Fat Man Little Boy
“Fat Man and Little Boy” starring Paul Newman
By:
Lara Brown
Misty Corbett
Joanne W. Hix
Markette Plummer
Stacee Sloan
Management 5120 Organizational Design and Change
Professor Warren Watson
10/25/09
1. Draw the organizational design for how Groves and Oppenheimer set up the Project. Describe how would you redesign or modify their organization to be more effective. Show this in a drawing. Be sure to describe how your modification is different from the original organization. Also, describe the basic design characteristics (key business processes, key supporting processes, deliberations, integration mechanisms, and interdependencies) in the atom bomb project, as it existed in the film, and any changes in these factors in your modification. In the movie, there was a merger of two very different types of teams. As these teams grew, management needed to adapt in order to control and coordinate key business processes in order to successfully complete the project. From the very beginning, there was a lack of support functions between General Groves and Oppenheimer. Neither one of these leaders initiated control of relations. General Groves engages Oppenheimer, telling him that he wants to bring all the men together centrally and have a ringleader. Based on this conversation and our observations, it would appear that the organizational design that was initially implemented for the Manhattan Project is a centralized, mechanistic structure. General Groves is the decision making authority, controlling all of the organization’s activities including all communications, procedures, and correspondence up and down the chain of command. Groves also limits the interaction between the groups, stating that he does not want the engineers talking to the theorists, and does not want the theorists talking to the manufacturing teams.
[pic] Key things that General Groves and Oppenheimer did to integrate two very diverse organizational types was to
By:
Lara Brown
Misty Corbett
Joanne W. Hix
Markette Plummer
Stacee Sloan
Management 5120 Organizational Design and Change
Professor Warren Watson
10/25/09
1. Draw the organizational design for how Groves and Oppenheimer set up the Project. Describe how would you redesign or modify their organization to be more effective. Show this in a drawing. Be sure to describe how your modification is different from the original organization. Also, describe the basic design characteristics (key business processes, key supporting processes, deliberations, integration mechanisms, and interdependencies) in the atom bomb project, as it existed in the film, and any changes in these factors in your modification. In the movie, there was a merger of two very different types of teams. As these teams grew, management needed to adapt in order to control and coordinate key business processes in order to successfully complete the project. From the very beginning, there was a lack of support functions between General Groves and Oppenheimer. Neither one of these leaders initiated control of relations. General Groves engages Oppenheimer, telling him that he wants to bring all the men together centrally and have a ringleader. Based on this conversation and our observations, it would appear that the organizational design that was initially implemented for the Manhattan Project is a centralized, mechanistic structure. General Groves is the decision making authority, controlling all of the organization’s activities including all communications, procedures, and correspondence up and down the chain of command. Groves also limits the interaction between the groups, stating that he does not want the engineers talking to the theorists, and does not want the theorists talking to the manufacturing teams.
[pic] Key things that General Groves and Oppenheimer did to integrate two very diverse organizational types was to