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Network Organization Structures

In: Business and Management

Submitted By sosexy13
Words 1262
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Network organization structures are businesses contracted to perform multi-tasked outsourcing functionalities for other companies. Whatever the client company specializes in, the network structure will perform all the other supply chain activities. The object is the minimize boundaries within the supply chain (Nelson, D. L., & Quick, J. C. 2006). Network organizations adapt to unstable conditions, when problems and requirements for action arise which cannot be broken down and distributed among specialists' roles within a hierarchy. ... Jobs lose much of their formal definition ... Interaction runs laterally as much as vertically. Communication between people of different ranks tends to resemble lateral consultation rather than vertical command (http://ccs.mit.edu/papers/CCSWP192/ccswp192.html#2).

In the recent years, innovative organizational structures explored where the boundary within the organization is more flexible and more permeable allowing a faster knowledge transfer. Other types of structures have been “Modular organizations” and “Virtual Organizations”, these organizational ideas revolve around knowledge sharing for better operational decision-making. Modular, Virtual, and Boundary less organizational structures are optimized for faster information creation and sharing. In today’s information driven world, it makes sense to have an organizational structure to exploit faster movement of information (http://www.geocities.com/akottolli/Business_Organization_and_Structure.htm).

The traditional organization structure for many businesses in the 20th century was the bureaucracy, originally defined by Max Weber (http://dictionary.bnet.com/definition/organization+structure.html). A traditional organizational structure typically builds in a top-down hierarchy. The power in the organization resides at the top and the lines of responsibility flow from the

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