Appex Case
At beginning, the company was technology-driven and loosely structured its start-up stage. A small business, Very strict organizational structure is considered to be unnecessary. The structure was very informal and fluid. Employees were focused, committed, and hardworking, and worked in close interaction with each other. As a result, Appex was very responsive and effective at getting things done quickly and relatively cheaply. This is a very typical structure for those small companies in the starting up stage. Advantage is that when the company business is not very large, it can act in this way to fully utilize the resources and make itself responsive and effective at getting things done quickly and relatively cheaply. Disadvantage is that if fortunately, the market was growing quickly and so was the company, things will change into chaotic because there is no long-term planning for the company and all people just focus on the immediate issues. The company will not be able to further grow with this structure.
Circular Structure
A circular structure meant that there were concurrent circles expanding out from a middle circle. At Appex, the innermost circle contained the senior executives. The next circular layers out included the managers of functions, and the employees in the functions. In the environs around the circle were Appex’s customers. Advantage things of this structure are that the information can flow continuously and freely within the organization and between the organization and its environment. Disadvantage is that employees could not relate to the circular structure especially for those newly joined staffs.
Hierarchical, Functional Structure
This structure was a very traditional structure which emphasizes hierarchical, roles and responsibilities and bureaucracy. Actually most companies are still adopting and this model nowadays. There are a lot of pros and cons listed in the case but the key point is that with such a structure, planning can somehow be strengthen as each function has its own responsibilities, and the work force can better focus on their domain with specific expertise. However this structure still has a lot of shortcomings. Firstly if the hierarchy is flat, which means that all the functional heads are directly under the CEO, then the CEO will have to handle everything. This will definitely enlarge the dependency of the CEO and reduce decision making efficiency. Secondly teams will become polarized comparing to the project based structure, because people will only focus on their own roles and responsibilities