Organizational structures A story of evolution

The structure of an organization is essentially a vehicle through which strategy is implemented and, as the corporate strategy of the company changes to respond to markets and environments, so too must the organizational design of the company alter. 

As a result, most chemical corporations have, or are undergoing, restructuring or re-engineering . This latter term refers to a process which merges job functions, automates office procedures and makes more effective use of information. Chemical companies are also focusing on core 

The chemical industry in the 1990s has therefore been characterized by new organizational structures, not only to maximize opportunities within changing environments, but also to overcome fundamental structural problems that have developed during the last decade. 

Differentiation is the way that a company allocates people and resources to organizational tasks in order to maximize market and economic opportunities. The greater the level of skill and specialization, the higher the level of differentiation. 

Both differentiation and integration are regarded from the vertical and horizontal perspectives, whereby vertical simply means viewing how much variation occurs at different levels hierarchically in the organization. Horizontal refers to variation across the organization at the same hierarchical level (Wilson and Rosenfield ). 

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