Xerox Leadership and Org Structure

Xerox Bureaucratic structures exist in organizations in order to provide a means by which to exercise control over the organization. This type of structure focuses on chain of command and reporting. This structure usually sees strategy formulated at the top of the organization, then disseminated downwards. The managers play the role of assigning tasks and control over their employees. Multiple layers of management are typically used in order to ensure full and effective control over the company (Ingram, 2015).

There are several benefits to flatter organizational hierarchies, and the Xerox case exhibits several of these. One of the most important is better communication. Management at Xerox needed to encourage greater creativity, in particular getting feedback from all levels of the organization in order to innovate. The flatter hierarchy lowers barriers between workers and key decision-makers, enabling communications to flow better throughout the organization (Griffin, 2015). This is what occurred at Xerox, where the company became leaner and decisions were made more quickly.

This allowed Xerox to become more responsive to the needs of its customers. Teams were empowered, which also improved the ability of Xerox to respond to the market, and to move without needing successive layers of approval for every action, which was required under the bureaucratic structure. In this case, the divisional structures at Xerox were based on products. The product model of organizational structure is common because companies had a split where engineers would make products, then require a sales division to sell them.

However, it makes more sense for Xerox to work with a customer-based organizational structure. There are similarities in the different types of firms that Xerox serves, and their needs are in particular quite similar by customer type. As such, the firm started to shift towards a customer-based organization structure as part of its changes. Organizational design affects how an organization controls its activities, and how fast it can respond to changes in its external environment.

The bureaucratic structure at Xerox was successful when the company had a near-monopoly and could focus on producing high numbers of goods, but there was a change in the environment with foreign competition. The company was far too slow to respond to this shift. The change in the external environment was met with a change in organization structure under the two CEOs in this case. The new structure was more responsive, something that was required.

In addition to moving more towards a structure based on the customers, Xerox also needed to flatten the structure in order to move more quickly and have better communication flows throughout the organization. It was losing share for the simple fact that it was not meeting its customers' needs. For example, hardware and software would traditionally have been different divisions at Xerox, where in the new structure they could be in the same division, because the integrated system was a need of the larger customers, regardless of geography or industry.

The moves that Xerox made were driven by pragmatism. The company needed a structure that.