| Course | GM543 Strategic Organizational Design and Architecture |
|---|---|
| Unit | Unit 4 |
| Paper type | Coordination mechanism analysis |
| Length | About 1,140 words, 7 pages double-spaced |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Purdue University Global |
| Program | MS in Management |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for GM543 Unit 4
Seventeen People on Tuesday: A Unit 4 Analysis of Coordination Mechanisms at a Furniture Maker
[Student Name]
Purdue University Global
GM543: Strategic Organizational Design and Architecture
Unit 4 Coordination Mechanism Analysis
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
Harrow Contract Furniture, its meetings and every figure are composite and illustrative; the frameworks and studies cited are real.
How a Large Project Moves
A large project at Harrow Contract Furniture passes through five groups. Sales quotes it and negotiates the terms. Special products engineering reviews any custom fabric, finish or dimension. The plant schedules and builds it. Supply chain buys the materials, including customer's own material when the client supplies a fabric. Installation sets the delivery date with the site and puts the furniture in place.
Between these five groups there are four joints: sales to engineering at quoting, engineering to the plant at release, the plant and supply chain at scheduling, and the plant to installation at shipping. Every late project in the last year began its delay at one or more of these joints, and the record shows where the delays gather. Of 42 large projects that shipped late, 24 lost most of their time at quoting, when a territory manager promised a finish or a date before engineering had reviewed it.
The Inventory of Linking Devices
The Tuesday order review. Created four years ago by the operations vice president, it links sales, engineering, both plants, supply chain and installation. It began with six people and now has seventeen regular attendees. It shares status but cannot settle disagreements, because the senior person present is usually a plant manager who has no authority over sales.
The special orders spreadsheet. Created by a coordinator, it links every group and records each custom request, its status and its owner. Anyone can edit it. It cannot settle anything, and three groups keep their own copies.
The liaison engineer. A senior special products engineer answers coordinators' questions two afternoons a week. Created by the engineering vice president, the role links engineering and customer operations. The engineer can give an opinion on a custom request but cannot approve it.
Standard product codes. Maintained by engineering, the codes link sales, engineering and the plants for catalog products. They work well and settle most questions about standard orders before they arise.
The order status screen. Built into the order system by IT, it links the plants and customer operations. It shows where an order is but not why it is late.
Email. Used by everyone, for everything. In a sample of ten large projects, the average project produced about 180 internal emails between quote and installation.
Only one device, the standard product codes, settles questions on its own. The rest share information. None can make a decision when two groups disagree, and that is why disagreements travel up to vice presidents or wait for Tuesday.
Harrow has many ways to share information about a project and almost no way to settle a disagreement about one.
Classifying the Joints
James Thompson identified three types of interdependence between units, each needing a different kind of coordination (Thompson, 1967). Pooled interdependence exists when units draw on the same budget or service without needing each other's output, and it can be coordinated by standardization. Sequential interdependence exists when one unit's output is the next unit's input, and it can be coordinated by plans and schedules. Reciprocal interdependence exists when units' outputs go back and forth between them, and it needs mutual adjustment.
At Harrow, the joint between the plant and installation is sequential: the plant ships, then installation sets furniture in place. A good schedule and the status screen handle it well. The joint between the plant and supply chain is mostly sequential, with occasional back and forth when a material is late. The joint between engineering and the plant at release is sequential for catalog work.
The joint between sales and engineering at quoting is different. A territory manager proposes a fabric or dimension, engineering asks questions, the customer changes the request, engineering reviews again, and the price and date move with each round. This is reciprocal interdependence. For catalog orders the joint barely exists, because standard codes answer most questions. For large projects, it is where the work goes back and forth most.
The Ladder of Lateral Capability
Galbraith described a ladder of lateral devices, ordered by how much coordination they provide and how much they cost: direct contact between managers, liaison roles, task forces, teams, integrating roles, managerial linking roles and, at the top, the matrix (Galbraith, 1973). He argued that a task with more uncertainty forces the organization to handle more information during the work itself, and the higher up the ladder an organization must climb (Galbraith, 1974).
Harrow's devices sit near the bottom. The Tuesday review is a standing meeting, close to a task force without a task. The liaison engineer is a liaison role in Galbraith's sense, with limited time and no authority. The spreadsheet and email are forms of direct contact. These devices suit sequential interdependence, where the next step can be planned. They do not suit the reciprocal joint at quoting, where each round of questions changes the next.
The Mismatch and the Recommendation
The mismatch sits at quoting. Reciprocal work between sales and engineering is being handled by devices built for sequential work, so every disagreement either waits for Tuesday or climbs to two vice presidents. Van de Ven, Delbecq and Koenig found that as work becomes more interdependent, units rely more on group meetings and personal coordination rather than on rules and plans (Van de Ven et al., 1976). Harrow has responded in the same way, but by adding attendees to one meeting rather than by building a device suited to the joint.
The recommendation is a step up the ladder at that joint only. Harrow should create two project integrator roles, each owning a portfolio of large projects from quote to installation, with authority to approve custom requests within agreed limits and to set the promised date with the plant scheduler. Each integrator would be a senior engineer or experienced coordinator, paid about $105,000 a year with benefits, for a cost of about $210,000.
The integrators would also need management attention. The sales and engineering vice presidents must agree on the limits of their authority, and the CEO must back them when a territory manager or plant manager disagrees. Without that support, the role would become another liaison with no power to decide.
The Tuesday review should then shrink to the six people who started it, with large projects removed from its agenda. If the integrators recovered even half of the delay at quoting, about 12 of last year's 42 late projects might have shipped on time, a gain worth more than their salaries in a business that sells on delivery reliability.
References
Galbraith, J. R. (1973). Designing complex organizations. Addison-Wesley.
Galbraith, J. R. (1974). Organization design: An information processing view. Interfaces, 4(3), 28-36. https://doi.org/10.1287/inte.4.3.28
Thompson, J. D. (1967). Organizations in action: Social science bases of administrative theory. McGraw-Hill.
Van de Ven, A. H., Delbecq, A. L., & Koenig, R., Jr. (1976). Determinants of coordination modes within organizations. American Sociological Review, 41(2), 322-338. https://doi.org/10.2307/2094477
The Purdue Global GM543 Unit 4 instructions
In GM543 Unit 4 you analyze how an organization coordinates work across its units. Map the flow of one kind of work across the groups it passes through and mark each joint between them. Inventory every linking device you can find, formal and informal, and for each note who created it, what it links and whether it can settle a disagreement or only share information. Classify each joint by type of interdependence, usually Thompson's pooled, sequential and reciprocal types. Place the devices on a ladder of lateral capability such as Galbraith's. Then look for a mismatch: a joint whose interdependence needs more than its devices provide. Recommend the lightest device that would fix it and price it in salaries and management attention. Expect about six pages, citing Thompson, Galbraith and coordination research in APA 7.
How this GM543 Unit 4 example is built
The analysis traces a large project through sales, engineering, the plant, supply chain and installation, marks four joints and finds most delay at quoting. Six devices are inventoried: the Tuesday review, a special orders spreadsheet kept in three copies, a liaison engineer available two afternoons a week, standard product codes, a status screen and about 180 emails per project. Only the codes settle anything, and the highlighted sentence makes that point. Thompson's types show the quoting joint between sales and engineering is reciprocal while the others are mostly sequential. Galbraith's ladder places the devices near the bottom. Van de Ven, Delbecq and Koenig support the finding that interdependent work needs personal coordination. The recommendation adds two integrators with authority over custom approvals and promised dates, shrinks the review to six and estimates about 12 projects recovered.
Where the points sit in the GM543 Unit 4 rubric
GM543 rubric credit for this analysis rests on the inventory and on matching devices to interdependence. Instructors look for a complete list of linking devices, informal ones included, with each device's power to decide recorded. Classifying each joint correctly with Thompson's types earns more than defining the types in general. Placing devices on Galbraith's ladder shows the writer understands that coordination has levels and costs. The central finding should be a specific mismatch at a named joint, supported by evidence such as where delays gather. Recommendations earn more when they choose the lightest device that fits and price it, including the senior attention it needs. Thompson's Organizations in Action, Galbraith's books and Interfaces article and Van de Ven, Delbecq and Koenig in American Sociological Review supply the sources in APA 7.
Common GM543 Unit 4 mistakes, and how to avoid them
GM543 Unit 4 papers often list formal mechanisms such as meetings and software and miss the informal ones that carry the work. Others classify interdependence once for the whole company instead of joint by joint, which hides the place where the mismatch lies. A common gap is decision power: many devices share information but cannot settle a dispute, and that difference explains why problems climb to senior managers. Some writers recommend a matrix when a single integrator would do. Map the flow, mark each joint, list every device with what it can decide, classify each joint, place the devices on the ladder, find the mismatch and recommend the smallest step up that fixes it, with its price.
Get a GM543 Unit 4 example written to your instructions
Trace a single order, request or case as it passes between departments at your workplace, and list whatever joins those departments today: meetings, shared files, liaisons, standard codes, software. Pair the list with the Unit 4 instructions and rubric; no charge applies to the first analysis, which typically arrives in 24-48h, each joint classified and the recommendation priced. The paper above is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official Purdue University Global document.
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GM543 Unit 4 questions, answered
Is Thompson the only way to classify interdependence?
No, though his three types remain the usual starting point in design courses. Van de Ven, Delbecq and Koenig later added a team form, in which work moves among members at the same time, and some sections assign that version. Whatever typology the reading supplies, the analysis gains its force from applying it to specific joints in the work and matching each to the mechanism serving it.
What counts as a coordination mechanism?
Anything that carries information or settles decisions across a boundary the chart creates. Standards, schedules, shared software, liaison roles, standing teams, integrators and dual reporting all qualify, and so do informal habits such as the engineer everyone phones. Informal devices belong in the inventory, since they often carry more of the load than anything official, and they vanish when that person leaves.
How much should the recommendation cost out?
Enough that a reader can compare it with doing nothing. Salaries for new roles, hours of meeting time and the attention of senior people are the usual items, bracketed where figures are estimates. Galbraith's observation that each step up the ladder consumes more management time is the reason the price matters: the lightest device that handles the joint usually wins the argument.
Where can I find a free GM543 Unit 4 sample paper?
This page carries a full GM543 Unit 4 coordination mechanism analysis of a furniture maker's project flow, using Thompson's interdependence types and Galbraith's ladder, with APA 7 references.
Why does the quoting joint need more than a meeting?
Work between sales and engineering at quoting goes back and forth as the customer changes requests, which is reciprocal interdependence. A weekly meeting can share status but cannot make the repeated decisions this joint needs, so disagreements wait or climb to vice presidents.