Organization - APPAbokcms1.appa.org/pdfs/71-02192012.pdf · Organization Introduction The design of the facilities management organization is ultimately the responsibility of the

Organization

Jack Hug, Past APPA President and APPAFellow

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Organization

Introduction

The design of the facilities management organization is ultimately theresponsibility of the chief facilities officer. While others may be calledon to participate in designing the organizational structure, to react todesigns, to provide suggestions, or to help in planningimplementation, it is ultimately the leader’s job to actively shape theorganization. Management’s job is to turn complexity andspecialization into performance. To ignore organization design is tothrow away a potentially powerful tool for building effective andefficient organizations. This chapter is concerned with the big-pictureof the organization and its major departments.

Educational Facilities Management (EFM) organizations; small,medium, or large have characteristics in common but also manydifferences. The definition of organization used in this chapter is takenfrom “Organization Theory and Design-Tenth Edition by Richard L.Daft and is as follows: “organizations are social entities that are goaldirected, are designed as deliberately structured and coordinatedactivity systems, and are linked to the external environment.”1

Organizational design and structure is a vast complex area of studyand a single chapter on the topic cannot begin to provide a completesurvey of the field. The objective of this chapter is to help people tounderstand Educational Facility Management organization design andstructure. In this chapter, we will address the most prevalentcommunities of practice in Educational Facilities Managementorganizational structural forms discovered from digging deep intoexisting college and university facilities management organizationstructures and from extensive reading of books and professionalperiodicals on this topic. This experience and learning supports thetheory that while organizational design is not the answer to allproblems in organizations, it frequently is an important component ofsignificant efforts to enhance organizational efficiency andeffectiveness. More than anything else, where the lines are drawndepends on what the organization is trying to accomplish and how it istrying to improve.

No two organizations are exactly alike and differences matter. In mostinstances, the right thing to do in organizational design truly depends


on the circumstances; the organizations history, mission, strategy,resources, the institutional context, scale, and scope, and theorganizations external environment are almost always different fromone institution to another and these differences must be consideredwhen designing organizations. Experience teaches that organizationalchange can be disruptive and cause confusion. As you read throughthis chapter, keep one central thought in mind; the typical picture ofan organization is a version of a pyramidal organization chart. Thefocus of this picture views the most critical factor of an organizationas a stable or static structure with formal relationships among jobsand work units. Although this is one way to think about organizations,it is only one part of the picture. As we understand more aboutorganizations, we begin to see that our picture excludes otherimportant images such as leadership behavior, the impact of theenvironment and institutional context, informal relationships, and theflow of information and decision making power. Organization is muchmore than just a system or a set of lines and boxes. We will learn thatit is not just about how we draw the lines and arrange the boxes; it’salso about why we do so and who we put into those boxes that matteralso.

This chapter also provides a historical setting so that we might betterunderstand how many of today’s organizational design principles andelements evolved. This chapter explains why organizational lines aredrawn the way they are and then redrawn the way they are. It willprovide answers to why it seem like we are changing our minds all thetime, constantly redrawing the lines. Joan Magretta in her insightfulbook “What Management Is”2 states that “the reason we areconstantly redrawing the lines is because “the design of anorganization is implicit in its strategy, so much so that it is hard to tellwhere strategy leaves off and organization begins. Because strategy isdynamic, organizations must be flexible. Drawing the lines oforganization is an ongoing struggle to stay relevant. Not a job doneonce and for all.” Magretta emphasizes that management’s jobrequires it to draw three different kinds of lines:

First, the boundary lines, which separate what’s inside andwhat’s outside.Second, the lines of the organization chart, which map how thewhole is divided into working units, and how each part relates tothe other.Third, are the sometimes invisible, but always important, lines ofauthority. These determine who gets to decide what, and howthe internal organization really works.

So, what should your organization look like? How should youorganize? And where should you draw the lines?


In the concluding section of this chapter, "A New OrganizationalView," we explore the need to rethink the organization to help usrecognize how Educational Facilities Management work has changedand consequently how to use organizational structure to find newways of delivering products and services.

Historical Setting

The time period for the publication of the books on organizationtheory and design began with the early years of the growth ofbusiness administration in the United States. “Before 1850, very fewAmerican businesses needed the services of a full-time administratoror for that matter required a clearly defined administrative structure.Industrial enterprises were very small in comparison with those oftoday. And they were usually family affairs. The two or threeindividuals responsible for the destiny of a single enterprise handledall its basic activities; economic and administrative, operational andentrepreneurial. In the agrarian and commercial economy ofante-bellum America, business administration as a distinct activity didnot yet exist.”3

The writings of Alfred A. Chandler Jr. “Strategy and Structure:Chapters in the History of the American Industrial Enterprise” firstedition published in 1962 are most instructive and essential readingfor those who want to build a foundational understanding of thebeginning of the profession of business administration as an essentialidentifiable activity and its effect on organizational theory and design.Chandler began with an initial thought that an examination of the waydifferent enterprises carried out the same activity; whether thatactivity was manufacturing, marketing, procurement, finance oradministration, would have as much value as a study of a single firmcarrying out all these activities. This comparative analysis did in factprovide the ways in which American businessmen have handled theseactivities over the years. In 1961 Chandler raised the question; whathas been the structure used to administer these early greatenterprises? And who were its innovators? A preliminary survey of theexperience of fifty of the largest industrial enterprises in the UnitedStates helped to answer these questions. From this list Chandlerselected multi-divisional organizations to study partly because theseenterprises had faced significant challenges in organizational designand organization theory as the work of their respective organizationsgrew in size and complexity. The multi-divisional enterprises which heselected include: DuPont, General Motors, Standard Oil Company,New Jersey, and Sears, Roebuck and Company.


Organizational design evolution for Educational Facility Managers isimportant because as we will see in this chapter, most facilitymanagement department organizational designs and structures todayhave many organizational elements derived from these earlierversions of the industrial organizational structure, administrativeconcepts, principles, and theory. As business and industries becamelarger and more complex, their executives were faced with morecomplex administrative problems. The enormous expansion of theAmerican economy especially after World War II brought theiradministration practices to the attention of sociologists,anthropologists, economists, political scientists, and other scholars.

In Organization Theory and Design; Richard L. Daft provides aninstructive evolution of organizational theory and design, which helpsus understand where a number of theories and design elementsoriginate. Daft astutely notes, “Organization theory is not a collectionof facts; it is a way of thinking about organizations. Organizationtheory is a way to see and analyze organizations more accurately anddeeply than one otherwise could. The way to see and think aboutorganizations is based on patterns and regularities in organizational design. Organizational scholars search for these regularities, definethem, measure them, and make them available to the rest of us. Thefacts from the research are not as important as the general patternsand insights into organizational functioning. Insights fromorganization design research can help managers improveorganizational efficiency and effectiveness, as well as strengthen thequality of organizational health.”4 Daft points out that the modern eraof management theory began with the classical perspective in the latenineteenth and early twentieth century. The emergence of the factorysystem during the Industrial Revolution posed problems that earlierorganizations had not encountered. During the Industrial Revolution,the perspective that sought to make organizations run like well-oiledmachines is associated with the development of hierarchy and bureaucratic organizations. This “classical perspective” Daftemphasizes, remains the basis for much of modern managementtheory and practice. The classical perspective had its emphasis onefficiency and organization. Other perspectives began to emerge toaddress new concerns, such as employee needs and the role of thework environment. Elements of these early organizationalperspectives are widely used in organization design today.

Pioneered by Frederick Winslow Taylor, scientific management emphasizes scientifically determined jobs and management practicesas the way to improve efficiency and labor productivity. Taylorproposes that workers “could be retooled like machines, their physicaland mental gears recalibrated for better productivity.” He insisted


that management itself would have to change and emphasized thatdecisions based on rules of thumb and tradition should be replacedwith precise procedures developed after careful study of individualsituations.5 To use this approach, managers develop precise, standardprocedures for doing each job, select workers with appropriateabilities, train workers in the standard procedures, carefully planwork, and provided wage incentives to increase output. Although thedays of separating the heads from the hands has mostly ended, theideas of creating a system of maximum efficiency and organizing workfor maximum productivity are deeply embedded into our facilitiesorganizations. Today; with continuing slow economic growth in theNation and in the Global economy, additional rounds of budget cutsare becoming a reality for many educational institutions. For facilitymanagers there is a renewed interest in re-examining how facilitiesmanagement work is done. We are once again experiencing anhistorical classical management perspective with an emphasis onefficiency and work management and organization. Only this timearound, we have organizational experience and a number of newmanagement tools with which to manage.

These insights helped to establish organizational traditions that therole of management is to maintain stability and efficiency, with topmanagers doing the thinking and workers doing what they are told.

Whereas scientific management focuses primarily on the people whodo the basic work of the organization (such as producing the productsand services of the organization, on the shop floor, and on thefront-line), administrative principles look at the design andfunctioning of the organization as a whole. Daft recognizes, forexample, that “managers in the early 1900s had very few externalresources to draw upon to guide and develop their managementpractice. But thanks to early theorists like Henri Fayol (1841-1925),managers began to get the tools they needed to lead and managemore effectively. Fayol, and others like him, are responsible forbuilding the foundations of modern management theory. Theseprinciples form the foundation for modern management practices andinfluence organizational design.”6 These principles clearly representmany of the administrative practices of Educational FacilityManagement. Fayol's principles are listed below.

Fayol's 14 Principles of Management

Division of Work – When employees are specialized, output canincrease because they become increasingly skilled and efficient.

1.

Authority – Managers must have the authority to give orders,but they must also keep in mind that with authority comesresponsibility.

2.


responsibility.Discipline – Discipline must be upheld in organizations, butmethods for doing so can vary.

3.

Unity of Command – Employees should have only one directsupervisor.

4.

Unity of Direction – Teams with the same objective should beworking under the direction of one manager, using one plan. Thiswill ensure that action is properly coordinated.

5.

Subordination of Individual Interests to the GeneralInterest – The interests of one employee should not be allowedto become more important than those of the group. This includesmanagers.

6.

Remuneration – Employee satisfaction depends on fairremuneration for everyone. This includes financial andnon-financial compensation.

7.

Centralization – This principle refers to how close employeesare to the decision-making process. It is important to aim for anappropriate balance.

8.

Scalar Chain – Employees should be aware of where they standin the organization's hierarchy, or chain of command.

9.

Order – The workplace facilities must be clean, tidy and safe foremployees. Everything should have its place.

10.

Equity – Managers should be fair to staff at all times, bothmaintaining discipline as necessary and acting with kindnesswhere appropriate.

11.

Stability of Tenure of Personnel – Managers should strive tominimize employee turnover. Personnel planning should be apriority.

12.

Initiative – Employees should be given the necessary level offreedom to create and carry out plans.

13.

Esprit de Corps – Organizations should strive to promote teamspirit and unity.

14.

Fayol's "14 Principles" was one of the earliest theories of managementto be created, and remains one of the most comprehensive. He'sconsidered to be among the most influential contributors to themodern concept of management, even though people don't refer to"The 14 Principles" often today.

The Principles of Management are the essential, underlying factorsthat form the foundations of successful management. According toHenri Fayol in his book “General and Industrial Management” (1916),while Frederick Taylor was focused on the worker, work methods andpractices employed by the individual worker, Fayol was theorizingabout all of the elements necessary to organize and manage a majorcorporation. Since that time, Fayol's theoretical contributions havebeen widely recognized and his work is considered as fully important


as Taylors. Fayol's work was one of the first comprehensivestatements of a general theory of management. Fayol also proposedthat there were six primary functions of management:

1. Forecast and plan

2. Organize

3. Command or direct

4. Coordinate

5. Develop output

6. Control (in the sense that a manager must receive feedbackabout a process in order to make necessary adjustments and analyzeany deviations from standards).

For you “senior” students of management studies, this list will remindyou of the “four functions of management”; a framework routinelytaught in business schools decades ago that included: planning,organizing, directing, and controlling.

“The scientific management and administrative principles approacheswere powerful and gave organizations fundamental new ideas forestablishing high productivity and increasing prosperity.Administrative Principles in particular contributed to the developmentof bureaucratic organizations, which emphasize designing andmanaging organizations on an impersonal rational basis throughelements such as clearly defined authority and responsibility, formalrecord keeping, and uniform application of standard rules. Althoughthe term bureaucracy has taken on negative connotations in today’sorganizations, bureaucratic characteristics worked extremely well forthe needs of the industrial Age. One problem with the classicalperspective, however, is that it failed to consider the social contextand human needs.”7

Human relations received little attention because of the prominence ofscientific management. However a major breakthrough occurred witha series of experiments at a Chicago company; the Hawthorne Worksof Western Electric Company in the late 1920’s and early 30’s.TheHawthorne Works was a model of American industrial production. TheHawthorn Works was the site of the first undertaking of socialscientific research on the organization of work, managerial practice,and worker satisfaction. Interpretations of these studies concludedthat positive treatment of employees improved their motivation andproductivity. The publication of these findings lead to a revolution inworker treatment and laid the groundwork for more work inexamining the treatment of workers, leadership practices, motivation,


and human resource management. The resulting new human relationsand behavioral approaches added new and important contributions tothe study of management and organizations.

However, the hierarchical and bureaucratic approaches that developedduring the Industrial Revolution remained the primary approach toorganizational design well into the 21st century. Although during the1980’s it began to lead to problems because of increased globalcompetition. This produced new corporate cultures and those of uswho were managers during this time will remember that this had aprofound impact on Educational Facilities Management Departmentsas well. Suddenly there was a frenzy of new management tools andideas to drive us forward to value lean staff, flexible and more agileorganizations, rapid response, closer to the customer practices,excellence, and total quality, process reengineering, key performancemeasures, innovation, collaboration, partnerships, and engagedemployees. This emphasis lasted for decades and consequentlyorganizations have undergone profound and far-reaching changes.

Present-day influences on the shift in Educational FacilitiesManagement organization design include; advances in information andcommunications technology, increasing understanding of the manyinterdependencies of facilities management organizational functions,increased educational levels of employees, growth of knowledge andthe growth in the number of knowledge-workers, increasingquality-of-life expectations, and changing managerial philosophy’sabout innovation, collaboration, and the value added by theachievement of genuine employee engagement. By some measures,Educational Facilities Management organizational design and practicesare beginning to represent an authentic paradigm-shift. Yet the designof organizations continues to embody many elements of the oldClassical Perspective of organizational design.

Harold J. Leavitt in his book written in 2005; “Top Down-WhyHierarchies Are Here to Stay and How to Manage them MoreEffectively” has written “The reality seems to be that a great manyscholars, educators, consultants, and executives simply don’t likewhat large hierarchies do to people and to productivity. Some people;those who are especially concerned with human welfare, might agreethat hierarchies are commonplace, but feel that they are so bad forpeople that we should get rid of them. Other observers; those whoare more concerned about effectiveness of organizations, believe thathierarchical architecture is just out-of-date, old fashioned, inefficientas well as inhumane. Must we really, in today’s world of knowledgeand information, still deal with hierarchies’ archaic appendages, thingslike ranks and status and charts showing who reports to whom?”7Today, hierarchies in Educational Facility Management organizations


are patently obvious. Hierarchical organizational structures havedominated the Educational Facilities Management profession all duringmy five decade career in facilities management. Today, this designpractice is demonstrably reinforced through any analysis of existingEducational Facilities Management organizations. The hierarchies arehere to stay.

This has implications for the organizational designer to match thework coordination needs and the human relations needs of theorganization with an appropriate type and amount of lateralprocesses. Consequently, facility managers have responded to theseneeds by forming both formal and informal groups; organizational-overlays, teams and task-forces are created, specialgroups are formed for a particular problem solving assignment, andmore is being done to achieve cross-functional practices. Today, thereis great interest in removing barriers and encouraging voluntarycooperation, and collaboration. Indeed, the steep vertical hierarchiesare changing-somewhat and these changes are generally positive.Some have flattened. (Figure-1;Trends in Organizational Shape).

Figure 1. Trends in Organizational Shape

Giving people more autonomy is common and many organizationshave opened horizontal/lateral coordination-linkages through the useof cross-functional work-flows and processes.

The change that we are now experiencing is not new concepts andtheory of neither organizational design nor new administrativeprinciples. It is simply taking us a long time to get around to makingthe change. Jay R. Galbraith in his book “OrganizationDesign”8 introduced the idea of organizational design as a continual


http://bok.appa.org/files/Figure 1 New.jpg

decision process to bring about coherence among people, organizingform, and strategy. Galbraith presents the Star Model for linkingdifferent strategies to different organizations. The Star Model wasdeveloped in 1977 and is still highly regarded as an organizing tool.The Star Model is a generic configuration composed of strategy,structure, human resources, rewards, and management processes(Figure-2).

Figure 2. The Star Model

Source: Jay R. Galbraith

The Star Model provides a starting point and a decision-makingframework for organizational design. It illustrates that structure isonly one facet of an organization’s design. Another insight to begained from the Star Model is that different strategies lead todifferent organization structure. There is no “one-size-fits-all design.Galbraith also recommends that to begin the organizational designprocess, articulating the organizational capabilities that are availableto execute the strategy is critical to success. These capabilitiesbecome the criteria for all further design decisions. The design thatshould be chosen is the one that best meets the criteria derived fromthe strategy. The Star Model concept-choices are as follows:


Strategy: Choice of domain, objectives, goals, tacticsStructure: Choice of organizing mode, division of labor,departmentalization, configuration, distribution of decisionmaking powerProcesses: Choice of information and decisionprocesses, decision mechanism, frequency, formalization,databaseReward System: Choice of compensation, promotion basis,leadership style, job designPeople: Choice of selection, training and development,promotion, transfer

Differences Matter

The most prevalent practice that facilities managers follow todaywhen addressing an organizational structure design or change, is toemploy the comparative method; a review of facilities managementorganization charts from other institutions for guidance on how tostructure their organizations. The problem with this approach is thatall institutions have organizational elements that are unique or thatrepresent specific differences. Identical comparisons are rarelypossible. These differences matter. The different organizationalelements could be a distinct strategy, unique personality of theleader, a particular physical and geographical location, special historyof the organization, and other factors found by studying theinstitutional context and circumstances. When using a comparativemethod to look at another institutions' organizational structure, it iscritically important to conduct a relevant dialogue with the facilitiesmanager at the institution you are studying in order to capture anunderstanding of why a particular structure was selected. It is hard toescape the reality that the right thing to do when it comes toorganizational design depends on the specific circumstances of yourinstitution. Many problems result when facilities organization structuredesigns are treated as similar.

Henry Mintzberg, widely known for his numerous writings onorganizational design and structure and for his extensive research onthe theory, design, and structure of organizations, reinforces thisnotion that all organizations in the same profession are not alike.Mintzberg reinforces this notion and the ideas articulated above thatnot only are all organizations not alike but that a great manyproblems in organizational design stem from the assumption that theyare. “Organizations are not a mere collection of component parts towhich elements of organizing can be added or subtracted at will. Theeffective organizations achieve coherence among their componentparts; they do not change one element without considering the

9


consequences to all of the others.”9

Figure-3, Organization Differences, is a schematic that demonstratesboth the general and the specific or unique organizational dimensionsand helps in our understanding of these principles. Assume that wecan represent an organization by a circle: three different organizationsand three different areas. The first area, represented by thedark-shaded portion, is the intersection of all three organizations. Thismeans that on some dimensions, every facilitiesmanagement organization is like every other facilitiesmanagement organization. The second area, the lighter-shadedportions, contains dimensions in which an organization is like someorganizations but unlike others. The third area, represented by thelightest-colored portions, represents those features that are unique tothe specific organization.

Figure-3. Organizational Differences

For leaders who are anxious to make organizational structurechanges, be mindful of the words of Michael Goold and AndrewCampbell, who raised the important organizational issues of power,anxiety, and control as issues of change in their Harvard BusinessReview article, Do You Have a Well-Designed Organization? "Creating


Review article, Do You Have a Well-Designed Organization? "Creatinga new organizational structure is one of the toughest and mostpolitically explosive challenges that an executive faces."10

Peter Drucker also sounds an alert in his book The Practice ofManagement, noting; “A good organization structure is not a panacea.It is not, as some organization theorists seem to think, the only thingthat matters in managing. But, the right organization structure is thenecessary foundation; without it the best performance in all areas ofmanagement will be ineffectual and frustrated.”11

Historical Lessons-Learned

Organizational design is a continual choice process covering choices ofstrategy, organizing modes, and techniques of integrating individualand organizational interests. A few visible descendants of these earlytheories and practices of organizational design greatly influence theorganizational design choices available to the facilities manager today.The classical and decision theorists contributed primarily to choices oforganizing modes. The human relations theorists and the behavioralsciences approach deal mainly with the problem of integratingindividual and organizational interests. Some of these include a choiceof organizational forms; division of labor; authority and motivation;hierarchies of authority; chain of command, line, and staff workers;decision-making and information processes; compensation andreward systems; and the people approach, including selection,compensation, promotion, and job design. Today, our facilitiesmanagement organizations are characterized by attempts to integratethese various concepts. There is an increasing emphasis onestablishing coherence among organizational structure, informationflows, work process flows, and people. Even though work may bestructured into separate departments or functional activities, manyfacilities management organizations today are striving for greaterhorizontal coordination of work activities, often using teams ofemployees from different functional work areas to work together.Boundaries between departments as well as those between campusorganizations are becoming more flexible and less accentuated asfacilities organizations face the need to respond to changes morerapidly. Organizational design at its core involves choices.Organization design matters and an organization has a better chanceof success if it is reflectively designed, nurturing and nudging thevarious pieces.

Effective Organizational Design -- How to GetOrganized


Effective organizational design requires an in-depth consideration of anumber of organizational elements. There is also a requirement thatbefore putting organizational design on paper, to have anappreciation for the abundant differences in an organization’s specific contextual dimensions including: the larger organizational view, theinstitutional environment and context, Facilities ManagementDepartment’s distinct purpose (mission), operating principles andvalues, strategy, resources and capabilities. Once these contextualdimensions are understood, then and only then can we begin to drawthe lines of the organization; its structural dimensions.

The Larger Organizational View

Lest we get ahead of ourselves by jumping to the design of theorganization, let us first remember that a facilities managementdepartment is only one part of a much larger institutional organization.

Typically, the first piece of the larger organizational view is the highereducation enterprise itself and an understanding of how a particularinstitution fits within this enterprise. The next piece is the institution'sacademic administration (those organizational pieces that encompassthe institution's major responsibilities for teaching, research, publicservices, or health care) and then the nonacademic administrativeorganization (business and finance, campus services, and resourcemanagement). The facilities management organization typicallyfollows as only one of numerous nonacademic campus administrativeand service organizations. This larger view of the institutionalorganization positions the facilities organization as an important butproportionately small part of the overall structure of the institution,even though facilities management often is one of the largestnonacademic departments on campus.

A number of similarities as well as some notable differences existamong higher education institutional organizational structures.Although no one size fits all, organizational design at the institutionallevel tends to have similarities based on a number of descriptivevariables. These variables are contained in the Carnegie Classificationof Institutions of Higher Education(www.http://classifications.carnegiefoundation.org).

Facilities management organizations are challenged in many ways,and the successful organizations have developed leaders who havemastered the art of seeing the big picture of the institutional needswhile at the same time continuing to be the campus champion forfacilities.

The Institutional Environment and the Facilities Management


http://www.http/classifications.carnegiefoundation.org

Context

For facilities managers, failure to carefully plan the organization tomeet its business objectives (mission, vision, strategy, and goals) andfailure to dedicate time to design its organizational structure inharmony with mission, vision, strategy, and goals are where a greatnumber of organizational problems start. It will be no surprise to theseasoned facilities manager that the identification of the facilitiesorganization strategy and goals and the achievement of crystal-clearclarity and shared understanding of mission and vision remain elusiveand obscure for many organizations.

It is important during the early onset of examining the organizationalstructure and in the development of strategy to describe theorganizational setting (its context) because it significantly influencesand shapes the structural design and dimensions of the organization.“Whereas the structural dimensions of the organization includeinternal characteristics such as formalization, specialization, hierarchyof authority, centralization, professionalism, and personnel ratios, the contextual dimensions account for size, technology, workenvironment, goals, strategy, and culture.”9 A common managementtool often employed to help identify and understand the particularsituation in which the facilities organization finds itself is theenvironmental scan, also known as strengths, weaknesses,opportunities, and threats (SWOT) organizational analysis. Theappropriate use of this tool will provide management insight and willincrease a shared understanding among facility department membersof the organization's internal strengths and weaknesses and theexternal environment opportunities and threats. A companionmnemonic, to the SWOT is STEEP; Social, Technological, Economical,Environmental, and Political. This management tool is also used togain insight into the macro-external environment. The well-knownSTEEP tool is used all over the world as a basis for external analysis.

A combination of the use of these two tools; SWOT and STEEP,coupled with the articulation of the facilities managementorganizational mission, vision, values, strategy, and goals will positionthe facilities manager to begin to think constructively andcomprehensively about organizational design and structure.

Where to Draw the Lines

Drawing the Boundary Lines

In the design of any organization, departmental boundary lines haveto be drawn somewhere and are a critical part of the organizational


to be drawn somewhere and are a critical part of the organizationalworkplace environment. These boundaries are usually drawn to grouppeople and activities on the basis of functions and the logic of divisionof labor by putting like-type things together.

Organizations have always had and will continue to have boundaries.People specialize in different tasks, and thus boundaries exist betweenfunctions. People have different levels of authority and influence, soboundaries exist between bosses and subordinates. People inside theorganization do different work than suppliers, customers, andoutsiders do, so boundaries exist there as well. In addition, peoplework in different places, under different conditions, and sometimes indifferent time zones, thus creating different boundaries.

The underlying purpose of all these boundaries is to separate people,processes, and production in healthy and necessary ways. Boundarieskeep things focused and distinct. Without them, organizations wouldbe disorganized. People would not know what to do. There would beno differentiation of tasks, no coordination of resources and skills, andno sense of direction. In essence, the organization would cease toexist.

For the facilities management organization, one would be hardpressed to improve on the exquisite treatment of this subjectprovided by William Middleton, former chief facilities managementofficer at the University of Virginia and past president of APPA.Middleton’s description provides the facilities managementprofession's collective thinking about facilities organization, structure,boundary, and scope and the triad of facilities management functionsshown in Figure-4.


Figure- 4 The Triad Organization

“In its broadest sense, facilities management in higher education maybe thought of as a triad of functional areas: planning and acquisitionactivities related to the planning, design and construction of thefacilities required to support teaching, research, and public servicefunctions; the maintenance and operation of facilities; and theassignment and utilization of facilities.”12

Underlying the importance of each of these facilities managementfunctional areas are the substantial financial needs of facilitiesacquisition, maintenance, and operation, renovation and alteration,and disposal at the end of useful life. In other words, the total cost ofownership TCO) throughout a facility and capital assets useful life.

Traditionally, institutions of higher education generally function inthese three broad areas in a loosely decentralized manner. Forexample, the process of facilities planning and acquisition is quiteoften carried out by a facilities planning and construction office orsimilar unit whose activities are confined to this function alone.Maintenance and repair, minor renovations, and the provision ofutilities services are usually the responsibility of an independentbuildings and grounds or facilities management department.

Management of the process of facilities assignment and utilization ismost often done by still another organizational unit, typically a stafffunction in the college or university administration.

While the triad of facilities management functions; planning anddesign and construction, operations and maintenance, and space


management, are most often carried out on this decentralized basis,compelling arguments can be made for a more comprehensiveapproach to facilities management.”12

With the constantly shifting patterns of institutional organization thatcharacterize most institutions of higher education, it is usually difficultto identify any clear-cut trends or directions in organizationalconcepts. Many important relationships among these three functionalareas of the facilities management triad argue for a closeorganizational relationship among all three. For example, a close linkbetween the assignment and utilization function and the facilitiesplanning and acquisition process is essential to ensure that anyprogramming for new facilities is based on real need. A carefulanalysis of the existing facilities inventory against a projection ofrequirements based on accepted space criteria and standards is anessential part of an effective facilities planning process. As facilitiesbecome ever more complex, a close and continuing dialogue betweenthose who plan facilities and those who maintain and operate thembecomes increasingly important. Such a dialogue ensures that themaintainability lessons learned by the maintenance and operatingforces about specific materials and equipment — as well as thespecific design requirements for efficient maintenance and operations— can be incorporated into plans and specifications for newconstruction. Finally, a close relationship among the staff membersinvolved in the assignment and use of facilities and those involved inmaintenance can focus limited maintenance resources on the areas ofhighest utilization or greatest need.

This triad organizational paradigm was most popular throughout thelatter part of the twentieth century and remains popular today amongfacilities managers as the preferred structure of responsibilities. Acomprehensive facilities management structure that includes all theorganizational parts required to get the campus facilities managementwork done simply makes good sense. However, only a smallpercentage of the total population of colleges and university facilitiesmanagement departments has succeeded in adopting thiscomprehensive organizational model.

Drawing the Lines of the Organization Chart

Organizational capabilities and capacity must be considered whendesigning organizations and determine the lines of the organizationchart; how the whole is divided into working units and how each partrelates to the other. The appropriate use of the environmental scan;SWOT analysis described above, will result in a critical and objectiveassessment of the organization's capabilities; its core competencies.Core competencies are defined as things the organization does


especially well in comparison to its peers or competitors. A corecompetency is a deep proficiency that enables the facilitiesmanagement organization to deliver unique value to customers. Anorganization's core capabilities are those activities that, whenperformed at the highest level, enable the organization to bring itsstrategic choices to life. They are best understood as operating as asystem of reinforcing activities, a concept first articulated by HarvardBusiness School’s C.K. Prahalad and Gary Hamel. For example, a corecompetency may be understanding customer needs; it may bepreventive maintenance, utility operations, building maintenance, andcustodial and grounds maintenance. APPA (http://www.appa.org) hasidentified a framework consisting of the following four functional areasin which core competencies for the facilities management professionare concentrated; they can be used to guide our work in determiningthe functional parts of the organizational structure:

General Administration and Management1.Operations and Maintenance2.Energy, Utilities, and Environmental Stewardship3.Planning, Design,Construction4.

The APPA Body of Knowledge; Part-4 Planning, Design, andConstruction include chapters on Real Estate, and SpaceManagement. Over the past two decades, the functions of real-estatemanagement and space planning and management have gainedrecognition as important facility management support services. Theincreasing awareness of the initial costs of space and the life-cyclecosts of buildings; the total cost of ownership (TCO), andconsequently its impact on the institution’s operation costs has hadthe effect of bringing the space and real estate dimension of thecampus to the fore. There is now a growing acceptance that campusbuildings must be managed as valuable institutional resources.Institutions of all sizes and especially those with large building andreal estate portfolios recognize the strategic importance of aligningthe physical planning, space, and real estate management functions,and the operations and maintenance assets to the institutionalbusiness plans.

APPA uses these facilities management core competencies as anorganizing framework for its educational programs including theInstitute for Facilities Management and Leadership Academy; APPA-U.This framework is also used for structuring research initiativesthrough the APPA Center for Facilities Research (CFaR), for itscredentialing and certification programs such as the EducationalFacilities Professional (EFP) credential and Certified EducationalFacilities Professional (CEFP), also is used for capturing andorganizing data and information for use in the Facilities Performance


http://www.appa.org/

Indicator (FPI) survey and report and the APPA Body of Knowledge(BOK).

Each of the four core competencies is typically broken down furtherinto specific facilities services functions, activities, or divisions. Inessence, this creates some familiar facility functions and well-knownorganizational elements that assist in organizational design andalignment. The framework allows strategic grouping of tasks andactivities for achieving effectiveness. Here again, the facilitiesmanager is reminded of the distinctive choices of services for thefacilities organization to provide and the choices of which services notto provide. As a profession, we have learned that we cannot be greatat everything and that strategic choices matched to the organizationsunique and competitive capabilities need to be made. “When thinkingabout capabilities, you may be tempted to simply ask what you arereally good at and attempt to build a strategy from there. The dangerof doing so is that the things you’re currently good at may actually beirrelevant to campus customers and stakeholders.

Articulating the organization's core capabilities is a vital step in thestrategy process. Identifying the capabilities required to deliver on theservice choices you have made crystalizes the areas of focus andresource investment and allocation for the organization. Thisapproach enables the organization to continue to invest in its currentcapabilities, to build up others, and to reduce the investment incapabilities that are not essential to the strategy.

The APPA Core Competence Framework is used to illustrate strategicgrouping practices for facilities management organizations. For thesize of the organization, in this chapter, facilities managementfull-time equivalent (FTE) is used in the examples, arbitrarily classifiedas small (less than 100 FTEs), medium (100 to 500 FTEs), large (500to 800 FTEs), and extra-large (800 to 1,600 FTEs). By comparison tolarge business and industry organizations, even our largest and mostcomplex institutional facilities management organizations are quitesmall in terms of number of staff. The very largest of our facilitiesmanagement organizations have fewer than 1,600 staff members, andthe majority has fewer than 500 FTEs. Compared with corporateAmerica — which most of the current management books, literature,and business school studies are targeting — facilities managementorganizations are indeed quite small.

Dr. Susan Mohrman at the Marshall Center for EffectiveOrganizations, University of Southern California, when asked howorganization size factors into the research on organizational studies,advised; “The major way that size enters the literature onorganizational structure literature is as a correlate of complexity.


Given the limitations of spans of control, larger organizations tend tohave more sub-units and more specialization and formalization. This istrue of large departments, large businesses and large corporations. Anumber of companies handle complexity by creating small units,departments, and businesses, and when they get to a certain size;they break them apart into specialized units. They do so simplybecause they believe that the coordination issues involved in a largecomplex organization are too costly both in terms of time andmotivation...Although I know of no research specifically dealing withsize, size tends to be one of the variables considered in most designframeworks.” 13

Drawing the Lines of Authority

Using the APPA Core Competence Framework to help establish the lines ofauthority and who gets to decide what.

The APPA Body of Knowledge includes chapters and sections for eachof the four areas of the Core Competence Framework for help inunderstanding the comprehensive nature of the competencies andrequired organizational capabilities. The facilities manager who isdesigning or redesigning the facilities organization will find the choicescontained in the framework an immense help in drawing the lines ofauthority.

General Administration and Management Capabilities

Small: Small facilities management organizations tend to rely on thedirector, assistant director, and perhaps one administrative specialistfor facilities management administrative support. There is typicallyheavy reliance on the campus central administrative infrastructure forsupport for human resources, information technology, and businessand financial services. Members of the facilities management teamtend to wear many hats, and having specialists for these services inthe facilities management department at the small organization is rare.

Medium: Typically, the medium-size facilitiesmanagement organizations will design organizations with staffspecialists for administrative support. There are variations of themodels in that some organizations have these administrativespecialists reporting to a facilities manager, the director, associate orassistant director, or a facilities management department businessofficer. In other examples, these specialists will report to acampus-wide professional and either is co-located in the facilitiesmanagement department or located as a part of a central servicesgroup who are assigned the responsibility for serving the facilitiesmanagement department needs as well as the needs of other campus


departments. These specialties typically include human resources,information technology, budget and finance, and procurement.

Large and Extra Large: Characteristically, the large and extra-largeorganizations almost always have general administration andmanagement professional specialists for human resources,information technology, and finance, often including accounting,procurement, and contract administration specialists. They recognizethe strategic importance of these services and continue to invest inthe development of these organizational capabilities. A commonpractice is assigning these administrative responsibilities to aprofessional business manager.

Operations and Maintenance Capabilities

Small: Typically, the small facilities management departments focuson the quality of basic operations and maintenance services with anemphasis on buildings, grounds, appearance, and building system andutility infrastructure reliability. Capital planning: design andconstruction, major remodeling, and alterations are typically providedby contract or some other affiliated agency. The chief facilities officeris highly engaged with other professionals in the planning, design, andconstruction processes, from programming through project closeout.

The small institutions tend to contract some services for operationsand maintenance as appropriate for the regional and geographicalarea labor markets and conditions. The institutional competitiveposition for labor is a factor as the ability to attract and retain thelevel of skills required for some operations and maintenancecapabilities can be a challenge.

Medium: The medium-size facilities management organizations tendto provide the full range of operations and maintenance services.They are large enough to benefit from scale for grouping of specialistswhere needed, and typically they are attractive employers in the areawhere professional, skilled, and semiskilled staff members areneeded. Their use of skilled trades and multi-craft technicianshighlights their approach to operations and maintenance. Thesemedium-size facilities management organizations typically includeutilities, energy management, and sustainability within an operationsand maintenance organizational arrangement. They are also activeparticipants in the campus planning, design, and construction ofcapital projects. Sometimes the planning, design, and constructionresponsibility is separated from facilities operations and maintenanceand is structured under separate leadership. Where this is thestructure, both parties typically realize the interdependencies andneed for close cooperation and collaboration.


Large and Extra Large: The large and extra-large facilitiesorganizations have comprehensive operations and maintenanceservices offerings. Typically, they assume that all services andfunctions of importance and critical nature will be provided throughin-house staff. Again, they take advantage of scale and hire andretain staff in the necessary specialty skills. The large and extra-largeorganizations use active staff training and development programs andmanagement support systems to leverage the organization'scompetencies and increase organizational capacity. Someorganizations have continued with comprehensive apprenticeprograms for the building skilled and semiskilled trades. They tend tostructure the organization in a hybrid manner, with both centralizedshops and services and through the use of zone or area maintenancemethods.

The majority of large and extra-large organizations have acomprehensive facilities management organization with all of theAPPA core competencies structured under the purview of a single chieffacilities officer.

Energy, Utilities, and Environmental Stewardship Capabilities

Small: The small institutions are active players in managing andproviding energy, utility, and environmental stewardship. Often, onlya few players are available for these responsibilities. Depending onthe type and scale of the institution utility infrastructure, districtheating and cooling, individual and stand-alone systems, or acombination of these, the small facilities management organizationstend to recognize the strategic importance of these competencies.Many have used partnerships to augment existing staff and havepursued energy service company assistance and methodologies tohelp manage the energy and utility portfolio.

Medium: The medium-size institutions typically have staff for energy,utilities, and environmental stewardship responsibilities. These staffsare typically integrated into an energy and utilities managementfunction in the operations and maintenance division of theorganization. The environmental stewardship is a sharedresponsibility, and a facilities manager or the director will take amajor role in guiding or overseeing the overall role of the facilitiesmanagement organization in the institutional sustainability program.Coordination with other campus departments that also have a role inachieving sustainability is a requirement.

Large and Extra Large: Facilities organizations of this size aregenerally very aggressive in leading the campus energy, utility, and


environmental stewardship. In a number of instances at the large andextra-large campuses, energy, utility and environmental stewardshipare structured as an enterprise operation; they fully recover theircosts of operation and fund utility expansion and energy projects byrecovering utility costs to campus departments. Where this is thecase, utilities, energy, and environmental sustainability are oftenstructured with a director reporting to the chief facilities officer ratherthan to an operations and maintenance director. Where this is thestructure, those responsible are charged with energy and utilityacquisition, production, distribution, and end user use andconservation of energy. There are a number of different businessmodels that are in place to manage these critical functions. Campusesthat have district-heating and cooling combined utility plantoperations have exploited the advantages of co-generation andengineering efficiencies derived from this model. These campuseshave all the complexities and business challenges of a major publicutility.

Planning, Design, and Construction Capabilities

Small: The small facilities management departments most alwaysdepend on outside sources for this responsibility. Typically a campusadministrator is assigned the responsibility for coordinating theplanning effort. This does not imply that the chief facilities officer isnot an active participant. It simply is not feasible to have planning,design, and construction staff in house for small campuses that do nothave large capital programs on an ongoing basis. The smallinstitutions will frequently align the capital planning functionsincluding project programming, real estate management, spaceplanning and management, design and construction functions with anassociate vice president or vice president position.

Medium: The medium-size organizations will typically have somecapabilities to manage the planning, real estate management, spaceplanning and management, design, and construction processes buttypically must rely on outside professionals for many of theseservices. In many state institutions, the state serves a lead role andprovides assistance in various ways when it comes to newconstruction or major remodeling/alteration capital projects. Thesestate agencies are a partner with the campus facilities managementdepartment to fulfill the project requirements.

Large and Extra Large: Many large and extra-large organizationshave a full set of competencies for delivering capital planning, realestate management, and space planning and management, design,and construction services. These competencies include specialists inphysical planning, architecture, design, and construction activities and


physical planning, architecture, design, and construction activities andin numerous instances include a campus-wide responsibility for spaceplanning and management.

It is not uncommon, however, to see organizations where the physicalplanning function is assigned to a campus entity that is not under thedirection of the chief facilities officer. The institutional politics and thedesires of the president/chancellor and chief academic officersgenerally drive variations in this organizational structure.Occasionally, we find atypical alignments of the facility triad;planning, design, and construction as well as operations andmaintenance are separate entities, either reporting directly to thesame campus administrator or even reporting to different campusadministrators. In these instances, organizational unit leaders mustdevelop strong organizational linking mechanisms to ensure thatthese three units, which have a number of legitimateinterdependencies, are working well together.

In the proper design of an organization, the choices of services toprovide, how to provide those services, what quality and cost ofservices to provide, what management processes and supportcapabilities to provide to support those services, and how you chooseto measure performance of the chosen services are all up to you.Ultimately, the combination of these choices accounts for thedifferences in facilities management organizational structures. When itcomes to determining the quality of services or service standards,ultimately, the institution's priorities and the amount of resourcesavailable will determine the choice of services, staffing levels, andconsequently the campus facility service levels.

A New Organizational View: What's Ahead for theTwenty-First-Century Facilities ManagementOrganization?

The college and university facilities management profession over atleast the past five decades has had to deal with a constant flow ofchange requirements. Most of the change requirements evolved asadvancements and modifications of conditions at our institutions, suchas new leadership, changes in resources, and changes in the strategicdrivers, including political, economic, environmental, social, andtechnological change. Other kinds of changes are specific to particularcampus environments, such as campus growth, workforce diversity,generational and population demographic changes, adoption ofadvancements in information technology, changes in resourceallocation methodologies, emergency preparedness requirements,


allocation methodologies, emergency preparedness requirements,regulatory requirements and unfunded mandates, and increasingcosts of wages and benefits, energy, and construction. These are onlya few of the areas in which there has been substantial change for thefacilities manager. The facilities managers who were paying attentionto their surroundings adapted to these changes, mostly in a controlledand evolutionary manner. Only a few changes stand out as havingrequired major revolutionary steps and immediate or emergencyactions to deal effectively with the change. Arguably, colleges anduniversities have enjoyed distinct periods of stability; major shifts instrategic orientation occur only rarely. Some examples of major shiftsinclude the campus civil unrest of the 1960s, the war protests duringthe 1960s and 1970s, the energy crisis of 1973, the events ofSeptember 11 and its aftermath, and the global economic crisis of2008. Through all of these major change events, most of ourinstitutions continued to pursue a given strategic orientationarticulated in the institutional mission statements that haveremarkable similarities among institutions: the pursuit of teaching,learning, research, public service, and, where applicable, health care.Indeed, higher education has for a very long time enjoyed beinghighly valued by our society.

Change is continuous, but in the higher education sector, it occurs inthe context of a pretty stable strategic orientation. For much of highereducation and in turn for the associated facilities managementprofession, change usually results in doing more of the same butstriving to do it better. While this goes on in the higher educationenterprise, the world outside continues to change, sometimes slowlyand sometimes dramatically. Since the beginning of the twenty-firstcentury, there seems to be increasing frequency of dramatic changethat has spawned a much stronger sense that the institutionalstrategic orientation is increasingly out of sync with the world aroundus, both locally and globally. One cannot help but ask how facilitiesmanagement organizations must change in the twenty-first century.Is it time for a new organizational view and a different theory of howto deal with change?

Gary Hamel, in his book The Future of Management, challenges us tothink about the principles upon which our management beliefs arebased and how those tenets might limit organizational performance:

“The practices and processes of modern management have been builtaround a small nucleus of core principles: standardization,specialization, hierarchy, alignment, planning and control, and use ofextrinsic rewards to shape human behavior. These principles wereelucidated early in the 20th century by a small band of pioneeringmanagement thinkers, individuals like Henri Fayol, Lyndall Urwick,


Luther Gullick, and Max Weber. While each of these theorists had aslightly different take on the philosophical foundations of modernmanagement, they all agreed on the principles just enumerated. Thisconcordance is hardly surprising, since they were all focusing on thesame problem: how to maximize operating efficiency and reliability inlarge-scale organizations. Nearly 100 years on, this is still the onlyproblem that modern management is fully competent to address.

Hamel also describes the findings of his recent research onhierarchies, which is of particular importance for understanding whatis happening to organization design:

“Hierarchies may have gotten flatter, but they haven't disappeared.Frontline employees may be smarter and better trained, but they arestill expected to line up behind management decisions. Lower-levelmanagers are still appointed by senior managers. Strategy still getsset at the top. And the big calls are still made by people with bigtitles. There may be fewer middle managers on the payroll but thosethat remain are doing what managers have always done; settingbudgets, assigning tasks, reviewing performance and cajoling theirsubordinates to do better.

Additional evidence of the persistence of hierarchies in facilitiesmanagement is also provided through documented results ofon-campus assessments of facilities organizations and discussionswith facilities managers across the country. The fact thatorganizational hierarchies are here to stay can also be validated by awebsite review of college and university facilities managementorganizational structures. No facilities management organization wasfound that has designed a truly innovative management model oforganizational structure that is significantly different from thehierarchical model. After all, this form of organizational structure hasprovided an enormous amount of comfort and has contributed muchsuccess for the facilities professional. Most chief facilities managementofficers have shown little appetite to create radically neworganizational forms and capabilities. Under pressure to perform in achanging environment, chief facilities management officers clearlyhave more comfort and tend to concentrate their efforts on improvingthe efficiencies of existing organizations by applying conservative andtime-tested methods. This is simply a logical and lower-risk way of"doing what we know" in a different way and arguably has served thefacilities management practitioner well.

Because the hierarchical form of organizational structure is here tostay — and from all indications looks like it will continue topredominate the profession — the chief facilities management officercan in fact do a number of things that might not directly change the


hierarchical structure configuration in a dramatic way but rather mightenhance the hierarchy and prepare the organization for a new anddifferent future. When contemplating the need to adapt to change, wecan select from a number of alternatives, only one of which isreordering the organizational structure. A healthier hierarchy, orperhaps a rewiring and a retooling of this legacy management andorganizational model, might be the new prescription for success.Sometimes the mere application of new technology or processimprovement can meet changing service requirements; addresstraining for managers, supervisors, and frontline staff; and provide adifferent mindset for managing and developing new skills andcompetencies. These things can be done without undergoing majorreorganization.

New Success Factors

In The Boundaryless Organization: Breaking the Chains ofOrganizational Structure14 the authors Ron Ashkenas, Dave Ulrich,Todd Jick, and Steve Kerr present the idea that managers mustrecognize the new success factors for the twenty-first century andthat the hierarchical pyramid-shaped organizational structures thatexist for most of us come with four types of boundaries that are bothcontrols and constraints on the organization. These boundaries affecthow work is done, what roles and responsibilities are assigned, howinformation flows, who makes decisions, and where accountabilitylies. The new success factors, according to the authors of TheBoundaryless Organization, are speed, flexibility, integration, andinnovation. These success factors either augment or replace the oldorganizational success factors, which include size, role definition,specialization, and control.

These four boundaries are present in almost every facilitiesmanagement organization and are relevant for facilities managers toexamine when attempting to improve how the facilities organizationperforms. Therefore, one of the keys to aligning the organization tochanging requirements without major surgery and reconstruction ofthe structure of the organization is to examine the constraints on theorganization's performance as a result of these organizationalboundaries. These boundaries are as follows:

Vertical Boundaries: the floors and ceilings of the organizationthat separate people by hierarchy, title, status, and rankHorizontal Boundaries: the internal walls that separate thepeople in the organization by function, product or service unit, ordivisionExternal Boundaries: the external walls that separate thepeople in the organization from external contacts, suppliers, and


potential partnersGeographic Boundaries: the cultural walls, which includeaspects of the other three but are applied over time and oftenacross different cultures

As mentioned earlier in this chapter, there is the need to rethink theorganization to help us recognize how facilities management work haschanged and consequently how to use organizational structure to findnew ways of delivering services.

The following bold statements seem appropriate when thinkingseriously about a new organizational view:

Past practices of designing organizations make it more difficultfor facilities management organizations to change as theorganization faces new and inescapable challenges that aretesting our business-as-usual practices; our thinking aboutdesign of the organizational structure is linked to our past. Newsuccess factors for the facilities management profession — speedof service, flexibility, integration, and innovation — are not unlikethose required for much of business and industry. It will beimpossible to achieve these success factors without maximizinghuman potential in the organization. The once-murky bottom line for facilities managers is becomingclearer. An example of responding to this is an increase in use ofthe zone maintenance concept, a form of organizational structuretypically added within an existing facilities management hierarchyto respond to some of the new success factors driven by campusgrowth, geographic dispersion, and emphasis on improvingcustomer relationships, flexibility, and faster response times.Past practices of organizational design have created boundariesin all directions: vertical, horizontal, external, and geographic.These boundaries need to be examined and assessed todetermine the effect they have on the flow of information,decision making, cooperation, and collaboration and hence on theorganization's ability to master each of the new success factors.Getting ahead of the success curve requires a change in the oldparadigm of the manager's job: planning, organizing,coordinating, and controlling. These four words have dominatedmanagement vocabulary since the French industrialist HenriFayol introduced them in 1916, and they are apparently moreand more out of step in today's workplace. Thinking of themanager's job in terms of coordinating and cultivating ratherthan commanding and controlling opens up a range of newpossibilities.The nurturing of new relationships is proving to be an essentialingredient for success — relationships with customers,


employees, alliances, and partners and a new relationship withtime and space.15

The Knowledge Worker

Technology has changed the nature of work and the way that weapproach getting the work done. The knowledge worker is here tostay. About 60 years ago, Peter Drucker coined the term knowledgeworker to describe a new class of employee whose basic means ofproduction is the productive use of knowledge. Today, theseknowledge workers, who are frequently called professionals, representa larger and growing percentage of our facilities managementworkforce. Marshall Goldsmith writes in Leading New AgeProfessionals, "Knowledge workers are professionals who know moreabout what they are doing than their boss. In leading these new-ageprofessionals, it is important to be able to invert the pyramid, andlook at organizational leadership from the wants and needs of theprofessional, as opposed to the perspective of the skills of the leader."There is ample evidence that the advent of the knowledge worker andthe overall use of information technology, especially communicationtechnology, have been a major influence the past decade in changingfacilities management organizational design and practices.Information technology, in particular, has had a large impact on theway work is done. As Henry C. Lucas Jr. points out in his book TheT-Form Organization: “Using Technology to Design Organizations forthe 21st Century, the job of leading an organization has changed theway organizations do business with information technology; many ofthese ways are used by facilities management organizations, and newways to use technology are being applied daily”16.

Most organizations have embraced the use of information technologyand the advent of the knowledge worker found today throughout thefacilities management profession. Although the initial idealistic beliefthat technology would make work easier and free up managers' timeand even shorten the work week has not been fully realized, there canbe no question that the appropriate use of technology throughoutfacilities management organizations does make a difference andmatters greatly. Information technology is a variable that must beconsidered in the design of organizations. This discovery and use ofinformation technology as both a driver and an enabler have been aboon to facilities organizations.

The degree to which technology is used and the growth andpositioning of the knowledge worker in our facilities organization arevariables that can significantly affect organizational design andespecially how work is done. These variables have piled into andloaded up the hierarchy, and this process has not always been done in


loaded up the hierarchy, and this process has not always been done ina planned, orderly, and coherent way. This situation has presentednew organizational challenges, especially for midlevel managers whoare primarily in the organization to hold things together.

The Learning Organization

The term learning organization is gaining more popularity. Exactlywhat this means to facilities management organizations is notobvious. This much, however, we do know: Continual learning forimprovement is an essential ingredient and perhaps the ultimate goalof the learning organization. The challenge is to continually strive todo better, to gain an edge, and to instill best practices in anorganization. Successful facilities management organizations areabout much more than structure. Success involves changes in thinkingabout workforce capacities, about the way people are asked to work,and about how we think about and act on leadership and ownership ofproblem resolution. David A. Garvin, professor of businessadministration at Harvard Business School, has done substantialresearch on the concepts and practices of the learning organization.In his Harvard Business Review article, "Building a LearningOrganization," Garvin emphatically states, "Continuous improvementrequires a commitment to learning. How, after all, can an organizationimprove without first learning something new? Solving a problem,introducing a product or service, and reengineering a process allrequire seeing the world in a new light and acting accordingly. In theabsence of learning, organizations and individuals simply repeat oldpractices."

There are ample rewards for facilities managers who recognize thisconnection between learning and continual improvement. The conceptof the learning organization has more to do with what goes on withinthe organization than with how the organization is structured.However, organizational structure can inhibit or advance learning andcan add to a mindset that discourages or encourages the creation andsharing of knowledge.

An organizational structure that establishes a supportive and openenvironment for learning will be better equipped to deal with theincreasing complexity and continual change that are synonymous withthe facilities management profession.

Facilities managers have strived to engineer the optimum organization— that is, to obtain the highest performance efficiency whilemaintaining value-added services and to deliver those servicesconsistently and effectively. The ideal condition is to design astructure that will have lasting value and work for all time, asustainable organizational configuration with no frequent changes


necessary. However, the campus in reality produces a constant flow ofchanging service requirements. This reality has taught us that such astatic organizational orientation cannot work indefinitely. Noorganization, regardless of its size, is immune to change. Nearly allsectors of facilities management services are affected. Managementmust be selective in making change but nevertheless must embraceand incorporate the appropriate changes into the organization.

For the practicing manager, an important lesson in the twenty-firstcentury is that organizations face new and different challenges that lieoutside the realm of what had to be managed in the past. There is noescaping these challenges.

A summary of findings of successful facilities managementorganizational practices, taken from 70 facilities managementevaluation program reports over a 24-year period between 1990 and2016, found the design of facilities management organizations to be asignificant determinant of organizational success. This conclusion isespecially true in regard to how the organizational structure supportsexecution of strategy, enhances clarity of purpose; facilitates theunderstanding of roles, authority, and responsibilities; and promoteshuman interaction and getting the work done.17

Organizational Challenges Facing Education FacilitiesProfessionals

Challenges facing Educational Facilities Professionals today aredifferent from those of the past. Organizations are not static; today,many facilities management organizations are facing a need totransform themselves into dramatically different organizationsbecause of new challenges in the campus environment and theexternal environment. Consequently the concepts and practices oforganizational theory and design are continuing to evolve. The mostup-to-date research of hundreds of facilitiesmanagement organizations of all sizes, and library review of booksand other publications writings on the topic of organizational designprovide a large knowledge base for making facilitiesmanagement organizational designs more effective. The institutionalprofile and its context, and the facility management organizationscapabilities and capacity are two very important factors whichinfluence organizational design. The education facilities managementprofession demands periodic reorganization. Reorganization is apowerful tool for changing the trajectory of an organization andenhancing its performance. Yet, the results of organizational designand reorganization are often disappointing for facilities managers whowant to position their organizations to adapt to new needs. Mostfacility organizations find their organizational agility; its capability to


make timely, effective, and sustained change, to be a substantialchallenge and consequently their overall performance suffers.

Some specific challenges today that impact facilities managementorganizational design include; campus growth and expansion,imperatives to understand customer needs, customer goals and whatcustomers value. There are increasing expectations to be moreeffective by responding to needs more rapidly and with more agility, demands to continually manage costs and become more efficient,obligations to continuously improve and to be competitive, andcontinued pressure to do more with less. These challenges and othersrepresent a number of “new normal “situations that are forcing thefacilities manager to confront a new reality of organizational purpose,, organizational strategy, organizational capability, and accordingly,organizational design. Adding to the complexity of the challenge arecontinuing expectations that facilities management organizations willmake progress on the old familiar challenge of leading the institutionin its asset management and capital needs responsibility. Thisincreasing emphasis on the stewardship requirement is taking placeat a time when institutions are facing daunting financial challenges inmanaging the cost of a higher education degree. Major change to thecampus environment and business landscape; such as expansion orcontraction without organizational structural adjustments will onlylead to economic inefficiency, and deficiency in meeting campus needs.

Changes in campus workforce and workplace expectations areadditional challenges that affect organizational design. These factorsalso place demands on facilities leaders to stay current and developstate-of-the-art work management and work-flow processes.Workforce attributes that are paramount to realizing a successfulfacilities organization today include effective responses to increasingdemands for exemplary talent management, continual development ofessential capabilities, continuity of operations, leadershipdevelopment and succession, and constant nurturing of personalproficiency. Additionally, this includes technical skills, leadership skills,and accomplished competencies in ethics and professional standards.The increased use of information technology adds to the challenges aswell; the digital workplace, and big-data. If this weren’t enough,facility managers are expected to deal effectively with campus safetyand security provisions, complex environmental compliancerequirements, and new demands to meet the challenges of anincreasingly diversified and complex workforce. These are the forcesthat are shaping today’s organizations. Thus, managers must beprepared to design and redesign their organizational structures asthese changing service requirements and specific-institutionalcontextual conditions unfold. A good organizational structure iscritically important if the facilities organization is going to adapt to


these realities and other changes that will inevitably continue to alterthe campus facilities management landscape. Therefore,understanding of organizational theory and organizational design isrequired for successful leadership.

The kind of organizational design change likely to be required forsuccess will place new stresses on the organization's activities, onrelationships, and on the kind of decisions that need to be madedownward, horizontally, and upward. Consequently, changing the waywe manage and the way our organizations perform work to be able tofit the needs of the institutional environment is a viable alternativeand a significant complement to rearranging the configuration of theorganizational structure. This approach likely will prove to be aneffective prescription that is more aligned with today'stwenty-first-century requirements.

Notes and References

1 Daft, Richard, Organization Theory and Design, Tenth Edition. Mason, Ohio: Cengage Learning, 2012.2 Magretta, Joan, What Management Is-How it works and why it iseveryone’s Business. Copyright @2002 Joan Magretta, Free Press-ADivision of Simon and Schuster Inc.3 Chandler, Jr. Alfred D., Strategy and Structure: Chapters in theHistory of the American Industrial Enterprise, copyright 1962 byMassachusetts Institute of Technology.4 Daft, Richard, Organization Theory and Design, Tenth Edition. Mason, Ohio: Cengage Learning, 2012.5 Taylor, Frederick Winslow, “The Principles of Scientific Management”19116 Daft, Richard, “Organization Theory and Design”, Tenth Edition, Mason, Ohio: Cengage Learning, 2012.7 Leavitt, Harold J, “Top Down-Why Hierarchies Are Here to Stay andHow to Manage them More Effectively” Copyright @ 2005HarvardBusiness School Press8 Galbraith, Jay R., “Organization Design”, Addison Wesley PublishingCompany, 1997.9 Mintzberg, Henry, “The Structure of Organizations” Copyright@1979, Prentice Hall Inc.


10 Goold, Michael, and Andrew Campbell, Harvard Business Review,March 2002.11 Drucker, Peter F., “The Practice of Management”, New York:Harper Business edition, 1993; Collins edition, 2006.12 Middleton, William D., "Comprehensive Facilities Management" In Planning and Managing Higher Education Facilities: New Directions forInstitutional Research, No. 61, edited by Harvey H. Kaiser, 62. SanFrancisco: Jossey-Bass, 1992.13 Hamel, Gary, with Bill Breen, “The Future of Management”, Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2007.14-15 Ashkenas, Ron, Dave Ulrich, Todd Jick, and Steve Kerr. TheBoundaryless Organization: Breaking the Chains of OrganizationalStructure. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2002.16 Lucas Jr., Henry C., ”The T-Form Organization” using Technologyto Design Organizations for the 21st Century, Copyright @ 1996,Jossey-Bass Inc.17 Hug, Jack (Hug Consulting and Management Services). APPAFacilities Management Evaluation Program (FMEP) Conclusions" APPA,2016.


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