Publications
Publications
- June 2017 (Revised October 2017)
- HBS Case Collection
Organizing for Performance: Four Vignettes
By: Robert Simons
Abstract
This case provides four examples of organizations with very different business strategies: Walmart, Starbucks, Harvard Business School, and Google. To support their varying strategies, each of these organizations requires a specific configuration to provide the most value to their primary customer. Configurations examined include the Low Price, Local Value Creation, Global Standard of Excellence, Dedicated Service Relationship and the Expert Knowledge designs. Students are asked to analyze the configurations used in each of these examples and then to apply the analyses to a company with which they are familiar.
Keywords
Strategy And Execution; Management Control Systems; Organization; Span Of Control; Job Design; Resource Allocation; Organizational Design; Competitive Strategy; Value Creation
Citation
Simons, Robert. "Organizing for Performance: Four Vignettes." Harvard Business School Case 117-062, June 2017. (Revised October 2017.)
About The Author
