CMGT 500 – Week 3 Application Assignment, David Ebmeier
The article that I read for this week’s Application
Assignment is by Michael P. Collins, the author of Saving American Manufacturing
The article discusses Collins’ theory that most
manufacturers are unable to find new marketplace opportunities and need to
change their current organizational structures to a new model. (Collins,
2012) Collins uses terms
“Prospector” and the “Defender” to describe the organizational models currently
being used by manufacturing, (Defender is another name for the Functional type
of model we have been studying). (Collins, 2012)
Collins broke down the Defender, (Functional), and new
Prospector models into various aspects and contrasted the two types.
According to Collins (2012) “The Defender’s fundamental
emphasis is on operational efficiency, therefore most focus and time is devoted
to internal issues, such as capacity, quality and process.” Using that time and energy spent on
internal issues, “prevents them
from devoting much time to find out what is going on in the market.” (Collins,
2012)
The Prospector model would benefit companies by allowing companies
to explore new markets and allowing a shift in the decision-making and control
further down the chain and away from upper management. (Collins, 2012)
Collins goes on to illustrate more ways that the Prospector
model is seemingly superior to the Defender. “Prospectors’ prime capability is finding and exploiting new
product and market opportunities.”
(Collins, 2012)
Collins gave two examples of two different companies that
were able to improve their businesses by modifying their organizational models.
I found the author had an interesting take on the Functional
model and was passionate about companies changing models to stay relevant. It would seem that some companies could
truly benefit from implementing the changes which could lead to “shorter lead
times” and give the decision making processes back into the hands of “the
people who do the work.” (Collins, 2012)
Collins, M. (2012). The Prospector Organization. Manufacturing.net Retrieved from http://www.manufacturing.net/articles/2012/02/the-prospector-organization
David, I enjoyed your discussion of the Prospector vs Defender organizational models. It sounds like the Prospector is more agile and better suited for a more unstable environment. What sort of organizational structure is associated with the this model? Can you provide some examples of organizations that fall into each category? Do you think the Prospector is the new ideal model, or are there contexts where the Defender model is still appropriate?
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ReplyDeleteThank you David for sharing the article you read this week. On the surface I really like the idea of giving people further down the food chain more “power” to make decisions. I just think this could get a little out of control as each department does what it wants to benefit their own agenda. I think this type of org structure would work in a network structure where there are groups of people (teams) making decisions instead of just one person in a department. Can you see that as a hybrid to Collins ideas?
David, it is interesting that the author called these two theories on structure by these particular terms. What kept resonating in my mind was how the Prospector structure could be executed without hindering current operations. My thought is that it may take implementation horizontal components, much like network structures discussed by Kristina above. How do you think a functional organization can transition to the Prospector structure examined by Collins?
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