Introduction

The choice of a firm's configuration – sometimes called its structure or architecture – is a critical decision for the executive (Burton and Obel, 2004). The next step in the step-by-step approach is for you to choose a configuration and decide on the organizational complexity which will enable your firm to perform well for its given goals and strategy and in its environment. A poor choice of configuration leads to opportunity losses which can be a threat to the organization's short-term efficiency and effectiveness as well as its long-term viability. As in the earlier chapters, for convenience of expression, we use the term “firm” or “organization” as the unit of analysis, but you can substitute team, department or division if that is the unit of analysis you chose in Chapters 1, 2 and 3.