The Economist Guide to Organisation Design 2nd edition

Thousands of businesses fail every year because of the way they are organised or re-organised. A business's survival can depend not only on whether its structures and reporting lines match the needs of the market, but also whether they are adaptable to a rapidly changing business environment.

Managers seldom talk coherently about structuring their operations, let alone take a systematic approach to the issue. Too often, it happens for the wrong reasons - for example, because a new CEO wants to make an impact, or to work around a new IT system. This revised and updated Economist guide shows how leaders should think about and implement the design of a company, using the following five guiding principles:
- Design the corporate structure around its strategy and the operating context, not for ulterior or non-business reasons;
- Think holistically about the organisation; a company cannot restructure just one division without taking into consideration other operations;
- Consider the firm's future markets, customers and trends, not just what works best now;
- Invest time and resources - a redesign can be complicated to implement; it must be done without disrupting daily activities; and
- Consider the fundamentals of how the company operates and its market position; this is not a repair job to fix a short-term problem.