Den geografiska, funktionella och processorienterade organisationen
en fallstudie av Holmen Skog, SCA Skog och Sydkraft Vattenkraft
This thesis reports on a case study of two different organisational forms in the Swedish
forest industry; the geographic and the functional organisation. The work in the
geographic organisation is carried out within districts under the supervision of an overall responible district manager, where as in the functional organisation the work has been divided into functions headed by function managers. Forest magement, logging and wood
purchases are examples of such functions. The general idea of the functional organisation
is having the functions working over a larger geographic unit, without subdividing
district boundaries of the region. Also a third organisational form of current interest for the forest industry; the process orientated organisation, is analyzed in the case study.
Here, a company outside the forest industry has been analyzed, since no forest company
was considered to have made as much progress of changing organisation to process
orientation.
In the report I present the results from qualitative interviews, where I give the reader a
picture of the motives behind each organisational form, what the form implies for some
of the company?s interested parties and the organisations? views on future organisational
development. I point out differences and similarities between the different organisational
forms and analyse their strengths and weaknesses.
The results of the case study show among other things that there are varieties of the
geographic and the functional organisations in the studied companies. Holmen Skog
(Holmen) has an essentially geographic organisation but has made a grouping by function
of the work on the district level. In SCA Skog?s (SCA) functional organisation there
exists a geographic division of the region for some of the functions and there is a
variation in the functions? degree of specialisation. SCA also performs activities for
implementing process orientation in its? operations. The motives for grouping by function
are similar between Holmen and SCA, despite the difference in the subjected level of the
organisation. Here SCA has chosen the region level for the grouping by function whereas
Holmen has chosen the district level. Both companies mention among other things a
greater focus on the flow of products as well as the opportunity of handling greater
demands on competence as important factors in favour of grouping by function, and
thereby a higher degree of specialisation for their employees. Holmen though, advocate
to keep its? districts as an organisational unit, arguing that they facilitate necessary
communication among the staff as well as providing material for high quality internal
benchmarking in the purpose of generating beneficial internal competition between
different districts. In general the management control of the forest companies are
dominated by goals while in the process orientated organisation, Sydkraft Vattenkraft, an
additional set of fixed and deliberately applied values are used as an important tool of
control. At Sydkraft Vattenkraft the strengths of increased process orientation are said to be a greater opportunity for employees to obtain an overall view of the work conducted
by the firm as well as that it points out what activities that are essential for the success of operations. These statements are indeed recognisable from SCA?s experiences of work aiming for increased process orientation. Both companies apply the same model for
organisational development but Sydkraft Vattenkraft has chosen to introduce an organisational structure with a new set of roles, in the purpose of supporting the process
orientation. As a consequence, Sydkraft Vattenkraft?s organisation constitutes an
interesting case worth studying for any company that strive for its? processes to be the
guideline of its? operations.