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concentrated on design, while the Operations team can concentrate on providing client services. Now everybody can use its expertise in a specific area.

The new organizational structure enables Cisco NDCS to look for new ways to improve efficiency in managing service support. Experienced engineers are able to train newer staff members, handle incidents more quickly, which in turn reduces losses of time. And the new structure means that staff have more time to talk to clients and help them with Cisco’s processes.

To sum up, this change has increased employees’ awareness of the firm’s performance and improved customer satisfaction.

Language focus

1.Look through the texts again and translate the following word partnerships from Russian into English.

жизненного цикла бизнеса; команды по разработке и эксплуатации;

2.Complete the sentences with the words below. Translate them into Russian.

impact hierarchy focus ignore functional awareness matrix field delegate

1.I have to stay late this evening because my _____ manager asked me to finish the report on development processes by tomorrow morning.

2.We use an organizational model which is a combination of functional and line structure, in other words a _____ structure.

3.She just got a job in an area that is growing enormously. She works with new technologies in the communication _____ .

4.I get really angry when I have set out a policy and my staff don’t keep to it. I don’t understand why they _____ my decision about what needs to be done.

5.He has too much work and needs to learn how to better_____ responsibility to his team.

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6.Each of our team leaders has to report to the person above him or her, in other words all information moves up the levels of ______ to the top.

7.Much of the work we do _____ on improving clients’ business processes and helping them stay competitive in today’s market.

8.The candidates for the position must have a good _____ of people as well as how companies function.

9.Our task is to identify the problem before it starts to have an _____ on our clients.

3. Translate the following sentences into English.

1.Компания начала проводить изменения в своей организационной структуре после того, как стало понятно, что в компании происходит дублирование рабочих процессов.

2.Компания столкнулась с рядом проблем. Одна из них это перемещение работников в другие отделы или филиалы.

3.Кроме того, компания решила использовать сетевые и региональные команды, чтобы выполнять задания и оказывать услуги эффективно.

4.Структура не была достаточно гибкой, чтобы соответствовать требованиям времени и темпам роста компании.

5.Новая модель жизненного цикла бизнеса позволила компании легче и быстрее определять проблемы, отдавать приоритеты наиболее важным направлениям, повышать удовлетворённость потребителя.

6.Ему хорошо удаётся справляться с непредвиденными случайностями и снижать потери рабочего времени.

7.Наш отдел всегда отдавал приоритет в работе обслуживанию наших клиентов.

8.В новой организационной структуре каждый отдел может сосредоточить своё внимание на определённых областях знаний с целью использования этих знаний при выполнении задач.

4.Modal verbs for possibility and probability

The underlined words are all modal verbs that say that something is possible or probable. The modal verbs will and could are more frequent than may and might in English.

When companies change their organizational structure the following can happen:

-Staff may find themselves working in different teams.

-Staff might have a different manager.

-Staff might have to follow different rules.

-Staff may need training to improve coordination between departments.

-Staff could have more or less work.

-Some people could lose their job.

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-Managers might have problems with the changes in their roles.

-Staff will have a better relationship with customers.

5.Look back at the article about Cisco. What do you think will or will not happen after the reorganization?

Write one prediction for each of the prompts below with could, will, might and may (not).

Put each of the predictions in one of the three categories below depending on how certain you are about your opinion.

Example:

a)I’m quite certain: The reorganization will probably lead to redundancies.

b)I think it’s possible: It may / can / could lead to redundancies.

c)I’m not very certain: The reorganization might lead to redundancies.

1.Some middle managers / lose their job.

2.The company / become more efficient.

3.Customer services / be improved.

4.The company / become more profitable.

5.Communication between departments / be difficult.

6.The new system / be very different from the old one.

Managing Practice

Read about the problem of an employee who works in a matrix-structured company and is in a very difficult situation with two line managers.

Miranda works for a large multinational company that produces clothes. She is currently working on a project to produce women’s clothes for sale in South East Asia. Her project manager has told her that the line of clothes should be ‘sporty’ and ‘young’ since he has done a lot of market research on this and the results show that this is what will sell well.

However, Miranda’s functional manager has told her that she should aim for ‘elegant’ and ‘smart’ clothing since this is the style which the brand is famous for. The functional manager is worried that if the company produces ‘sporty’ clothing, this may damage the brand’s image.

Miranda may also need to remember:

-her functional manager decides on future pay rises and promotion in the company;

-her project manager has done the market research and this is a key project for the company;

-the company has to think about its global image.

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In pairs, make a list of problems that may arise from this situation. Try to use some of the collocations from the language focus.

Make suggestions for how this employee could solve the problem. Try to make your suggestions realistic.

I think she should ….

It would be a good idea if she explained ….

She could ….

Unit 5 Managing organizations: Company development

Read and translate the article.

Larry Greiner, Professor of management and Organization, developed a theory of organizational growth. He said that the growing organizations move through the stages of evolution each followed by a crisis and a change. He identifies the following five stages. They are:

Stage 1 – Growth through creativity

Stage 2 – Growth through direction

Stage 3 – Growth through delegation

Stage 4 – Growth through coordination

Stage 5 – Growth through collaboration

Stage 1 Creativity / Leadership

The first stage of organizational growth is called creativity. This stage is dominated by the founders of the organization, and the emphasis is placed on creating both a product and a market.

The founders are often good entrepreneurs, who do not especially like management activities. Their energy is concentrated on making and selling a new product. But as the organization grows, management problems occur that cannot just be handled informally. The founders have unwanted management responsibilities and there are conflicts between them.

Stage 2 Direction / Autonomy

It is at this point that the crisis of leadership occurs and Stage 2 begins. Who is going to lead the organization and solve the management problems? The solution is to get a very strong manager who is acceptable to the founders and who can pull the organization closely together. This leads to growth through direction.

During this phase the new manager and key staff take most responsibility for direction. However, over time lower managers will increasingly want more autonomy. This can lead to what is called the crisis of autonomy. The crisis can be