May 25, 2013

The 7S Model

The Hard S’s
Strategy	Actions a company plans in response to or anticipation of changes in its external environment.
Structure	Basis for specialization and co-ordination influenced primarily by strategy and by organization size and diversity.
Systems	Formal and informal procedures that support the strategy and structure. Systems are more powerful than they are given credit)
The Soft S’s
Style / Culture	The culture of the organization, consisting of two components: Organizational Culture: the dominant values and beliefs, and norms, which develop over time and become relatively enduring features of organizational life. Management Style: more a matter of what managers do than what they say; How do a company’s managers spend their time? What are they focusing attention on? Symbolism – the creation and maintenance (or sometimes deconstruction) of meaning is a fundamental responsibility of managers.
Staff	The people/human resource management – processes used to develop managers, socialization processes, ways of shaping basic values of management cadre, ways of introducing young recruits to the company, ways of helping to manage the careers of employees
Skills	The distinctive competences – what the company does best, ways of expanding or shifting competences
Shared Values /Superordinate Goals	Guiding concepts, fundamental ideas around which a business is built –must be simple, usually stated at abstract level, have great meaning inside the organization even though outsiders may not see or understand them.

cf.: Article Summary from TheManager.org

cf.:The Information Systems Triangle