The Effect of Organizational Structure on Teams

“Different people in the same structure tend to produce qualitatively similar results. When there are problems, or performance fails to live up to what is intended, it is easy to find someone or something to blame. But, more often than we realize, systems cause their own crises, not external forces or individuals’ mistakes” (Senge 1990).

As we can see from our earlier description of the company, division, and project structure, the only thing that is really changed in the team environment is the way in which functional organizations interact. The team may be able to execute some series of processes more rapidly by increasing the concurrency of tasks, but the processes haven’t really changed, and the team has not added the catalyst that is required for success. Since we have not really changed the overall structure in which the team operates, it should not be surprising that our results are unchanged.