¶ … HR

One of the problems that may arise in other problems relates to the number of employees. Of course, this method worked with a reduced number of employees (we are not talking about the big General Electric, but about a small joint venture. THE general Electric has 300,000 employees. How could cross functional entities work there?). In my opinion, this kind of system can never work in larger entities.

A second problem that may arise is related to the cross functional, matrix-like type of organization this system implies. We may be facing the following problem: the worker in the manufacturing department has to answer to the manager of the manufacturing department, to the HR Manufacturing Manager, to the Sales Manufacturing Manager (it is an extreme example, but it could be the case), etc. This type of cross subordination is always tricky: the employee has to know where to get his orders from; if there is more than one manager for the same department, confusion in messages may occur.

A third problem is cost related. This type of change seems to have implies lots of additional costs for the company: lots and lots of trainings, promotions, transfers and buyouts for affected managers and supervisors, profit sharing, etc. The results of only 18% increases in revenue don't really seem to account for all the expenses.

2. One of the previous jobs I had was in a company that produced software. Sadly enough for the company, the HR department was in charge with hiring new personnel. In a software company, the new employees have to be very technical oriented: it is not really a necessity to be someone sociable or a funny guy, but it is a necessity to be able to use Borland Delphi in programming. But the HR department used the usual hiring tests: where do you see yourself in 10 years? Why do you want to work here? It is obvious that, by the time they got to work, we discovered that the perfect employees hired didn't really know that well how to use Borland or they had only vague notions. But, they were indeed funny guys