On Thursday, Microsoft said it would dissolve its eight product divisions in favor of four new ones arranged around broader themes, a change meant to encourage greater collaboration as competitors like Apple and Google outflank it in the mobile and Internet markets. Steven Ballmer, the longtime chief executive, will shuffle the responsibilities of nearly every senior member of his executive bench as a result.

“To execute, we’ve got to move from multiple Microsofts to one Microsoft,” Ballmer said.

It remains to be seen whether more cohesive teamwork, if that is what results from all the movement, will offer the spark that has been missing from so many of Microsoft’s products in recent years.

The company has been widely faulted for being late with compelling products in two lucrative categories, smartphones and tablets. Its Bing search engine is a distant second to Google and loses billions of dollars a year for Microsoft.

Rivalries among the company’s divisions have built up over time, sometimes resulting in needless duplication of efforts.

Product development groups will sometimes go to great lengths to avoid this, creating software like email programs that duplicate the functions of other products elsewhere at Microsoft.

While its old divisions all had their own finance and marketing organizations, Microsoft is now centralizing those functions. The new divisions are meant to effectively force its groups to work more closely together to create complete products consisting of hardware, software and services.

Some of the company’s organizational changes echo those made recently by Apple and Google. But Microsoft’s changes are far more sweeping and involve many more people.

“This is, in my mind, the biggest thing we’ve ever done,” said Lisa Brummel, a 24-year Microsoft veteran who leads its human resources department.