Challenges and Strategies of Matrix

Challenges and
Strategies of Matrix
Organizations:
Top-Level and Mid-Level
Managers’ Perspectives
Thomas Sy, College of Business Administration, California State University, Long Beach;
Laura Sue D’Annunzio, A.T. Kearney Inc.

U

sing surveys, inter-

views, and workshops with 294 toplevel and mid-level managers from seven major multinational corporations in six industries, we identified the top five contemporary challenges of the matrix organizational form: (1) misaligned goals, (2) unclear roles and responsibilities, (3) ambiguous authority, (4) lack of a matrix guardian, and (5) silo-focused employees. We also provide managers with the best practices that will improve their matrix organizations.

Interest in matrix organizational structures peaked during the 1970s and 1980s.
Since that time, research and literature on the noticeably. matrix have dropped
Simultaneously, organizations continue to adopt the matrix as a viable alternative to deal with their increasingly complex
H UMAN RESOURCE PLANNING 28.1

39

Overview of the Matrix

EXHIBIT 1

Matrix Forms

Functional
Matrix
s

Employees remain full members of functional departments. s

Processes and procedures instituted to ensure cross functional collaboration. Balanced
Matrix

s

s

Employees move between functional departments and projects and respectively retain membership with those units during the same period.

Strives for equalized power and authority between organizing dimensions and equal pursuit of multiple business objectives.

s

Permanent project management overlay. s

Project managers have primary control over resources and project’s direction.

s

Project managers are responsible for defining what needs to be accomplished and when.

s

s

s

s

Classic model by which the matrix form is known.

s

Employees are officially members of two organizing dimensions.

s

Project

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