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ACCA Strategic Professional · Strategic Business Leader · Enabling success: organising

Norvik Software wins bespoke innovation projects from clients. It staffs each project with temporary multidisciplinary teams of experts who adapt informally to one another, with few formal rules and a blurred line between line and staff roles. Growth now makes clients demand repeatable, standard delivery with predictable costs. If Norvik responds by formalising procedures and creating a large technostructure, which shift in configuration is most likely, and what is the main risk?

Norvik would drift from adhocracy toward machine bureaucracy. Standardised procedures and a large technostructure give repeatability and cost predictability, but they risk stifling the informal mutual adjustment and flexibility that drive its bespoke innovation.

  1. AAdhocracy toward machine bureaucracy, risking loss of innovation and flexibilityCorrect
  2. BAdhocracy toward simple structure, risking loss of specialist expertise
  3. CProfessional bureaucracy toward adhocracy, risking loss of standardised skills
  4. DMachine bureaucracy toward divisionalised form, risking loss of central control

Explanation

Norvik currently shows adhocracy: mutual adjustment, project teams and organic structure. Formalising procedures and building a technostructure are hallmarks of machine bureaucracy, which suits stable, repeatable work but undermines the innovation that is Norvik's competitive edge. The other options misdescribe the starting point or direction.

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