Question 5 – Evaluate Van Hopen’s idea of increasing the flexibility with which the different parts of the company work with each other.

Try and guide the class towards two alternative approaches to organizing the business:

(a) Promote flexibility between the two main processes.

(b) Separate the two main processes so that each can focus on its own requirements.

This is a fundamental decision for Marco Van Hopen. The idea of treating the organization as one large flexible process that can perform any of the business’s services is fine when the company is small (indeed it is the characteristic of most small companies). Yet, when the company grows there is increasingly a need to segment the organization to match the segmentation of the markets being served. In other words, move towards option

(b) by focusing each process on what it should be good at.