FRONT-BACK ORGANIZATION : AN ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE FOR GLOBAL CORPORATIONS

DOI Web Site

Bibliographic Information

Other Title
  • フロント-バック組織 : グローバル企業の新たな組織構造
  • フロント-バック ソシキ : グローバル キギョウ ノ アラタ ナ ソシキ コウゾウ

Search this article

Description

In the age of globalization, corporations have to deal with many challenges such as diversity of output and efficiency. Several organizational structures have been created and many researchers have discussed them. Front-Back Organization is an organizational structure presented by Galbraith (1993, 1995, 2000), and is considered to be suitable for the progress of globalization. Is the front-back organization a new and distinctive organizational structure? And will it be an alternative for global corporations? In this paper, we deal with these questions. Firstly, we discuss the definition of front-back organization and the background of the introduction of the front-back organization. The idea of front-back organization goes back to Corey & Star (1971). The importance of their idea that corporations have to consider the variety of markets has been noticed in recent years, because the progress of globalization makes global corporations to adapt to several regions of the world. Secondly, we refer to the two types of front-back organization presented by Galbraith; coordination type and market mechanism type, and describe the characteristics of each. Thirdly, we compare front-back organization with other organizational structures; multi-divisional organization and global matrix organization, and show that there are differences between them in term of allocation of functions, management cost, number of command line, and degree of achievement of duality. In addition, we show the relationships between these organizations. When a company's globalization progresses, its organizational structure changes firstly from multidivisional to front-back organization, and next from front-back organization to global matrix organization. With these analyses, we clarify the characteristics and future possibility of the front-back organization.

Journal

Keywords

Details 詳細情報について

Report a problem

Back to top