GM500 Unit 5 Matrix Structure Design Analysis Example

Two Bosses by Design: A Unit 5 Structure and Design Analysis of a Matrix Engineering Firm

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Purdue University Global

GM500: Management Theories and Practices I

Unit 5 Structure and Design Analysis

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[Date]

The firm, its chart and its figures are composite and illustrative; the theorists and studies cited are real.

Figure 1: The Firm's Structure

Figure 1, a simplified organization chart, shows the firm's two axes. Across the top run eleven project managers, each responsible for one or two building projects, their budgets and their schedules. Down the side run five discipline chiefs, for architecture, structural, mechanical, electrical and civil engineering, each responsible for technical standards, staffing and professional development within the discipline. An engineer, drawn at the intersection of one project column and one discipline row, takes daily direction from the project manager and technical direction from the discipline chief. Above both axes sit three principals who resolve disputes.

How the Work Flows

Discipline chiefs decide who works on which project and approve every set of drawings before it is issued. Project managers set deadlines, track hours against the budget and represent the firm to the client. When the two disagree, typically over whether an engineer can be moved to another project or whether a drawing set can be issued before full review, the dispute goes to a principal. Last year the principals handled 46 such escalations, about one a week, and the median escalation took six working days to settle.

Lens 1: Fayol and Unity of Command

Henri Fayol held that an employee should receive orders from one superior only, and he warned that dual command produces confusion, divided loyalty and conflict between the two superiors (Fayol, 1949). His principle predicts three things in this firm: engineers unsure whose instructions come first, managers competing for their time and decisions slowed by disputes.

The evidence partly confirms him. In a short survey of 38 engineers, 24 said they had received conflicting instructions in the past month, and the 46 escalations show that disputes between the two axes are routine. But Fayol's principle also predicts that the arrangement should fail, and the firm has used it for fourteen years while growing from 150 to 400 people.

Lens 2: Lawrence and Lorsch on Differentiation and Integration

Paul Lawrence and Jay Lorsch argued that organizations facing complex environments must differentiate, building departments with their own goals, time horizons and expertise, and must also integrate those departments to produce a coordinated result. The most effective firms in their study achieved high levels of both (Lawrence & Lorsch, 1967).

This lens explains why the firm accepts two bosses. Each discipline needs depth: structural engineers must keep pace with code changes, new materials and analysis software, and that depth is built by a discipline chief who sees all structural work across the firm. Each project needs integration: a hospital wing must have its structure, ductwork and wiring designed to fit together on one schedule. A firm organized purely by discipline would lose integration; one organized purely by project would lose depth. The matrix holds both.

The double reporting line is not a failure to follow Fayol; it is the price the firm pays for needing deep disciplines and integrated projects at the same time.

Lens 3: Galbraith and Information Processing

Jay Galbraith treated organization design as a problem of information. The more uncertain the task, the more information must be processed during the work itself, and hierarchy alone cannot carry it. A firm can lighten that load, for instance by building in slack time or budget, or by increasing the capacity to process it, through lateral relations up to and including a matrix (Galbraith, 1974).

Building design is highly uncertain: clients change requirements, site conditions surprise, and each discipline's choices constrain the others. In a pure hierarchy, a question about whether a beam can be moved to fit a duct would travel up one discipline and down another. In the matrix, the structural and mechanical engineers on the project resolve it together, under one project manager. Galbraith's lens predicts that the matrix should reduce the number of decisions that need to reach the top, and the firm's records suggest it does: the principals see one escalation a week out of hundreds of cross-discipline decisions made on projects.

Which Prediction Holds

Fayol's prediction of conflict is borne out, but his prediction of failure is not. The Lawrence and Lorsch and Galbraith lenses explain why the conflict is tolerated: it is the cost of processing a large volume of cross-discipline information close to the work. The escalation data point to where that cost concentrates. Of the 46 escalations, 31 concerned staffing, usually a project manager resisting a discipline chief's decision to move an engineer to another project. Only nine concerned technical review, and six concerned budgets.

Stanley Davis and Paul Lawrence observed that matrix structures often run into trouble not because of the dual line itself but because decision rights between the two axes are left unclear, so that every overlap becomes a negotiation (Davis & Lawrence, 1978). The firm's escalation pattern fits that diagnosis: staffing is the one decision both axes believe they own.

Recommendation: Move One Decision Right

The analysis supports keeping the matrix and clarifying the staffing decision. Discipline chiefs should keep the right to assign engineers, since depth and development depend on it. But once an engineer has been assigned to a project, the assignment should be fixed for a defined period, such as the remainder of the current design phase, unless the project manager agrees to a change. Moves within that period would require the principal's approval in advance rather than after a dispute.

A second, smaller step would publish a one-page decision chart listing, for each recurring decision, which axis decides, which must be consulted and which is only informed. Davis and Lawrence's diagnosis suggests that writing the rights down matters as much as the rights chosen. This change gives the project axis predictability and leaves the discipline axis its authority over who works where. If it works, staffing escalations should fall sharply within a year, and the median time to settle the remainder should shorten because fewer cases would reach the principals at once.

Conclusion

The firm's double reporting line breaks Fayol's unity of command deliberately. Fayol correctly predicts the conflict it produces, but Lawrence and Lorsch explain why the firm needs both axes, and Galbraith explains why the matrix handles the information that building design requires. The firm's own records locate most of the conflict in one unclear decision right. Fixing that decision, rather than the structure, is the most promising change.

References

Davis, S. M., & Lawrence, P. R. (1978). Problems of matrix organizations. Harvard Business Review, 56(3), 131-142.

Fayol, H. (1949). General and industrial management (C. Storrs, Trans.). Pitman. (Original work published 1916)

Galbraith, J. R. (1974). Organization design: An information processing view. Interfaces, 4(3), 28-36. https://doi.org/10.1287/inte.4.3.28

Lawrence, P. R., & Lorsch, J. W. (1967). Differentiation and integration in complex organizations. Administrative Science Quarterly, 12(1), 1-47. https://doi.org/10.2307/2391211