Het einde van de businessunit is nabij: de multidimensionale organisatie is het model voor de toekomst. De komende jaren zullen een drastische wijziging te zien geven in de wijze waarop (grote) ondernemingen worden georganiseerd en aangestuurd.
Het businessunitmodel, sinds midden jaren tachtig uiterst populair, kan een aantal nieuwe uitdagingen niet aan. Grilliger markten en consumentengedrag en de eis vanuit de kapitaalsmarkt van veel hogere synergieniveaus binnen ondernemingen dwingen tot een nieuw organisatiemodel: de multidimensionale organisatie. In Nederland werkt al een aantal ondernemingen met dit model, waaronder Albert Heijn Company, ASML, Microsoft, PricewaterhouseCoopers en IBM Nederland.
Hans Strikwerda – Van unitmanagement naar multidimensionale organisaties (Van Gorcum, 2008)
Hans Strikwerda – Executing strategy in turbulent times: how capital markets impact corporate strategy (Van Gorcum, 2007)
Hans Strikwerda – Growth, governance and organisation: on power strategy and modular organisation (Van Gorcum, 2005)
Hans Strikwerda – Shared Service Centers: van kostenbesparing naar waardecreatie (Van Gorcum, 2004)
Hans Strikwerda – Organisatie-advisering: wetenschap en pragmatiek (Eburon, 1994)
A field research on the state of the application of the concept of business-unit organization (M-form) in the Netherlands, has produced some noteworthy results. Interviews were held with 36 organizations, mostly for-profit companies (including Dutch subsidiaries of multinationals). It was found that the concept of unit management, that is to organize the firm in a number of self-contained business units as profit centers, is still very strong in the theory-in-use of managers and as a basis for accounting systems. However, virtually no business unit any longer is self-contained organized, contrary to the definition of the M-form. All business units, in varying degree, depend on resources outside the unit to achieve their objectives.
In at least five cases the mental anchoring to the unit-concept has resulted in debilitating problems with respect to account management and with project management. A small number of companies have overcome this problem and similar dilemmas by defining accountability for turnover and profit & loss simultaneously over multiple dimensions (product, region, account, market segment, industry). For each dimension a separate manager is accountable. Examples of firms doing so are ABN AMRO, IBM, Microsoft, ASML, PwC and some others. Those companies have commensurate multidimensional management reporting, management information, and coordination & control processes. The reason to operate a multidimensional organization seems to be the emergence of multidimensional markets, to need to exploit economies of scope, especially with respect to knowledge, to have higher effectiveness in management control, to be more flexible, to reduce resource biased risk averse target setting, and to appropriate more value from the market in the case of network industries.
