Final answer:
A Center of Excellence (COE) is an organizational structure focusing on harnessing staff expertise to benefit an organization's strategy, part of a shift towards team-based, flatter structures that respond adaptively to modern business challenges.
Step-by-step explanation:
The question pertains to an organizational structure that uses staff expertise in specific areas to enhance the strategic performance of an organization. This structure is known as a Center of Excellence (COE). COEs are designed to pool knowledge and skills to provide leadership, best practices, research, support, and/or training for a focus area. The goal is to harness internal expertise and share it across the organization to achieve better outcomes and to foster innovation and efficiency.
There is a growing trend of companies moving away from traditional hierarchical structures towards more flat organisational systems, emphasizing teamwork and core competencies. Adopting a team-based approach, where diverse sets of skills are combined to work toward common goals, can be advantageous. Nonetheless, as modern workplaces experience rapid changes due to technology, economic shifts, and globalization, it is vital to implement structures like COEs that can respond flexibly and leverage collective knowledge effectively.