Multi-Manager Hierarchy for Complex Enterprise Reporting
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Solution Overview
Problem
Complex organizational structures in modern enterprises make it difficult to accurately represent and visualize employees' positions and operational responsibilities, especially when employees report to multiple managers, leading to unstable hierarchies and challenges in performance analysis.
Innovation Solution
A computer-implemented method and system that defines a hierarchical structure for organizational responsibilities, allowing multiple operational managers to report to different managers for each responsibility, enabling accurate representation and reporting of performance data without the need for fictitious organizations.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If a traditional one-to-one reporting structure is used, then the hierarchy is simple and stable, but it cannot represent complex organizational structures where employees report to multiple managers
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the organizational hierarchy into multiple independent reporting lines, allowing an employee to have separate reporting relationships with different managers for different responsibilities. This is achieved by creating a many-to-many mapping between employees and managers, where each employee-manager relationship is treated as a distinct segment rather than requiring a single unified hierarchy.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an additional dimension to the traditional hierarchy by allowing employees to report to multiple managers simultaneously across different dimensions or levels. Instead of a single vertical reporting line, the system creates a multi-dimensional structure where reporting relationships can vary by function, department, or project type.
2Adaptability or versatility
If multiple reporting lines are allowed, then complex organizational structures can be represented, but the hierarchy becomes unstable and difficult to visualize
Solution Approach 1:
The patent creates a universal reporting framework that can accommodate multiple reporting relationships through a standardized many-to-many mapping structure. This universal approach allows the same structural pattern to handle various complex scenarios (multiple managers, shared responsibilities, cross-functional reporting) without requiring different hierarchy models for each case, thereby maintaining stability.
Solution Approach 2:
The system creates virtual or logical copies of reporting relationships rather than physical organizational changes. By representing multiple reporting lines as data mappings rather than structural duplications, the system maintains a single stable hierarchy while allowing employees to have multiple operational managers through informational copies of their roles and responsibilities.
3Loss of information
If department-based reporting is used, then performance can be aggregated by organization, but the association between manager and department is not stored in the system
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges the employee reporting structure with the departmental organization structure by creating a unified many-to-many mapping system. This integration allows the system to simultaneously track which employees report to which managers and which departments those employees belong to, eliminating the need for separate department-based reporting mechanisms and preserving manager-department associations directly in the data model.
Data Source
AI summary
A method of organizing, storing and representing a hierarchy of human resource information and organizational responsibilities of an enterprise provides a human resource user the ability to define and view an organizational chart for a plurality of organizations within a company or enterprise. The method may be used to define a top node and a plurality of other nodes that then can have responsibilities and managers assigned to each node in the hierarchy. Each other manager can have multiple responsibilities, multiple managers or multiple delegations. A graphical user interface may allow users to select and manipulate different combinations of managers and responsibilities to view a hierarchy in an employee centric manner, using menus and drill down charts.