组织生命周期Organizational Life Cycle

组织生命周期Organizational Life Cycle

The organizational life cycle describes how organizations grow, develop, and eventually decline. It is the organizational equivalent of the

product life cycle in marketing 它相当于营销中的产品生命周期。

Instead of considering stages of development 发展阶段 in terms of structure, the organizational life cycle place the primary emphasis on the dominant issue facing the corporation, and the organizational structure is only a second concern.

The stages of the organizational life cycle are Stage I —Birth, Stage II —Growth, Stage III —Maturity, Stage IV —Decline, and Stage V —Death The below table summarized the impact of these stages on corporate strategy and structure:

Note that the first three stages are similar to the three commonly accepted stages of corporate development. The only significant difference is the addition of decline and death stages to complete the cycle. Even though a company’s strategy may still be sound, its aging structure, culture, and processes may be such that they prevent the strategy from being executed properly; thus the company moves into decline. Movement from growth to maturity to decline and finally to death is not inevitable. A revival phase may occur sometime during the maturity or decline stages. Managerial and product innovations can extend the corporation’s life cycle. This often occurs during the implementation of a turnaround strategy. Unless a company is able to resolve the critical issues facing it in the decline stage, it is likely to move into Stage V: corporate death.

Few corporations move through these five stages in sequence. Some corporations, for example, might never move past Stage II. Others, like General Motors, might go directly from Stage I to Stage III.

The key is for management to be able to identify when the firm is changing stages and to make the appropriate strategic and structural adjustments to maintain or even improve corporate performance. 管理的关键是明确公司何时发生阶段变化，以及何时做出适当的战略和结构调整，从而维持、甚至提高公司的业绩。