Reference no: EM132253668

You are the top functional manage of small greeting card company whose new lines of humorous cards for every occasion are selling out as fast as they are reaching the stores. Currently, your employees are organized into different functions such as card designers, artists, and joke writers, as well as functions such as marketing and manufacturing. Each function works on a wide range of different kinds of cards—Birthday, Christmas, Hanukkah, Thanks giving, and so on. Sometimes the design department comes up with the initial idea for a new card and sends the idea to the artists, who draw and color the picture. Then the card is sent to the joke writers who write the joke to suit the card. At other times, the process starts with writing the joke, which is sent to the design department to find the best use for the idea.

The problem you are experiencing is that your current functional structure does not allowing you to produce new cards fast enough to satisfy customer’ demands. It typically takes a new card one year to reach the market, and you want to shorten this time by half to protect and your market niche.

(1) Discuss ways in which you can improve the operation of your current functional structure to speed the product development process.

(2) Discuss the pros and cons of moving to a (i) multidivisional, (ii) matrix, and (iii) product-team structure to reduce card development time.

(3) Which of these structures, do you think, is most appropriate and why?