Rainbow Design Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Rainbow Design - Essay Example Rainbow Design appears to be a rather fluid organization, considering that it is involved in supplying a highly creative, uniquely designed service product.     Such firms cannot rely on organizational structures that are more appropriate for batch processing, standardized products. There are three general organizational structures: the functional, the divisional, and the matrix organizations. The functional organization, the most traditional of the three, is structured according to business functions, while the divisional organization may be organized along product, customer or geographic divisions. The matrix organization, on the other hand, has the flexibility of an overlap of functional and divisional forms. (Bateman & Snell, 2005, pp. 257-262). A diagram of the typical matrix organization follows on next page: In the Rainbow Design firm, it is apparent that persons each performing a separate function were grouped together to accomplish one web design project for a single customer. The group is composed of a junior content designer (Laura), and account manager (Teresa), a technical developer (John), and a creative director (Amber). In the above diagram, the group relationship could be exemplified by the lowest row, where three staff positions (Laura, Teresa and John) and one project manager (Amber) are grouped together to accomplish one project. The greatest advantage of the matrix organization is the exploration of synergies among creative individuals working at the same project such as in Rainbow Design, simplifying communication and enhancing coordination among them. Rainbow’s personnel work in groups, a group being â€Å"Any number of people who interact with each other, are psychologically aware of each other, and who perceive themselves to be a group† (Schein) and â€Å"who interact to fulfil a common goal† (Bowditch & Buono). Within the Rainbow Design matrix organization, groups called project teams become the vehicle by which the design product is created. A team is simply a group with a specific work purpose, and for Rainbow the work purpose is the creation of a web design to the client’s liking.