Den geografiska, funktionella och processorienterade organisationen : en fallstudie av Holmen Skog, SCA Skog och Sydkraft Vattenkraft

Abstract: 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.