Post #4: Organizational Structure

Choosing the structure of an organization is an important step in the team’s success and requires plenty of consideration beforehand. The effects of the decision include, but are not limited to, how well the team will be able communicate, how the team makes decisions, and what responsibilities each team member will have. That being said, the structure can make or break a team. To name a few ways that structure impacts results, communication may be easy or broken, decision makers may have too much control or not enough, and members may find themselves overloaded with things to accomplish or they may find themselves under-worked.

As far as movie teams go, few are as currently relevant (and profitable) as “The Avengers.” For those of you who don’t know, The Avengers that I would like to discuss are the movie adaptations of a team of Marvel comic book superheroes. Lately, there have been two Avengers films, but having not yet seen the second, I will not be talking about that one here.

Most members of this team have previously appeared as individual crime fighters in their own movies. They were presented mostly as solitary figures; few of these characters were experienced in teamwork and perhaps even fewer would accept help even when it was offered. Their separate storylines each began with them being extremely stubborn about not accepting help and ended with them being mostly stubborn about not accepting help.

The plot of the movie is all about organizing a team. As I said, none of these members were open to teamwork previously, but when danger shows its face, they’re forced into cooperation regardless of their strong objections. They tended to see each other as inferior relative to themselves, and each of them also believed they knew the right course of action. The first hour or so of the film involves them fighting each other and getting in each other’s way despite all having the same general goals: justice and the safety of mankind.

There is a “boss” in the group: Samuel L. Jackson’s character is responsible for bringing the team together in the first place. He runs the defense organization known as “S.H.I.E.L.D.,” but deciding he needed something more than that, he creates this additional division of superheroes. However, his control over these superheroes is minimal at best despite how he’d prefer it to function. This division is very loosely connected to the rest of the S.H.I.E.L.D. organization, and communication is very minimal across that structural gap.

The superhero organization is most akin to Mintzberg’s adhocracy which is described as “a loose, flexible, self-renewing organic form tied together mostly through lateral means” (Bolman and Deal 82). The laterally-organized team very loosely follows procedures or policies, and their organization was created specifically to defeat the film’s antagonist. There’s also plenty of the ambiguity and incoherence that Mintzberg describes this structure with. Upon completion of the mission, the team separates.

The group also resembles the All-Channel Network from “Reframing Organizations,” chapter five. The team doesn’t exhibit much hierarchy. The boss exists but more of a guide than somebody in control. The group members all communicate directly and decisions are made on consensus. It’s also arguably similar to a basketball team since the organization’s success results from mutual understanding and cohesiveness.

The team can also be related to Katzenbach and Smith’s features of high-performance teams. I’ll go down the list to cover them all. The team’s purpose is shaped by the demand of defending the world from the bad guy’s plot for world-domination. Their only real performance goal would be to defeat the antagonist and save as many lives as possible. The team is of nine people if you include support characters and the “boss,” so it’s a manageable size. All the members are diverse and have different skills which all mesh together nicely. A major part of the story involves the characters developing commitment to working relationships. Finally, they all think of themselves as collectively accountable. They blame each other often early on, but gaining this accountability is part of the plot’s progression (108).

Many of the successful qualities in the “Reframing Organizations” are depicted in this team. I’d also like to point out how relevant it is that the team is highly unsuccessful for most of the movie. They all have their own incentives and ways of doing things. They fail to cooperate in almost everything they do, and they are highly resistant to structure. This depicts some realism in the film that successful teams don’t happen immediately. There will be friction and resistance. Sacrifices and compromises may be slow to take place. It takes time to create efficiency in the system, and the perfectly efficient system doesn’t exist.

Bolman, Lee, and Terrence Deal. Reframing Organizations: Fifth Edition. Jossey-Bass, 2013. Print.