Does Organization Structure Follow Strategy: A Case Study of Uzima University, Kenya

Abstract

This was a desk review of literature to try to establish what other authors have said regarding the relationship between structure and strategy. The review included an in depth study of textbooks of leadership and management, peer reviewed journals and other contemporary literature on the subject. Several search machines including Google, Google scholar and yahoo were used to access some of the literature. From the review it has been shown that organizational structure and the contextual designs are very important if organizations have to meet their goals in an ever changing competitive environment. Structural and contextual dimensions help in designing an organization to achieve high performance and effectiveness. It is the duty of the top management to ensure that organizations are correctly designed in a manner that organizes and focuses peoples work and shapes their response to customers and other stakeholders. It has also been shown that successful companies like Hewlett-Parcard succeeded because their strategy of technological innovation was supported by a highly flexible organization structure which was organized around an integrated, self-contained, product divisions that were given a great deal of independence. This review has not conclusively established that structure follows strategy because at times structure may appear much later after the formulation of the strategies but what is even more important for organizations is that for organizations to achieve their goals they must carefully adopt a structure in line with their size, technologies used, strategy and the nature of their ever changing environment.