I work at the company which manufactures dental prosthetics. I consider this organization as a functional based one since this organization structure is a hierarchical organization structure wherein people are grouped as per their area of specialization. Each department have its own manager who will be responsible for the performance of his team structure. This helps the organization control the quality and uniformity of performance. The advantages of this organization are that employees are grouped by their knowledge which helps to achieve better performance and since employees are very skilled, efficiency is gained because they are experienced in the same work.

I work in an organization that is both Functional and a Matrix organization. We essentially use project managers within departments that lead the projects with a staff beneath them. Most of the project managers pertain to Engineering. There is definitely silos that form behind the departments in which it becomes "tribal" knowledge since some information is only known within the departments and by certain people. The matrix characteristics of the company come from the project managers hand picking people from functional groups to form part of the project team. Most of the project managers pertain to engineering type projects.

I would like to work for matrix organization because matrix management is ideal for sharing talents and skills across departmental boundaries. One of the most common scenarios for matrix management is when a group of individuals from all different functions organizes under a project manager to create something new and unique.The ability to draw upon diverse skill sets from multiple disciplines strengthens the overall project team. Matrix approaches to projects and other initiatives are typically less expensive than establishing dedicated project teams, and the diversity of the team members makes them superior to many purely functional teams.Depending upon the power of the manager leading the cross functional initiative there are three types: soft matrix, moderate matrix and hard matrix styles of teams.The hard matrix format is similar to a dedicated team, where the manager and team members have near autonomy over their initiative. A soft form of matrix typically means that the initiative manager is dependent upon the various functional managers of the team participants for decision-making authority.

I currently work in a functional organization, which to my understanding is the most traditional form of business organization. There are functional managers of each department, such as Manufacturing, Quality, Purchasing, and R&D. Within these, there are individual staff members who are recruited for the current projects being completed. I would prefer to work in a Matrix Organization, as this is more sensible and more efficient. In a field as complex as medical device development, it is necessary to have an organizational set up that lends itself to more cohesive project and functional departments.

In my current position, I believe it is mostly a functional-based organizational structure with minor aspects of matrix organizational structure. For the most part, there are supervisors (functional managers) of different departments. My direct supervisor has a lot of power when dictating what needs to get done and the timetable it needs to get done in. In this way, individual responsibilities are very clear cut and individual staff is made accountable for their actions/ work progress. We directly report to our supervisor which eliminates confusion, inefficiencies, and wasted time. In addition my projects are mainly done within departments and then combined after each of the individual components is completed. It is important to note, however, there are a special group of ‘floating’ support engineers that drift among the functional groups and assist with general issues and report inconsistencies to upper management. In this way, my organization is unique to most other responses I have read above.

A large number of companies nowadays use matrix-style organizational structures. Organizational structure has a huge impact on the performance of a company, so choosing this style is not a matter of convenience, but rather the fact that matrix organizations have been shown many times to be effective. Although I have not ever been a corporate employee, it stands to reason that most companies will choose methods that have been tested and proven to work, which is why the matrix structure is so popular.

Personally, however, I would prefer to work in a functional organization. This is largely because I would rather have a singular boss, and use my own initiative to work with and learn from employees of different teams if need be. Of course, this is purely a matter of personal preference- different personalities will doubtlessly prefer certain organizational structures. Because, as mentioned previously, many functional managers do not have technical expertise in the area the team is working in, a number of people (including possibly myself in the future) may well dislike this structure.

My workplace consists of a matrix organization in which resources are split based on project priorities. Project managers are able to share the skills of employees across projects and departments. Project managers in the research and development team lead projects within specialized departments with the help of junior scientists and researchers. I feel like this type of organization structure brings equal attention to all the skill levels available in the company through different employees. It provides a wider range of resources available compared to functional and project based organization. Information flow from project to project is much smoother preventing mistakes from being repeated.

I believe my organization is consider to be Matrix Organization, but also overlaps with the functional organization. We have a CEO, followed by Group President, who oversees multiple medical divisions including Orthopedic, Trauma & Extremities, and Spine. Each individual medical division has a functional head, president. We have multiple projects based on many different product portfolios. Each project is supported by project managers, but has very limited power. In my current position, I feel like I have two bosses, project manager who oversees a daily activities and my direct reporting manager, who oversees all the tasks. Furthermore, I also notice the project manager participating in hiring resources with the divisional business partners. This may sometimes cause project delay if the business head and the project leaders are not on the same page.

My current position is in a functional organization where each department team has a functional manager to whom other team members report to. I think this style work well for us as each department needs to concentrate their focus on certain activities and having functional managers to report to makes it easier for a team to work together and avoids wasting time with some members being out of sync or not having work to do. This style also helps keep projects on schedule and running smoothly in my opinion as functional managers often collaborate to continually update what is required of their team.

I would would like to work in Matrix Organization because of its flexibility to drawing employees from different functional disciplines for assignment to a team without removing them from their respective positions. It is good in terms of large and long time projects management. Employees in a matrix organization report on day-to-day performance to the project or product manager whose authority flows sideways across departmental boundaries.
Matrix organization is also have good management of resources, no department or project silos and knowledge transfers well from project to project and between departments.

I work for a company that follows a functional organization. Functional heads operate with a large degree of power governing day to day operations as well as project development. Groups are also organized around projects with little cross talk between functional groups. It works well for the large company that I work for as it allows for dedicated work and organization. It does however limit cross-training and development of other skill sets.

I prefer to work in a matrix organization, instead of choosing between lining up staff along functional, geographic or product lines, management has both. Staffers report to a functional manager who can help with skills and help prioritize and review work, and to a product line manager who sets direction on product offerings by the company. This structure has some advantages:

Resources can be used efficiently, since experts and equipment can be shared across projects.
Products and projects are formally coordinated across functional departments.
Information flows both across and up through the organization.
Employees are in contact with many people, which helps with sharing of information and can speed the decision process.

In case of these advantages, I choose to work in a matrix organization.

I find that at my job, we are a mixture of functional and project-based organization. We have different departments ranging from microbiology, HCM, different engineers, manufacturing, and marketing. All the teams work with each other within the department but some people in different departments will also work together for certain projects. There are definitely silos that are formed but a lot of the decisions made are together as a team. I believe it is definitely easy to coordinate within the department as well. With a big company and so many people working within each department, this organization mixture works well. There’s room to expand and work on different projects but also having the same responsibilities required for a functional organization. Project-based organizations also give you room to network and know other people.

I work in more of a Project-based Organization. Every hospital is considered a separate account and they run as such. If another account needs help, I can go to that account to lend my expertise for a little before coming back to my original account. We are departmentalized in the hospital we are stationed at as the "Biomedical Engineering/Clinical Engineering/Biomed" Department. Being a third party company, this makes everyone in the hospital my customer. This can lead to some Matrix organization issues at times.

The company that I currently work at would be considered a project-based organization considering that we conduct research on cell therapy-based products and techniques. For example the projects that we conduct focus on the processing and transplantation of stem cells, bone marrow aspirate, and white blood cells (WBCs) for immunotherapy. Although all projects share the similarity of being cell-based, they all have different end goals in treating their designated conditions. The advantages and disadvantages of a project-based organization are accurately reflected in lecture, for example, the initial start of a project can be considered to be the most frenzied stage in that team members must adjust and become acquainted with their roles and each other. This has lead to disagreements between members and management, most commonly among those who are asked to step outside of their comfort zone and undertake an unfamiliar role after having performed a specific role on a consistent basis.

One of the main disadvantages of a project-based organization, as mentioned again in lecture, is that duplicate resources exist. If a team member abruptly leaves a project, then the company must act fast to replace that member so that an upcoming role/process can be fulfilled. For example, if a stem cell project is understaffed and an outside individual specializes in both stem cells and maintenance, then the individual will be tasked into the project despite the team already having multiple members that do maintenance. This in turn deprives other projects of having equipment maintenance while one project has a surplus.

Project-based organizations are known for not having "silos" of department information, however there is limited knowledge shared between project teams. Why might communication between departments be facilitated in this type of organization, but not between project groups. Can competition between project teams be considered "human error". If so, how can it be addressed?