The Practice of Organizational Restructuring: From Design to Reality

Organizational restructurings are commonplace, put in place by many senior management teams as part of a wider strategic change to create alignment between ways of working and a new strategic intent. Yet we know little about how these restructurings are implemented and delivered by the middle managers often charged with making the senior manager blueprints a reality. This paper argues that for us to appreciate the way restructuring works in practice, we need to recognise that any shift in organisational form requires an accompanying cognitive orientation. The paper discusses the implications this raises for practice.