiences.

Top performers also set goals that align with their organization’s objectives (68%), effectively measure and demonstrate content performance (61%), and show thought leadership (60%). Collaboration with other teams (55%) and a documented strategy (53%) also help top performers reach high levels of content marketing success.

We looked at several other dimensions to identify how top performers differ from their peers. Of note, top performers:

• Are backed by leaders who understand the work they do.
• Are more likely to have the right content management technologies.
• Have better communication across organizational silos.
• Do a better job of measuring content effectiveness.
• Are more likely to use content marketing successfully to generate demand/leads, nurture subscribers/audiences/leads, generate sales/revenue, and grow a subscribed audience.

Little difference exists between top performers and their less successful peers when it comes to the adoption of generative AI tools and related guidelines. It will be interesting to see if and how that changes next year.

Budgets and spending: Holding steady

To explore budget plans for 2024, we asked respondents if they have knowledge of their organization’s budget/budgeting process for content marketing. Then, we asked follow-up questions to the 55% who say they do have budget knowledge.

Content marketing as a percentage of total marketing spend

Here’s what they say about the total marketing budget (excluding salaries):

• About a quarter (24%) say content marketing takes up one-fourth or more of the total marketing budget.
• Nearly one in three (29%) indicate that 10% to 24% of the marketing budget goes to content marketing.
• Just under half (48%) say less than 10% of the marketing budget goes to content marketing.

Content marketing budget outlook for 2024

Next, we asked about their 2024 content marketing budget. Forty-five percent think their content marketing budget will increase compared with 2023, whereas 42% think it will stay the same. Only 6% think it will decrease.

Where will the budget go?

We also asked where respondents plan to increase their spending.

Sixty-nine percent of B2B marketers say they would increase their investment in video, followed by thought leadership content (53%), in-person events (47%), paid advertising (43%), online community building (33%), webinars (33%), audio content (25%), digital events (21%), and hybrid events (11%).

The increased investment in video isn’t surprising. The focus on thought leadership content might surprise, but it shouldn’t, says Stephanie Losee , director of executive and ABM content at Autodesk.

“As measurement becomes more sophisticated, companies are finding they’re better able to quantify the return from upper-funnel activities like thought leadership content ,” she says. “At the same time, companies recognize the impact of shifting their status from vendor to true partner with their customers’ businesses.

“Autodesk recently launched its first global, longitudinal State of Design & Make report (registration required), and we’re finding that its insights are of such value to our customers that it’s enabling conversations we’ve never been able to have before. These conversations are worth gold to both sides, and I would imagine other B2B companies are finding the same thing,” Stephanie says.

Top content-related priorities for 2024: Leading with thought leadership

We asked an open-ended question about marketers’ top three content-related priorities for 2024. The responses indicate marketers place an emphasis on thought leadership and becoming a trusted resource.

Other frequently mentioned priorities include:

• Better understanding of the audience
• Discovering the best ways to use AI
• Increasing brand awareness
• Lead generation
• Using more video
• Better use of analytics
• Conversions
• Repurposing existing content

Content marketing predictions for 2024: AI is top of mind

In another open-ended question, we asked B2B marketers, “What content marketing trends do you predict for 2024?” You probably guessed the most popular trend: AI.

Here are some of the marketers’ comments about how AI will affect content marketing next year:

• “We’ll see generative AI everywhere, all the time.”
• “There will be struggles to determine the best use of generative AI in content marketing.”
• “AI will likely result in a flood of poor-quality, machine-written content. Winners will use AI for automating the processes that support content creation while continuing to create high-quality human-generated content.”
• “AI has made creating content so easy that there are and will be too many long articles on similar subjects; most will never be read or viewed. A sea of too many words. I predict short-form content will have to be the driver for eyeballs.”

Other trends include:

• Greater demand for high-quality content as consumers grow weary of AI-generated content
• Importance of video content
• Increasing use of short video and audio content
• Impact of AI on SEO

Among the related comments:

• “Event marketing (webinars and video thought leadership) will become more necessary as teams rely on AI-generated written content.”
• “AI will be an industry sea change and strongly impact the meaning of SEO. Marketers need to be ready to ride the wave or get left behind.”
• “Excitement around AI-generated content will rise before flattening out when people realize it’s hard to differentiate, validate, verify, attribute, and authenticate. New tools, processes, and roles will emerge to tackle this challenge.”
• “Long-form reports could start to see a decline. If that is the case, we will need a replacement. Logically, that could be a webinar or video series that digs deeper into the takeaways.”

What does this year’s research suggest B2B content marketers do to move forward?

I asked CMI’s Robert Rose for some insights. He says the steps are clear: Develop standards, guidelines, and playbooks for how to operate – just like every other function in business does.

“Imagine if everyone in your organization had a different idea of how to define ‘revenue’ or ‘profit margin,’” Robert says. “Imagine if each salesperson had their own version of your company’s customer agreements and tried to figure out how to write them for every new deal. The legal team would be apoplectic. You’d start to hear from sales how they were frustrated that they couldn’t figure out how to make the ‘right agreement,’ or how to create agreements ‘consistently,’ or that there was a complete ‘lack of resources’ for creating agreements.”

Just remember: Standards can change along with your team, audiences, and business priorities. “Setting standards doesn’t mean casting policies and templates in stone,” Robert says. “Standards only exist so that we can always question the standard and make sure that there’s improvement available to use in setting new standards.”

He offers these five steps to take to solidify your content marketing strategy and execution:

• Direct. Create an initiative that will define the scope of the most important standards for your content marketing. Prioritize the areas that hurt the most. Work with leadership to decide where to start. Maybe it’s persona development. Maybe you need a new standardized content process. Maybe you need a solid taxonomy. Build the list and make it a real initiative.
• Define . Create a common understanding of all the things associated with the standards. Don’t assume that everybody knows. They don’t. What is a white paper? What is an e-book? What is a campaign vs. an initiative? What is a blog post vs. an article? Getting to a common language is one of the most powerful things you can do to coordinate better.
• Develop . You need both policies and playbooks. Policies are the formal documentation of your definitions and standards. Playbooks are how you communicate combinations of policies so that different people can not just understand them but are ready, willing, and able to follow them.
• Distribute . If no one follows the standards, they’re not standards. So, you need to develop a plan for how your new playbooks fit into the larger, cross-functional approach to the content strategy. You need to deepen the integration into each department – even if that is just four other people in your company.
• Distill . Evolve your standards. Make them living documents. Deploy technology to enforce and scale the standards. Test. If a standard isn’t working, change it. Sometimes, more organic processes are OK. Sometimes, it’s OK to acknowledge two definitions for something. The key is acknowledging a change to an existing standard so you know whether it improves things.

For their 14 th annual content marketing survey, CMI and MarketingProfs surveyed 1,080 recipients around the globe – representing a range of industries, functional areas, and company sizes — in July 2023. The online survey was emailed to a sample of marketers using lists from CMI and MarketingProfs.

This article presents the findings from the 894 respondents, mostly from North America, who indicated their organization is primarily B2B and that they are either content marketers or work in marketing, communications, or other roles involving content.

Thanks to the survey participants, who made this research possible, and to everyone who helps disseminate these findings throughout the content marketing industry.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

About Content Marketing Institute

Content Marketing Institute (CMI) exists to do one thing: advance the practice of content marketing through online education and in-person and digital events. We create and curate content experiences that teach marketers and creators from enterprise brands, small businesses, and agencies how to attract and retain customers through compelling, multichannel storytelling. Global brands turn to CMI for strategic consultation, training, and research. Organizations from around the world send teams to Content Marketing World, the largest content marketing-focused event, the Marketing Analytics & Data Science (MADS) conference, and CMI virtual events, including ContentTECH Summit. Our community of 215,000+ content marketers shares camaraderie and conversation. CMI is organized by Informa Connect. To learn more, visit www.contentmarketinginstitute.com .

About MarketingProfs

Marketingprofs is your quickest path to b2b marketing mastery.

More than 600,000 marketing professionals worldwide rely on MarketingProfs for B2B Marketing training and education backed by data science, psychology, and real-world experience. Access free B2B marketing publications, virtual conferences, podcasts, daily newsletters (and more), and check out the MarketingProfs B2B Forum–the flagship in-person event for B2B Marketing training and education at MarketingProfs.com.

About Brightspot

Brightspot , the content management system to boost your business.

Why Brightspot? Align your technology approach and content strategy with Brightspot, the leading Content Management System for delivering exceptional digital experiences. Brightspot helps global organizations meet the business needs of today and scale to capitalize on the opportunities of tomorrow. Our Enterprise CMS and world-class team solves your unique business challenges at scale. Fast, flexible, and fully customizable, Brightspot perfectly harmonizes your technology approach with your content strategy and grows with you as your business evolves. Our customer-obsessed teams walk with you every step of the way with an unwavering commitment to your long-term success. To learn more, visit www.brightspot.com .

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Abstract: We explore a new class of diffusion models based on the transformer architecture. We train latent diffusion models of images, replacing the commonly-used U-Net backbone with a transformer that operates on latent patches. We analyze the scalability of our Diffusion Transformers (DiTs) through the lens of forward pass complexity as measured by Gflops. We find that DiTs with higher Gflops -- through increased transformer depth/width or increased number of input tokens -- consistently have lower FID. In addition to possessing good scalability properties, our largest DiT-XL/2 models outperform all prior diffusion models on the class-conditional ImageNet 512x512 and 256x256 benchmarks, achieving a state-of-the-art FID of 2.27 on the latter.

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Understanding Organizational Structures

Organizational structure aligns and relates parts of an organization, so it can achieve its maximum performance. The structure chosen affects an organization's success in carrying out its strategy and objectives. Leadership should understand the characteristics, benefits and limitations of various organizational structures to assist in this strategic alignment.

Overview Background Business Case Key Elements of Organizational Structures Types of Organizational Structures

Vertical structures (functional and divisional)

Matrix organizational structures, open boundary structures (hollow, modular virtual and learning).

The Impact of Growth Stages on Organizational Structure Metrics Communications and Technology Global Issues Legal Issues

This article addresses the following topics related to organizational structure:

• The case for aligning organizational structure with the enterprise's business strategy.
• Key elements of organizational structure.
• Types of organizational structures and the possible benefits and limitations of each.
• The impact of an organization's stage of development on its structure.
• Communications, technology, metrics, global and legal issues.

Organizational structure is the method by which work flows through an organization. It allows groups to work together within their individual functions to manage tasks. Traditional organizational structures tend to be more formalized—with employees grouped by function (such as finance or operations), region or product line. Less traditional structures are more loosely woven and flexible, with the ability to respond quickly to changing business environments.

Organizational structures have evolved since the 1800s. In the Industrial Revolution, individuals were organized to add parts to the manufacture of the product moving down the assembly line. Frederick Taylor's scientific management theory optimized the way tasks were performed, so workers performed only one task in the most efficient way. In the 20th century, General Motors pioneered a revolutionary organizational design in which each major division made its own cars.

Today, organizational structures are changing swiftly—from virtual organizations to other flexible structures. As companies continue to evolve and increase their global presence, future organizations may embody a fluid, free-forming organization, member ownership and an entrepreneurial approach among all members. See  Inside Day 1: How Amazon Uses Agile Team Structures and Adaptive Practices to Innovate on Behalf of Customers .

Business Case

A hallmark of a well-aligned organization is its ability to adapt and realign as needed. To ensure long-term viability, an organization must adjust its structure to fit new economic realities without diminishing core capabilities and competitive differentiation. Organizational realignment involves closing the structural gaps impeding organizational performance.

Problems created by a misaligned organizational structure

Rapid reorganization of business units, divisions or functions can lead to ineffective, misaligned organizational structures that do not support the business. Poorly conceived reorganizations may create significant problems, including the following:

• Structural gaps in roles, work processes, accountabilities and critical information flows can occur when companies eliminate middle management levels without eliminating the work, forcing employees to take on additional responsibilities.
• Diminished capacity, capability and agility issues can arise when a) lower-level employees who step in when middle management is eliminated are ill-equipped to perform the required duties and b) when higher-level executives must take on more tactical responsibilities, minimizing the value of their leadership skills.
• Disorganization and improper staffing can affect a company's cost structure, cash flow and ability to deliver goods or services. Agile organizations can rapidly deploy people to address shifting business needs. With resources cut to the bone, however, most organizations' staff members can focus only on their immediate responsibilities, leaving little time, energy or desire to work outside their current job scope. Ultimately, diminished capacity and lagging response times affect an organization's ability to remain competitive.
• Declining workforce engagement can reduce retention, decrease customer loyalty and limit organizational performance and stakeholder value.

The importance of aligning the structure with the business strategy

The key to profitable performance is the extent to which four business elements are aligned:

Leadership. The individuals responsible for developing and deploying the strategy and monitoring results.

Organization. The structure, processes and operations by which the strategy is deployed.

Jobs. The necessary roles and responsibilities.

People. The experience, skills and competencies needed to execute the strategy.

An understanding of the interdependencies of these business elements and the need for them to adapt to change quickly and strategically are essential for success in the high-performance organization. When these four elements are in sync, outstanding performance is more likely.

Achieving alignment and sustaining organizational capacity requires time and critical thinking. Organizations must identify outcomes the new structure or process is intended to produce. This typically requires recalibrating the following:

• Which work is mission-critical, can be scaled back or should be eliminated.
• Existing role requirements, while identifying necessary new or modified roles.
• Key metrics and accountabilities.
• Critical information flows.
• Decision-making authority by organization level.

See  Meeting the Challenges of Developing Collaborative Teams for Future Success.

Key Elements of Organizational Structures

Five elements create an organizational structure: job design, departmentation, delegation, span of control and chain of command. These elements comprise an organizational chart and create the organizational structure itself. "Departmentation" refers to the way an organization structures its jobs to coordinate work. "Span of control" means the number of individuals who report to a manager. "Chain of command" refers to a line of authority.

The company's strategy of managerial centralization or decentralization also influences organizational structures. "Centralization," the degree to which decision-making authority is restricted to higher levels of management, typically leads to a pyramid structure. Centralization is generally recommended when conflicting goals and strategies among operating units create a need for a uniform policy. "Decentralization," the degree to which lower levels of the hierarchy have decision-making authority, typically leads to a leaner, flatter organization. Decentralization is recommended when conflicting strategies, uncertainty or complexity require local adaptability and decision-making.

Types of Organizational Structures

Organizational structures have evolved from rigid, vertically integrated, hierarchical, autocratic structures to relatively boundary-less, empowered, networked organizations designed to respond quickly to customer needs with customized products and services.

Today, organizations are usually structured vertically, vertically and horizontally, or with open boundaries. Specific types of structures within each of these categories are the following:

• Vertical — functional and divisional.
• Vertical and horizontal — matrix.
• Boundary-less (also referred to as "open boundary")—modular, virtual and cellular.

See  What are commonly-used organization structures?

Two main types of vertical structure exist, functional and divisional. The functional structure divides work and employees by specialization. It is a hierarchical, usually vertically integrated, structure. It emphasizes standardization in organization and processes for specialized employees in relatively narrow jobs.

This traditional type of organization forms departments such as production, sales, research and development, accounting, HR, and marketing. Each department has a separate function and specializes in that area. For example, all HR professionals are part of the same function and report to a senior leader of HR. The same reporting process would be true for other functions, such as finance or operations.

In functional structures, employees report directly to managers within their functional areas who in turn report to a chief officer of the organization. Management from above must centrally coordinate the specialized departments. 

A functional organizational chart might look something like this: 

Advantages of a functional structure include the following:

• The organization develops experts in its respective areas.
• Individuals perform only tasks in which they are most proficient.
• This form is logical and easy to understand.

Disadvantages center on coordination or lack thereof:

• People are in specialized "silos" and often fail to coordinate or communicate with other departments.
• Cross-functional activity is more difficult to promote.
• The structure tends to be resistant to change.

This structure works best for organizations that remain centralized (i.e., a majority of the decision-making occurs at higher levels of the organization) because there are few shared concerns or objectives between functional areas (e.g., marketing, production, purchasing, IT). Given the centralized decision-making, the organization can take advantage of economies of scale in that there are likely centralized purchasing functions.

An appropriate management system to coordinate the departments is essential. The management system may be a special leader, like a vice president, a computer system or some other format.

Also a vertical arrangement, a divisional structure most often divides work and employees by output, although a divisional structure could be divided by another variable such as market or region. For example, a business that sells men's, women's and children's clothing through retail, e-commerce and catalog sales in the Northeast, Southeast and Southwest could be using a divisional structure in one of three ways:

• Product—men's wear, women's wear and children's clothing.
• Market—retail store, e-commerce and catalog.
• Region—Northeast, Southeast and Southwest.

A divisional organizational structure might look like this:

The advantages of this type of structure are the following:

• It provides more focus and flexibility on each division's core competency.
• It allows the divisions to focus on producing specialized products while also using knowledge gained from related divisions.
• It allows for more coordination than the functional structure.
• Decision-making authority pushed to lower levels of the organization enables faster, customized decisions.

The disadvantages of this structure include the following:

• It can result in a loss of efficiency and a duplication of effort because each division needs to acquire the same resources.
• Each division often has its own research and development, marketing, and other units that could otherwise be helping each other.
• Employees with similar technical career paths have less interaction.
• Divisions may be competing for the same customers.
• Each division often buys similar supplies in smaller quantities and may pay more per item.

This type of structure is helpful when the product base expands in quantity or complexity. But when competition among divisions becomes significant, the organization is not adapting quickly enough, or when economies of scale are lacking, the organization may require a more sophisticated matrix structure.

A matrix structure combines the functional and divisional structures to create a dual-command situation. In a matrix structure, an employee reports to two managers who are jointly responsible for the employee's performance. Typically, one manager works in an administrative function, such as finance, HR, information technology, sales or marketing, and the other works in a business unit related to a product, service, customer or geography.

A typical matrix organizational structure might look like this:

Advantages of the matrix structure include the following:

• It creates a functional and divisional partnership and focuses on the work more than on the people.
• It minimizes costs by sharing key people.
• It creates a better balance between time of completion and cost.
• It provides a better overview of a product that is manufactured in several areas or sold by various subsidiaries in different markets.

Disadvantages of matrix organizations include the following:

• Responsibilities may be unclear, thus complicating governance and control.
• Reporting to more than one manager at a time can be confusing for the employee and supervisors.
• The dual chain of command requires cooperation between two direct supervisors to determine an employee's work priorities, work assignments and performance standards.
• When the function leader and the product leader make conflicting demands on the employee, the employee's stress level increases, and performance may decrease.
• Employees spend more time in meetings and coordinating with other employees.

These disadvantages can be exacerbated if the matrix goes beyond two-dimensional (e.g., employees report to two managers) to multidimensional (e.g., employees report to three or more managers).

Matrix structures are common in heavily project-driven organizations, such as construction companies. These structures have grown out of project structures in which employees from different functions formed teams until completing a project, and then reverted to their own functions. In a matrix organization, each project manager reports directly to the vice president and the general manager. Each project is, in essence, a mini profit center, and therefore, general managers usually make business decisions.

The matrix-structured organization also provides greater visibility, stronger governance and more control in large, complex companies. It is also well suited for development of business areas and coordination of complex processes with strong dependencies.

Matrix structures pose difficult challenges for professionals charged with ensuring equity and fairness across the organization. Managers working in matrix structures should be prepared to intervene via communication and training if the structure compromises these objectives. Furthermore, leadership should monitor relationships between managers who share direct reports. These relationships between an employee's managers are crucial to the success of a matrix structure.

More recent trends in structural forms remove the traditional boundaries of an organization. Typical internal and external barriers and organizational boxes are eliminated, and all organizational units are effectively and flexibly connected. Teams replace departments, and the organization and suppliers work as closely together as parts of one company. The hierarchy is flat; status and rank are minimal. Everyone—including top management, managers and employees—participates in the decision-making process. The use of 360-degree feedback performance appraisals is common as well.

Advantages of boundary-less organizations include the following:

• Ability to leverage all employees' talents.
• Faster response to market changes.
• Enhanced cooperation and information sharing among functions, divisions and staff.

Disadvantages include the following:

• Difficulty in overcoming silos inside the organization.
• Lack of strong leadership and common vision.
• Time-consuming processes.
• The possibility of employees being adversely affected by efficiency efforts.
• The possibility of organizations abandoning change if restructuring does not improve effectiveness quickly.

Boundary-less organizational structures can be created in varied forms, including hollow, modular and virtual organizations.

Hollow organizations. Hollow structures divide work and employees by core and noncore competencies. Hollow structures are an outsourcing model in which the organization maintains its core processes internally but outsources noncore processes. Hollow structures are most effective when the industry is price competitive and choices for outsourcing exist. An example of a hollow structure is a sports organization that has its HR functions (e.g., payroll and benefits) handled by outside organizations.

Advantages of this type of structure include the following:

• Minimizing overhead.
• Enabling the organization to focus on its core product and eliminating the need to develop expertise in noncore functions.

Disadvantages include:

• Loss of control over functions that affect employees regularly.
• Restriction by certain industries (e.g., health care) on the extent of outsourcing.
• Lack of competitive outsourcing options.

Modular organizations. Modular structures differ from hollow organizations in that components of a product are outsourced. Modular structures may keep a core part of the product in-house and outsource noncore portions of the product. Networks are added or subtracted as needs change. For a modular structure to be an option, the product must be able to be broken into chunks. For example, computer manufacturer Dell buys parts from various suppliers and assembles them at one central location. Suppliers at one end and customers at the other become part of the organization; the organization shares information and innovations with all. Customization of products and services results from flexibility, creativity, teamwork and responsiveness. Business decisions are made at corporate, divisional, project and individual team member levels.

Advantages include the following:

• Minimizing the specialization and specialists needed.
• Enabling the company to outsource parts supply and coordinate the assembly of quality products.

Disadvantages include concerns about the actions of suppliers outside the control of the core management company. Risk occurs if the partner organization removes itself form the quality check on the end product or if the outsourced organization uses a second outsourced organization. Examples of supplier concerns include the following:

• Suppliers, or subcontractors, must have access to—and safeguard—most, if not all, of the core company's data and trade secrets.
• Suppliers could suddenly raise prices on or cease production of key parts.
• Knowing where one organization ends and another begins may become difficult.

Virtual organizations. A virtual organization (sometimes called a network structure) is cooperation among companies, institutions or individuals delivering a product or service under a common business understanding. Organizations form partnerships with others—often competitors—that complement each other. The collaborating units present themselves as a unified organization.

The advantages of virtual structures include the following:

• Contributions from each part of the unit.
• Elimination of physical boundaries.
• Responsiveness to a rapidly changing environment.
• Lower or nonexistent organizational overhead.
• Allows companies to be more flexible and agile.
• Give more power to all employees to collaborate, take initiative, and make decisions.
• Helps employees and stakeholders understand workflows and processes.

The disadvantages of virtual organizations include the following:

• Potential lack of trust between organizations.
• Potential lack of organizational identification among employees.
• Need for increased communication.
• Can quickly become overly complex when dealing with lots of offsite processes.
• Can make it more difficult for employees to know who has final say.

Virtual structures are collaborative and created to respond to an exceptional and often temporary marketing opportunity. An example of a virtual structure is an environmental conservancy in which multiple organizations supply a virtual organization with employees to save, for example, a historic site, possibly with the intent of economic gain for the partners.

Understanding the organizational environment is crucial in open boundary models. For example, some industries cannot outsource noncore processes due to government regulation. (For example, health insurance organizations may be unable to outsource Medicare processes). Or, in some cases, outsourcing may have to be negotiated with a union.

The key to effective boundary-less organizations is placing adaptable employees at all levels. Management must give up traditional autocratic control to coach employees toward creativity and the achievement of organizational goals. Employees must apply initiative and creativity to benefit the organization, and reward systems should recognize such employees.

Learning organizations. A learning organization is one whose design actively seeks to acquire knowledge and change behavior as a result of the newly acquired knowledge. In learning organizations, experimenting, learning new things, and reflecting on new knowledge are the norms. At the same time, there are many procedures and systems in place that facilitate learning at all organization levels.

The advantages of learning organizations include the following:

• Open communication and information sharing.
• Innovativeness
• Ability to adapt to rapid change.
• Strong organizational performance.
• Competitive advantage.

The disadvantages of learning organizations include the following:

• Power difference is ignored.
• Process of implementing will be complicated and take longer.
• Fear of employee participation in organizational decisions.
• Breaking of existing organizational rules.

The Impact of Growth Stages on Organizational Structure

Organizations typically mature in a consistent and predictable manner. As they move through various stages of growth, they must address various problems. This process creates the need for different structures, management skills and priorities.

The four stages of development in an organization's life cycle include the following:

The beginning stage of development is characterized by an inconsistent growth rate, a simple structure and informal systems. At this stage the organization is typically highly centralized. "Dotcom" companies are a good example of startup companies.

The expansion stage is evidenced by rapid, positive growth and the emergence of formal systems. Organizations at this stage typically focus on centralization with limited delegation.

Consolidation

The consolidation stage is characterized by slower growth, departmentalization, formalized systems and moderate centralization.

Diversification

The diversification stage occurs when older, larger organizations experience rapid growth, bureaucracy and decentralization.

As an organization grows or passes from one stage of development to another, carefully planned and well-conceived changes in practices and strategies may be necessary to maximize effectiveness. There are no guarantees that an organization will make it from one stage to the next. In fact, a key opportunity for leadership is to recognize indicators that suggest an organization is in a risky or unhealthy stage and to make appropriate structural adjustments.

The art of organizational design is assessing the environment's essential aspects and their meaning for the organization's future. Translating those characteristics into the right structure is critical to increasing efficiency and controlling costs. When selecting the best structure for the organization, company leaders should examine and evaluate current key structural dimensions and contextual factors. See  How do I determine which HR metrics to measure and report?

Structural dimensions

Leaders can develop an understanding of the organization's internal environment through measurement and analysis of its structural dimensions. Key dimensions, which are usually measured through a survey, include:

Specialization. The extent to which an organization's activities are divided into specialized roles.

Standardization. The degree to which an organization operates under standard rules or procedures.

Formalization. The extent to which instructions and procedures are documented.

Centralization. The degree to which leaders at the top of the management hierarchy have authority to make certain decisions.

Configuration. The shape of the organization's role structure, which includes:

• Chain of command. The number of vertical levels or layers on the organizational chart.
• Span of control. The number of direct reports per manager or the number of horizontal levels or layers on the organizational chart.

Contextual factors

A review of contextual factors will provide a better understanding of the external environment and the relationship between the internal and external environment. Some of the significant contextual factors to consider in this review include:

Origin and history. Was the organization privately founded? What changes have occurred in ownership or location?

Ownership and control. Is the organization private or public? Is control divided among a few individuals or many?

Size. How many employees does the organization have? What are its net assets? What is its market position?

Location. How many operating sites does the organization maintain?

Productsand services. What types of goods and services does the organization manufacture and provide?

Technology. Are the organization's work processes effectively integrated?

Interdependence. What is the degree to which the organization depends on customers, suppliers, trade unions or other related entities?

After examining the structural dimensions and contextual factors and developing an understanding of the connection between an organization's structure and strategy, organization leaders can consider alternative structures. They may use diagnostic models and tools to guide the design process.

Communications and Technology

The last few years have seen an unprecedented expansion and improvement of online communication. Software has pushed the boundaries of workplace communication beyond e-mail into collaborative social media platforms and innovative intranets. The decline in traditional communication methods and the dramatic increase in cyber communication has had a major impact on the workplace and is leading to restructuring.

As organizations continue to restructure to remain competitive, communications can drive the transition to an effective new organizational structure. Research suggests that companies can positively affect their credibility with employees through various organizational communication programs.

In establishing internal communication channels, leadership must be aware of the advantages and shortcomings of communication technologies and match them to the organization's needs, strategic goals and structure. Employers should also be cognizant of, and be prepared to deal with, the common communication challenges in various organizational structures. For example, communications technology has enabled organizations to create virtual workplaces and teams. In a virtual team, members from various geographical locations work together on a task, communicating via e-mail, instant messaging, teleconferencing, videoconferencing and web-based workspaces. Although virtual teams have significant advantages—most notably reduced travel costs and flexibility in staffing and work schedules—they also pose challenges. Virtual teams often find coordinating team logistics and mastering new technologies difficult. Communication is also a major challenge because of the absence of visual (body language) and verbal (intonation) clues. Research suggests that organizations can overcome these challenges through effective support and training.

Global Issues

Organizational structures often need to change as companies expand around the globe. An organization's leaders should plan carefully before opening offices in another country.

Many issues arise when an employer plans to open an international branch, hire international workers and formulate a globalized strategy. Among the questions that must be answered are:

• How do human resource legal requirements and practices vary from country to country?
• Should HR officials at headquarters do the work, or should a company open HR offices in the other country?
• Should an organization hire consultants to handle local hiring and personnel services?

Unless employers have a sound HR strategy ready before leaping into another country, they could fail.

When an organization opens international offices, HR professionals and other business leaders should be able to communicate as effectively with workers across the globe as around the corner. That can be a challenge. Having a robust intranet and using videoconferencing are alternatives to face-to-face communication.

As rapid changes in technology affect global communication, employees must be aware of linguistic, cultural, religious and social differences among colleagues and business contacts. The organization should train all employees (not just managers and CEOs who travel) in cultural literacy.

Moreover, employers should be aware that language difficulties, time‐and‐distance challenges, the absence of face‐to‐face contact, and, above all, the barriers posed by cultural differences and personal communication styles make global virtual work far more complex than local structures. These practices can enhance global virtual team relationships:

• Using online chats, video- and audioconferencing in addition to one-on-one conversations and e-mail.
• Posting profiles of team members that outline their expertise and roles in the organization.
• Being sensitive to the level of engagement team members are likely to deliver if they must meet at inconvenient hours across multiple time zones.

Legal Issues

Regardless of the type of structure, employers must ensure compliance with legal requirements in the countries where their organizations operate. Some of those requirements will be quite extensive (for example, public companies must ensure compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and most organizations must ensure compliance with the Fair Labor Standards Act and its related state laws). When organizational structures change, or if the chain of command is weak or fails to keep up-to-date with changes in the business, a company may have compliance problems because the structure has not been evaluated with regard to these laws. Imagine, for example, a restructuring that reduces the number of direct reports for an entire layer of management, which perhaps leads to those individuals no longer being exempt.

As an organization moves internationally, laws in the host countries must also be evaluated and a plan put in place for compliance before the expansion occurs. Employers must anticipate and plan for laws affecting all aspects of the employee experience, including hiring, benefits, leaves and termination.

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