The case focuses on the need for an innovative form of organization design at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in light of its strategic goals and the external environmental factors that the Agency encounters. Six strategic goals and seven environmental factors are described as a partial contextual background for the redesign of NASA’s organization structure. The new structure revolved around four Mission Directorates¾Aeronautics Research, Science, Exploration Systems, and Space Operations¾and some headquarters support functions. The overall structural transformation could be described as “a large matrix between projects (managed by Exploration Systems) and functional areas (overseen by Space Operations, Science, and Aeronautics Research.)” The projects that are managed by the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate are supported by the functional areas that are managed by the Space Operations, Science, and Aeronautics Research Mission Directorates, utilizing a network of 10 NASA Centers and nine Mission Support Offices. NASA’s redesigned organizational structure essentially is a combination of a project matrix and a network (or lattice) design that incorporate process differentiation rather than functional differentiation, process champions in place of multilevel management pyramids, activity teams instead of specialized departments, curtailing hierarchy to enable empowerment, and multidirectional flow of information among process teams.

Questions

1.     Explain the context that NASA’s strategic goals provide for the design of its organization structure.
2.     Explain the context that NASA’s external environment provides for both its strategic goals and the design of its organization structure.
3.     What is a network (or lattice) organization, and how does it differ from more traditional organization structures?
4.     Why have network (or lattice) organizations come into existence?
5.     How does the network (or lattice) organization relate to NASA’s organization design of four Mission Directorates supported by various NASA Centers and Mission Support Offices?
6.     What advantages and disadvantages do you think arise from utilizing a network (or lattice) organization?