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The article being analysed is about change in the Organisational Structure at Topcon Positioning Systems (TPS). In order to cater to the needs of a rapidly growing customer base, while also staying focused on expanding the business, TPS has adopted a “Divisional Organisation Structure”, changing from its “Functional Structure”. The new structure will have four market-focused Business Units and a new position of COO has also been created to oversee the sales, services, IS, HR and legal services, which are now part of operations and will serve all business units. The article also talks about the exponential growth that TPS has enjoyed, growing from 30 employees to over 700 employees in the last 15 years.
Applicable Concept and Frameworks: In order to better understand the reason behind TPS’s adoption of a Divisional Structure, the “Divisional Structure Framework” can be applied as follows:
Context: With TPS’ clients growing, catering to the diverse needs of its large customer base across different product lines could be challenging under the functional structure. Further, this growth has also resulted in size of the company increasing over twenty-folds.
Internal Systems: Initially, during its nascent stage, each function such as R&D, Sales, etc. played an important role in developing and pushing its products. However, with growth, TPS’ emphasis has shifted from its functional capabilities to increasing its product line, in order to capitalize on new opportunities or provide more options to existing customers. Thus, advanced research required for extending a product line or enhancing existing product features specific to a particular product line becomes important.
Strengths: A Divisional St ...