ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE, DESIGN, AND CHANGE

Organizational structure determines how work, authority, information, accountability, and interdependence are arranged; organizational design determines whether those arrangements remain appropriate as enterprise commitments and conditions change. This chapter develops a critical, integrative treatment of structure and organizational change across firms, cooperatives, public institutions, and digitally mediated networks. It compares contingency theory, information-processing approaches, sociotechnical systems, organizational ecology, institutional theory, and organizational ambidexterity, identifying their explanatory mechanisms, competing predictions, and empirical limitations. The analysis develops twelve connected domains, from specialization, structural configurations, coordination, culture, and growth to diagnostic methods, change programmes, distributed work, innovation, and design justice. A transparent secondary-source synthesis draws on original scholarship, Rwanda's Integrated Business Enterprise Survey 2024, East African Community institutional arrangements, and peer-reviewed international hybrid-work evidence. Original decision-support instruments include a structure-selection decision tree, a structural trade-off matrix, a cross-functional workflow diagnostic, a governance and escalation design, and reproducible redesign economics. A hypothetical Kigali service enterprise and a documented regional institution demonstrate why formal reporting lines are insufficient without decision rights, resources, credible information, and equitable working practices. The chapter argues that effective structure is a provisional, revisable arrangement for handling essential interdependencies at acceptable coordination, human, and legitimacy costs. This proposition is conceptual, not a claim of newly established causal effects.