Course MBA Subject Strategic Human Resource

Name Raffy Divina Date March 28, 2023

Student No 2022425920 Activity Assignment _Case Study

CASE STUDY CHAPTER 4

Question 1: In terms of our discussion of organizational structure, in what ways did the structure
at IBM change under Lou Gerstner, and what impact did this have on Individual jobs?

Answer: Lou Gerstner made the firm decision to keep IBM intact, and he changed its fundamental
economic model, re-engineered how the company did business and sold the under-productive
assets. He focused on customers–and he used his ability to drive the focus to the employees by
holding the leadership and management accountable. Moreover, he restructured the organization to
improve the decision-making process and enhanced the information flow within IBM. The
compensation was revamped as well from unit performance to overall corporate performance.

I believe the changes that happened even helped the employees to be more motivated, productive,
and goal-oriented as the business recovered from the brink of collapse and IBM's story became the
world’s most successful turnaround story in history.

Question 2: Compare and contrast the direction of structural change at IBM with the direction of
change we saw in the structural realignment at Microsoft (also discussed in the chapter).

Answer: Both Microsoft and IBM have a divisional organizational structure based on products. The
organizational outputs, or product type divisions, global corporate groups, and geographic segments
make up the structure of the former. These divisions are based on specific computer hardware and
software products. While handling the creation, manufacture, distribution, and sale of items, the
latter's structure is distinguished by the representation of business operations.

In contrast, IBM's second organizational feature, function-based divisions, focuses on crucial tasks
that let the world of information technology run smoothly. This structural element's primary goal is
to provide support for all of the product-type divisions across the whole company while Microsoft's
organizational structure enables it to concentrate on product creation, which is its main impact.

Question 3: Since both IBM and Microsoft achieved their goals by changing their structures and
Job design in opposite directions, what does this say about the relationship between organization
structure and job design? About organizational performance and job satisfaction on the other?

Answer: Organization Structure is the method by which work flows through an organization and
allows groups to work together within their functions to manage tasks while Job Design refers to the
way that a set of tasks, or an entire job, is organized. I think the relationship between the two is the
organization works in accordance to what is the design of the job.

Organizational performance is the ability of an organization to reach its goals and optimize results. In
today's workforce, organizational performance can be defined as a company's ability to achieve
goals in a state of constant change while Job satisfaction refers to the degree of pleasure or
happiness that an individual feels in their job. This can be influenced by a variety of factors, such as
the nature of the work itself, the work environment, the company's culture, and the employee's
relationships with their co-workers. Therefore, organizational performance is the output of job
satisfaction.