C Consultancy Company gives management consultancy to a range of organisations. It employs staff who have dissimilar industry backgrounds and who also offer dissimilar specialisms, for instance, in finance, marketing, IT, leadership, change management and logistics. The Company is currently organised around these specialist areas, with each specialism having a senior manager in charge. Though, for some of its project work it is necessary to adopt a matrix structure to meet the client's requirements.
Explain the advantages and disadvantages of a matrix project structure for C Consultancy Company's project work
The matrix structure could bring a number of benefits to consultancy project work. For example, it would bring together a wide range of expertise cutting across specialisms to work on a client project. This would also allow the company to offer a broader portfolio of consultancy interventions. From an employee perspective, it can facilitate the development of latest skills and adaptation to unexpected problems, broadening a specialist's outlook by working with others.
Whilst there are benefits, there can be drawbacks to the matrix project structure. One of the major problems is associated with the lack of clear responsibilities and potential clashes and tensions among the different priorities of the project tasks and the specialist area.