Objective
– To Share my learnings on Organizational Structure
Organizational
Structure is all about designed tasks, lines of authority, duties and
supervision in achieving organizational objectives. Organizational structure is
formed by how the organization is designed around these activities and lines of
authority so there can be various types of organizational structures according
to their needs. There are six major elements of organizational structure or
design.
Work Specialization
It means that your labour is specialized in
one task and they do that repeatedly and becomes expert of it. So organizations
have to decide what type of work force is required to perform the tasks. Work
specialization improves the efficiency and eventually employee productivity.
But there is also dark side of being work specialized, it creates monotonous and
employees get bored of repeating the same task gain and again. In contemporary
environment and organizational structure, managers keeping assigning variety of
tasks to employees and keep shifting their jobs to overcome the problems.
Departmentalization
Similar sort of activities are group and
performed under particular departments. Now it is to be decided that what types
of activities organization is involved in, and according to that departments
are created. There are various factors on the basis of which organizations may
create their departments in their organizational structure.
They may create Functional departments like
marketing, finance, HR, IT etc. One more type of departmentalization can be based on types of customers, like end consumers, business customers. Further Geography based departmentalization
includes creating departments according to different geographic regions the
business is operated. Then there is also product
departmentalization based on various product lines. Process departmentalization is based on different processes of
business for instance in textile sector ginning, weaving, dying, printing etc.
Chain of Command
Chain of command describes the line of
authority in the organization and answers the question that who reports to
whom? This element of organizational structure define lines of authority and
represents that how much authority is delegated down the line. Upper management
empowers employees so they can take decisions. It helps employees identifying
that whom they are answerable and from where orders would come.
Span of Control
Span of control defines that how many
employees are working under one manager. It also identifies the levels of
management in organizational structure. Based on the number of employees under
one managers, span of control can be termed as narrow or wider. In narrow span
of control manager has less number of employees to supervise. It brings closer
supervision but increases the cost since company has to hire number of managers
with high salaries. Whereas in wider span of control, there are large number of
employees under one manager, in this case efficiency is improved and cost is
reduced. Wider span of control is best suitable im situation when managers are
experienced and skilled, workers are skilled too and organization is not
geographically dispersed.
Centralization/Decentralization
These elements of organizational design
decides on how much decision making authority is to be delegated down the line
into the hierarchy. Centralization refers to that decision making is done at
the higher levels of organization. In such organizational structure, top
management considers it wiser to be decision maker rather authorizing employees
to do this. Decentralization is opposite of it as it allows giving authority to
the employees to make decisions in different scenarios. This helps workers be
more efficient and respond to queries and problems immediately.
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