Matrix organisation

Meaning of matrix organisation

Some organisations need two things at once: specialist departments that last, and teams that bring several specialisms together for a particular job. A matrix (or grid) organisation meets both needs by placing project teams on top of the existing functional departments, so that anyone posted to a project has two superiors, one in the department and one in the project. If the departments are drawn as columns of authority and the projects as rows, each team member sits where a column meets a row, and that is how the grid takes shape. The design arose because big, complicated undertakings could not be run well through line and staff or purely functional structures, which were not flexible or technical enough for them.

Its distinguishing features

• Dual reporting. For as long as the project runs, a team member takes instructions both from the head of his own department and from the project head.
• Resources are shared, not owned. A pure project organisation gives each project manager complete authority over the resources his project uses; in a matrix the project manager has to share them with the functional managers.
• Different jobs for the two managers. The project head looks at the project as a whole, much as a general manager would, while each functional head guards the soundness of his own speciality.
• Teams come and go; departments stay. People are lent to a project by their departments and, once it is over, return there to be given their next assignment.

Advantages

• Room to grow. When the organisation takes on more work it need not redraw its structure; it simply sets up another project team.
• Each project gets its own attention. A named team and its own resources stand behind every project, so it can be planned and monitored separately and is more likely to finish on schedule.
• Closer contact and stronger drive. Members deal with one another directly rather than through ranks, which keeps them motivated towards finishing the project, and the project head ties together people from different disciplines.
• A school for skills. Moving from one project to another exposes staff to new problems, so the organisation builds a wider range of professional skills in its people as it works.

Limitations

• A weak hold over the team. The project head leads people who are only on loan from several departments and over whom he has no line authority, so differences among them are hard to settle and coordination suffers.
• Whose instruction comes first? With two superiors, a member cannot always tell which order to carry out first, and unity of command is broken.
• Rivalry between the two heads. Project and functional heads may compete for power, and since neither stands above the other in a settled chain, the scalar principle is departed from as well.
• More paper, cost and time. Information keeps moving along the department line and along the project line, so paperwork multiplies; and because the instructions coming from the two bosses can conflict, the project becomes slower and dearer to finish.
• Performance is hard to judge. A department head whose staff are spread over several projects over time finds it difficult to assess how well each of them has worked.

Where it suits

The matrix suits an organisation running many projects at once that each need several specialisms. An engineering consultancy in Chennai designing a metro station, a hospital and an airport terminal together could pull structural, electrical and cost engineers into each project team while keeping them in their home departments. To make it work, each boss's authority must be clearly marked off.