Student Case

PACE Team 1.2 includes eight members from many countries with different specializations and experiences. Our client is IMPACT NW, a nonprofit organization that empowers impoverished families and individuals to reach a state of sustainable independence. It wants to create a new business to lease their professional operational services, such as accounting, payroll, business planning, marketing and fundraising. The team selected an organizational design based on what we have learned in Managing Organizational Change. We chose the Matrix structure, which can help us distribute the workload fairly. We have functional groups and production groups. We have five functional groups for working with client and four production groups for completing academic assignment. The functional groups include presentation, assignment, liaison, facilitator and slide master groups. We selected this structure, which will help us become more specialized, based on individual skills and disciplines. This structure allows us to complete tasks sequentially by assigning specific steps to each group. Production groups include marketing, human resources, finance and accounting, and legal. This structure is based on services that we will provide to our client. Also, we assigned these tasks based on our interests and experience. Even though we have different tasks and activities, we will work together to achieve the same goal. Therefore, the team members chose a hybrid structure, specifically the Matrix structure, because it can help us link functional groups and production groups. Also, it can help us link several subgroups with overlapping product and functional areas. The most important aspect of this structure is interdependence, so the team members can share their knowledge. Moreover, we can coordinate with the external environment, which includes the client, professors, and the teacher assistance.

We established this structure for achieving our goal, which is to provide our client with