Works
- Matrix organization designs: how to combine functional and project forms, Business Horizons 14(1), 29 to 40, 1971
- Designing Complex Organizations, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 1973
- Organization design: an information processing view, Interfaces 4(3), 28 to 36, 1974
- Competing with Flexible Lateral Organizations, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA (a revised edition of Designing Complex Organizations, 1973), 1994
- Designing Organizations: An Executive Guide to Strategy, Structure, and Process, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco (new and revised edition), 2002
- Organizing to deliver solutions, Organizational Dynamics 31(2), 194 to 207, 2002
- Designing the Customer-Centric Organization: A Guide to Strategy, Structure, and Process, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 2005
- Designing Your Organization: Using the Star Model to Solve 5 Critical Design Challenges, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 2007
- Designing Matrix Organizations that Actually Work: How IBM, Procter & Gamble, and Others Design for Success, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco (first edition, xiv and 258 pages), 2009
- The multi-dimensional and reconfigurable organization, Organizational Dynamics 39(2), 115 to 125, 2010
- The evolution of enterprise organization designs, Journal of Organization Design 1(2), 1 to 13, 2012
- The future of organization design, Journal of Organization Design 1(1), 3 to 6, 2012
- Designing Organizations: Strategy, Structure, and Process at the Business Unit and Enterprise Levels, Jossey-Bass, an imprint of John Wiley and Sons (third edition, 352 pages; hardcover ISBN 978-1-118-40995-4), 2014
In Organizational Structures
Known for
Designing organizations for information processing, and the lateral, matrix, and front-back forms that follow from it.
Ideas
Matrix design. The matrix, developed mainly in the aerospace industry, grows out of the choice between functional and project forms; Galbraith set out the designs between those two extremes, the factors that decide among them, and the Standard Products Co.'s move from a functional to a pure matrix form. Caveat: An article that builds on earlier matrix writing, including Mee (1964), so it is not where the matrix literature starts.
Front-back organization. For complex solutions, add customer-centric front-end units to product-centric back-end units and link them through five processes (customer strategy, portfolio planning, solutions development, ordering and pricing, and team assembly), with rewards and talent redesigned to match. Caveat: A design prescription illustrated with company examples, not a test; empirical studies (Davies, Brady, and Hobday 2006; Raja and colleagues 2018) find more variety than one model.
Multidimensional and reconfigurable organization. Designs that manage three or four dimensions at once (adding geography, market segments, channels, or solutions to products and functions), using front-back designs, integration through processes such as careers, cross-unit teams, and planning and budgeting, and teams assembled and disassembled as opportunities come and go. Caveat: Conceptual, illustrated with company examples. Read in the author's working paper version, not the published article.
Degrees of customer-centricity. Organizations can be customer-centric at four levels (light, medium, complete, and high), and the right level depends on the strategy, with structure, processes, rewards, and people practices aligned to it. Caveat: Based on a study of fifteen companies with McKinsey; the findings are not reported in a peer-reviewed venue.
Organizing to deliver solutions. A firm that sells solutions must add a customer-centric unit and integrate it with its product units, and how customer-centric it must become depends on its solutions strategy.
Information processing view of design. Galbraith argued that task uncertainty drives the information-processing load, and set out strategies to reduce the need for information or raise the capacity to process it, including a ladder of lateral relations. Caveat: Built from cases and theory.
In this section, “read” means read by the Organizational Structures series: where a line says a work, or part of one, was not read, the series did not read it.