Welcome to designing the organization from strategy to organizational structure.
My name is Mike Bednar.
For over 10 years I've been
a professor in the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois.
I teach several classes about management and
organizations and I'm interested in better understanding organizations
and helping people recognize and deal with some
of the problems that we all face in organizational life.
I do research on executive leadership and corporate governance.
So, I study how leaders can guide their organizations in
more effective ways and how we can hold them accountable for their actions.
The course you are about to begin is the first course in
a two course sequence on designing and managing organizations.
In this first course, we'll focus on how we can design
organizations that will allow us to execute our intended strategies.
We're going to discuss several key issues in this first class.
For example, in the first module,
we'll discuss the role of managers and how
they create value in the organizations that they lead.
We'll also talk about what corporate governance is and some of
the governance mechanisms that can help to hold leaders accountable for their actions.
In module two, we'll be talking about some of the basic factors or contingencies both
inside and outside the organization that we have to
take into account when designing organizations.
Modules three and four will be about fundamental principles of organizational design.
In module three, we'll talk about how to allocate authority,
tasks and resources throughout the organization.
Module four, we'll cover issues related to coordination and
control as well as how we can measure the performance of our design.
For each module, you'll see a brief introductory video by
me followed by a video lecture from Huseyin Leblebici.
Huseyin was a former colleague of mine and was a well respected scholar with
deep knowledge about organizations and the problems
that managers encounter in organizational life.
We're really fortunate to be able to learn from such a wise and thoughtful individual.
Each module will have a set of readings that you should pay attention to.
At the end of each module there will be a couple of assessment tools to see
how you're doing and understanding some of the basics of organizational design.
There will be a graded quiz on the material and occasionally,
I'll ask you to write a reflection essay where you
have a chance to apply the material to your own life.
I now want to give you a quick preview of what we'll be talking about in this course.
Ultimately, we'll try to better understand how managers create value.
To do that, we're going to start by understanding some of
the basic internal and external factors that managers need to be aware of.
Managers that understand their external environment are
better positioned to capitalize on opportunities,
avoid potential threats, deal with uncertainty and manage scarce resources.
When managers combine this understanding of external factors with
their knowledge of internal strengths and weaknesses of the organization,
they can create effective strategies to win in the marketplace.
Strategy and structure are intertwined.
Ideally, managers design organizations that fit with their intended strategy.
In this first course we'll be talking about principles of
organizational design that can enhance that fit between structure and strategy.
The follow up course to this one we'll focus more on some of
the design factors that we need to be aware of to effectively execute our plans.
Welcome to this course.
I invite you to listen to and learn
the material that will be presented, but more importantly,
I urge you to look for ways to apply what you're
learning to better understand the organizations that you're a part of.