For business imperatives, organizations today operate globally. To suit the global business requirements, organizations today frame different structures like, global, international, multi-domestic, transnational, informated, cellular and networked. A global organizational structure is not locally responsive; it does not believe in optimal sourcing, rather, it concentrates on work activities in one locale, i.e., in the country of its origin and follows a centralized approach.
A global organizational structure believes in home-based operations, even though it does business globally. Strategically, this type of organization offers similar products or services worldwide, irrespective of its acceptance or otherwise in various global markets. An international organization goes beyond home-based operations.
They create separate hubs for their various product- or service-mix, locating such hubs in those countries, where they can get the benefit of optimal sourcing. These hubs in different countries work as ‘centers of excellence’ and cater to the world market. Multi-domestic organizations follow a decentralized geography-based approach to customize their operations, specific to the countries’ requirements, where they likely to do business.
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They go for developing specific products and services, acceptable to local markets. Transnational organizations develop blending of the international and multi-domestic approaches to optimize their locational advantages and also to reap the benefits from optimal sourcing.
They customize their product and service-mix on region basis and, at the same time, gam the advantage from their worldwide centers of operations. Unilever, Proctor and Gamble and NEC are the good examples of this type of organization (Bartlett and Ghoshal, 1998). Informated organizations manage information up and down the organization, making an extensive use of computers and other related supports.
They are low in virtualization and high in IT infusion (Shoshana Zuboff, 1988). Cellular organizations are characterized by small, autonomous work groups or business units, which are self governed and which can grow, reproduce and form relations, as per their need (Miles et al, 1997).
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In fact, they are different from our earlier discussed SBUs or IBUs in a sense that they can operate more independently, even crossing the boundary of cells. Networked organizations develop active linkage between internal and external organizations to meet the knowledge needs.
They are a mix of virtualizations and IT infusion and are also active in making strategic alliances. Many organizations, in order to survive in a diverse global environment, develop a corporate culture, which is a learned, shared, relatively enduring, interdependent system of meanings that classify, code, prioritize and justify activities within the organization and towards external environments it has defined as relevant.