This article describes the domain of organization and work design expertise, and describes the breadth of design challenges that HR must address to support different kinds of growth strategies. It then describes the competencies that HR needs to be a major player in this domain, as well as some of the approaches that can be used to build the foundation for this capability. This is an important focus for HR, because talent management is inextricably linked to organization and work systems design, in a way that each constrains the other (Bjorkman & Soderberg, 2006). Various growth scenarios present different challenges. Thus, gaining organization design expertise and leadership is no easy task, but it can make an appreciable difference in organization effectiveness. The challenge of growth faces most companies in today‘s highly interdependent, competitive global economy. HR is staring at an incredible opportunity to increase its impact on organizational performance and become a true strategic partner by contributing to the organization and work design challenges that enable growth. Growth agendas present a compelling need for this expanded HR contribution. Whether seeking organic growth in new markets, expanding through developing innovative products, services, and business models, or growing through acquisitions and partnerships, companies face the need to find and integrate new resources, realign existing ones, and reconfigure core design features to handle the increased size and complexity that accompanies rapid growth (Aston, 2002).

Growth has become more difficult to achieve and manage, and people are often the passive recipients of what is left after the ―experts‖ have come in to help with the restructuring, or the new design has been drawn on a napkin by line executives. HR then scurries to pick up the pieces and address the talent needs. Much of the time, this just doesn‘t work. HR must learn how to view the organization through the lens of organization design for growth, and contribute to and proactively influence it. Particularly in the era of current and predicted talent shortages, the talent strategies associated with growth must be robust. To truly carry out a role as a strategic business partner and to proactively manage talent, HR must push beyond its comfort zone and traditional functional domains to help fashion the changing contexts in which talent carries out its work (Beer, 1997). Providing leadership in designing the organization for growth is an appropriate role for HR because the organization‘s design provides the context in which the human resources of the firm functions. A poorly designed organization is like a colander: you can pour top level talent and hours of effort into it, but much of this capacity will leak through the holes and/or be used up trying to plug the holes. A well-designed organization uses its talent effectively.

people, reaching new talent pools, developing existing employees to provide required new knowledge and skills and addressing the needs for a rapid expansion of leadership capability (Beatty et. al., 2003). Assuming a leadership role in organization and work design is not a natural extension of the current roles of many HR departments. In fact, most HR functions have been bystanders over the past decades, as this critical component of organizational functioning and talent utilization has unfolded and new designs have been put in place to address the challenges of the quality revolution, information technology evolution, and unfolding of the global economy. The vast majority of HR professionals have not learned the essential knowledge to be players on this field of organization design. Yet, rapid change has made organizational agility essential, and demanding shareholders have made growth imperative (Andolsek & Stebe, 2005). 1- Work System Design: The design of effective work systems is a related and equally important focus, often overlooked by HR professionals. The organization‘s design provides the architecture to house effective work systems, but these work systems also have to be carefully architected (Farley Cheryl, 2005). Whereas organization design tends to take a top down, strategy driven perspective that focuses on alignment for business performance and control, work system design configures the work activities of the organization to deliver value to the customer. For example, in Procter and Gamble and other organizations that develop and sell products, the new product development process is carried out in an intentionally designed work system with individual and team roles and responsibilities, communication and information-sharing processes, and other lateral linkages across the units that play a role in the process (Klaila, 2000). 2- Organization Design: Jay Galbraith‘s ―star model‖ (see Figure 1) is one of the most influential organizational design frameworks available. It delineates the elements of design that should be configured to fit with each other in support of the strategy of the firm. Since it was originally presented it in 1973, Galbraith and others have tailored it and used it to guide redesign activities at hundreds of firms that have faced different challenges, such as achieving lateral flexibility (1994), global functioning (2000), and customer centricity/ solutions generation capability (2005). Several underlying messages of this approach are apparent: implement features that support its strategy, including chosen paths to growth, and it must change those features as the strategy changes. 2) An organization‘s design consists of far more than its structure. The boxes and lines, although the focus of a great deal of attention from executive management, are merely the skeleton upon which the critical activities of the firm must occur Growth and agility require flexibility in using all the elements of the star to support the new capabilities. In fact, t two of the points on the star, the rewards design and the design of people systems, are squarely in the arena of human resource responsibility, and they cannot be designed out of context of other design elements.

3- Growth Strategies, Design Challenges: Today, most organizations find that competitive conditions, technological capabilities, fashion and customer preferences change so dramatically and quickly that growth strategies involve a combination of organic and externally fueled growth. Growth strategies often are conceived in an uncertain environment, one that requires organizational flexibility and agility. Organizations must be ―built to change‖ (Brewster, et. al., 2006). To get a sense for the substantive and process expertise entailed in helping design an organization for growth, we will look at a number of ways in which organizations grow and their associated design challenges We will start with the foundational processes involved in business life-cycle growth and then address: growth that builds on the core

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growth by developing new capabilities; growth through innovation; and growth through mergers and acquisitions (Caldwell, 2003). Clearly these are not mutually exclusive; a company may use all of these approaches to grow. But, each offers its own design challenges and requires that the process of growth is built into the routines of the organization. Furthermore, the challenges and problems of talent acquisition, development, and management differ.

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Assistant Professor, Delhi University, India E-Mail – ritu.hr.singh@gmail.com