Organizational Structures and Strategies Flashcards
Approaches to Staffing
- Ethnocentric approach
- Polycentric approach
- Geocentric approach
Ethnocentric approach
Monoculture, home country orientation
- Employees from home country
- Project management techniques of home country
- Usually: no consideration of foreign specifics
- Home country remains main market
Ethnocentric approach: Advantages
+ Dealing with familiar instruments
+ Uniform company policy
+ Easy communication between head office and foreign branches
+ International experience of parent company employees
Ethnocentric approach: Disadvantages
− Potential for conflict: culturally different views and attitudes
− Possible preferential treatment of employees from the parent company
− High costs due to posting
Polycentric approach
Multiculture, Host Country Orientation
- Host country: focus of corporate efforts
- Goal: highest possible integration into foreign market
- High autonomy of foreign organization
- If necessary, development of own host country image
Polycentric approach: Advantages
+ Low personnel costs
+ Language, market and cultural experience of employees
+ Easy communication between head office and foreign branches
+ International experience of parent company employees
Polycentric approach: Disadvantages
− Communication problems between foreign branch and head office
− Business conflicts of interest
− Often low know-how transfer
Geocentric approach
Mixed culture, world market orientation
- Goal: World market position
- Alignment of company’s activities with global market
- Globalized corporate decisions
Geocentric approach: Advantages
+ Utilization of a worldwide employee potential
+ high know-how transfer
Geocentric approach: Disadvantages
− High costs due to postings
− Mostly very complex communication structures
Influence Organization
Project manager as
mediator between
specialist departments
- Project manager has no
direct authority to issue
directives/ decisions - Close cooperation with
management
-> rather in small projects
Matrix Organization
- Superimposition of two
equivalent lines of
instruction - Each employee reports to
the department head and
project manager
-> Frequently, when all
organizational areas of the
company are affected
Autonomous Organization
- Exclusive responsibility of
the pm - All authority to issue
directives and make
decisions lies with the pm - Employees outsourced
from various business
units - High flexibility of the pm
-> very widespread in the
international project
business
Fields of activity of the German foreign construction
- “Traditional/ Direct” Foreign Construction
- T+B*-foreign expansion
- Engineering services
Engineering services
- Consulting and planning in developing, emerging and industrialized countries
- Services export
