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It requires managers who know the business in general, who have good interpersonal skills, and who can deal with the ambiguities of responsibility and authority Inherent in the matrix system. Training In such skills as planning procedures, the kinds of Interpersonal skills necessary for the matrix, and the kind of analysis and orderly presentation of ideas essential to planning within a group Is most Impor-tant for supporting the matrix approach. Moreover, management development and human resource planning are even more necessary In the volatile environment of the matrix than In the traditional organizations.

Mixed Structure

In an attempt to manage the g r o w t h of diverse operations, or because attempts to implement a m a t r i x structure have been unsuccessful, some firms have opted for w h a t can only be described as a mixed f o r m . In an early survey conducted by Dovvling " o n this issue, more than one - third (35 per cent) of respondents indicated that they had mixed forms, and around 18 per cent had product or m a t r i x structures. Galbraith and Kazanjian''* also identify mixed structures that seem to have emerged in response to global pressures and trade-offs:

For example, organizations that pursued area structures kept these geographical profit centers, but added worldwide product managers. Colgate-Palmolive has always had strong country managers. But, as they doubled the funding for product research, and as Colgate Dental Cream became a uni-versal product, product managers were added at the corporate office to direct the R&D funding and coordinate marketing programs worldwide. Similarly the product-divisionalized firms have been

64 CHAPTER 3 THE ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXT

reintroducing the international division. At Motorola, the product groups had worldwide responsibility for their product lines. As they compete with the Japanese In Japan, an international group has been Introduced to help coordinate across product lines.

A l t h o u g h all structural forms that result f r o m the evolutionary development of international business are complex and difficult to manage effectively, given an M N E ' s developing capabil-ities and experience at each new stage, mixed structures appear even more complex and harder to explain and implement, as well as control . Thus, as our discussion of the m a t r i x structure emphasized, it is important that all employees understand the mixed f r a m e w o r k and that attention is also given to supporting mechanisms, such as corporate identity, interperso-" nal relationships, management attitudes and H R systems, particularly p r o m o t i o n and r e w a r d policies.

Beyond the matrix

Early studies of headquarter-subsidiary relationships tended to stress resources, people and i n f o r m a t i o n flows f r o m headquarters to subsidiary, examining these relationships mainly in the context of control and c o o r d i n a t i o n . H o w e v e r , in the large, mature, m u l t i n a t i o n a l , these flows are multidirectional: f r o m headquarters to subsidiary; f r o m subsidiary to subsidiary; and between subsidiaries. The result can be a complex n e t w o r k of inter-related activities and relationships and the m u l t i n a t i o n a l management literature identifies three descriptions of organizational structures - the heterarchy, the transnational and the n e t w o r k f i r m . While they have been given different terms, each f o r m recognizes that, at this stage of international - ization, the concept of a superior structure that neatly fits the corporate strategy becomes inappropriate . The proponents of these forms are in agreement that multinationals at this