KATIE CURTIS

In ORGL 615: Organizational Theory and Behavior, we completed an in-depth case study of EU Designs and the structure of their organization. This analysis was very beneficial for me, as I felt many of the issues EU Designs was facing were similar to issues we were experiencing at the time in my organization. Through the readings and discussions in this course, we did an internal analysis and restructured how our organization operates. We changed from a divisional structure by department to a divisional structure by product type. This was the first major change made to help account for and manage the growth of the business.

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This structural change benefited us in many ways, one of those came as a surprise to us. It is now more obvious to us who the employees are that are more productive in their roles in comparison to a different employee in the same position but part of a different division. For example, our current structure is split up by client with one employee from each department continually working with the same client and same team. The set up is much like a lawyer, paralegal and legal assistant all from different departments but working together with one client. When analyzing the work of two people from the same department, we can now compare how well they handle their own cases compared to the other employees, whereas previously their work would overlap daily, and it was easier for one employee to hide behind the productivity of the other.

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We now suspect there are opportunities for coaching and training based on productivity; however, we only have subjective data rather than objective date to base these assumptions on. Part 2 of my leadership project arose from the need for objective data.