Organizational Structure

1. 13 Organizational Structure

2. Chapter Outline • What Is Organizational Structure? • Work Specialization • Departmentalization • Chain of Command • Span of Control • Centralization and Decentralization • Formalization • Common Organizational Designs • The Simple Structure • The Bureaucracy • The Matrix Structure

3. Chapter Outline • New Design Options • The Team Structure • The Virtual Organization • The Boundaryless Organization • The Leaner Organization: Organization Downsizing • Why Do Structures Differ? • Strategy • Organizational Size • Technology • Environment • Organizational Designs and Employee Behaviour

4. Learning Outcomes • What are the key elements of organizational structure? • What are some examples of traditional organizational designs? • What do newer organizational structures look like? • Why do organizational structures differ? • What are the behavioural implications of different organizational designs?

5. What Is Organizational Structure? • Organizational structure defines how job tasks are formally divided, grouped, and coordinated. • Six key elements when they design their organization’s structure: • work specialization • departmentalization • chain of command • span of control • centralization and decentralization • formalization

6. Exhibit 13-1 Six Key Questions for Organizational Structure

7. Work Specialization • The degree to which tasks in the organization are subdivided into separate jobs. • Also known as division of labour. • Benefits: • Efficiency-less time changing tasks, putting equipment away • Easier to train employees • Downsides: • Boredom, stress, low productivity, high turnover, increased absenteeism

8. Departmentalization • The basis on which jobs are grouped together. • Types: • Functional • Product • Geographic • Process • Customer

9. Chain of Command • Continuous line of authority that extends from upper organizational levels to the lowest level and clarifies who reports to whom. • Authority • Who has the right to give orders and expect them to be obeyed. • Unity of command • Subordinates should have only one superior. • Delegation • Assignment of authority to another person to carry out specific duties, allowing the employee to make some of the decisions.

10. Span of Control • Number of subordinates that can be efficiently and effectively managed. • Small span • Expensive, more managers. • Makes vertical communication more complicated. • Encourages tight supervision and discourages autonomy. • Larger span • Empowers workers. • Speeds up decisions.

11. Exhibit 13-2 Contrasting Spans of Control

12. Centralization and Decentralization • Centralization • The degree to which decision making is concentrated at a single point in the organization. • Decentralization • The degree to which decision making is distributed to lower level employees. • Makes it easier to address customer concerns quickly

13. Formalization • Degree to which jobs within the organization are standardized. • How standardized are the jobs? • High formalization means employees have little discretion. • Low formalization means employees have more freedom.

14. Simple Structure • Strengths: • Simplicity: fast, flexible, inexpensive. • Weakness: • Works best in small organizations. • Can slow down decision making in larger organization. • Can be risky as it relies on one person to make all decisions.

15. The Family Business • Family businesses represent 70 percent of Canadian employment and more than 30 percent of the gross domestic product. • Family businesses face both family/personal relations and business/management relations. • Family businesses must manage the conflicts found within families as well as the normal business issues that arise for any business.

16. Bureaucracy • Strengths: • Standardizes activities in an efficient manner. • Economies of scale, minimum duplication of personnel and equipment. • Lower quality employees are acceptable, which reduces employment costs. • Weaknesses: • Creates subunit conflicts. • There is an obsessive concern with following rules.

17. Matrix Organization • Breaks the unity of command principle. • Employees have two bosses. • Advantages: • Facilitates coordination when there are many activities. • More communication. • Efficient allocation of specialists. • Disadvantages: • Power struggles, confusion, stress.

18. Exhibit 13-4 Matrix Structure for a Faculty of Business Administration

19. New Design Options • Breaking the boundaries internally • Team Structure • Breaking the boundaries externally • Virtual Organization • Breaking the boundaries externally and internally • Boundaryless Organization

20. Exhibit 13-5 New-Style vs. Old-Style Organizations

21. Team Structure • Breaks down departmental barriers and decentralizes decision making to the level of the work team. • Team structures also require employees to be generalists as well as specialists.

22. Virtual Organization • A continually evolving network of independent companies—suppliers, customers, even competitors—linked together to share skills, costs, and access to one another’s markets. • Advantages: • Organizations can share costs and skills. • Provides access to global markets. • Increases market responsiveness. • Disadvantages: • Companies give up operational and strategic control to work together. • Managers need to be more flexible, acquire new skills.

23. Exhibit 13-6 A Virtual Organization

24. The Boundaryless Organization • An organization that seeks to eliminate the chain of command, have limitless spans of control, and replaces departments with empowered teams.

25. The Leaner Organization: Organization Downsizing • Downsizing • A systematic effort to make an organization leaner by selling off business units, closing locations, or reducing staff. • It has been very controversial because of its potential negative impacts on employees. • Advantages: • Huge reduction in wage costs • Can see positive effects on stock prices after the announcement • Disadvantages: • Employee attitudes, sickness absences, lower concentration on the job, and lower creativity • Can lead to more voluntary turnover

26. Effective Strategies for Downsizing • Investment • Communication • Participation • Assistance

27. Why Do Structures Differ? • Two extreme models of organizational design • Mechanistic model • highly standardized processes for work • high formalization • more managerial hierarchy. • Organic model • flat • fewer formal procedures for making decisions • multiple decision makers • favours flexible practices.

28. Exhibit 13-7 Mechanistic vs. Organic Models

29. Major Causes of an Organization’s Structure • Strategy • Innovation, cost minimization, and imitation. • Organizational Size • An organization’s size significantly affects its structure. • The relationship isn’t linear; rather, size affects structure at a decreasing rate.

30. Three Strategy Dimensions • Innovation • Cost-Minimization • Imitation

31. Exhibit 13-8 The Strategy-Structure Relationship

32. Major Causes of an Organization’s Structure • Technology • Every organization has at least one technology for converting financial, human, and physical resources into products or services. • The common theme that differentiates technologies is their degree of routineness. • Environment • Composed of forces outside the organization and the uncertainty associated with them.

33. Key Dimensions of an Organization’s Environment • Capacity • Degree to which environment can support growth. • Volatility • Degree of instability in an environment. • Complexity • Degree of heterogeneity and concentration in environment.

34. Exhibit 13-9 Three-Dimensional Model of the Environment

35. Organizational Designs and Employee Behaviour • To maximize employee performance and satisfaction, managers must take into account individual differences, such as experience, personality, and the work task, as well as culture. • People are attracted to, are selected by, and stay with organizations that suit their personal characteristics. • Those who prefer predictability are likely to seek out and take employment in mechanistic structures • Those who want autonomy are more likely to end up in an organic structure.

36. Global Implications • Culture and Organizational Structure • Culture and Employee Structure Preferences • Culture and the Boundaryless Organization

37. Summary and Implications • What are the key elements of organizational structure? • There are six key elements that managers need to address when they design their organization’s structure: work specialization, departmentalization, chain of command, span of control, centralization and decentralization, and formalization. • What are some examples of traditional organizational designs? • Some of the more common organizational designs found in use are the simple structure, the bureaucracy, and the matrix structure.

38. Summary and Implications • What do newer organizational structures look like? • The new structural options for organizations involve breaking down the boundaries in some fashion, either internally, externally, or a combination of the two. • Why do organizational structures differ? • Strategy, organizational size, technology, and environment determine the type of structure. • What are the behavioural implications of different organizational designs? • To maximize employee performance and satisfaction, managers must take individual differences, such as experience, personality, and the work task, into account. Culture should factor in, too.

39. OB at Work: For Review • Why isn’t work specialization an unending source of increased productivity? • What are the different forms of departmentalization? • All things being equal, which is more efficient, a wide or narrow span of control? Why? • How does a family business differ from other organizational structures? • What is a matrix structure? When would management use it?

40. OB at Work: For Review • Contrast the virtual organization with the boundaryless organization. • What type of structure works best with an innovation strategy? A cost-minimization strategy? An imitation strategy? • Summarize the size-structure relationship. • Define and give an example of what is meant by the term technology. • Summarize the environment-structure relationship.

41. OB at Work: For Critical Thinking 1. How is the typical large corporation of today organized, in contrast with how that same organization was probably organized in the 1960s? 2. Do you think most employees prefer high formalization? Support your position. 3. If you were an employee in a matrix structure, what pluses do you think the structure would provide? What about minuses?

42. OB at Work: For Critical Thinking 4. What could management do to make a bureaucracy more like a boundaryless organization? 5. What behavioural predictions would you make about people who worked in a “pure” boundaryless organization (if such a structure were ever to exist)?

43. Breakout Group Exercises • Form small groups to discuss the following: 1. Describe the structure of an organization in which you worked. Was the structure appropriate for the tasks being done? 2. Have you ever worked in an organization with a structure that seemed inappropriate to the task? What would have improved the structure? 3. You are considering opening up a coffee bar with several of your friends. What kind of structure might you use? After the coffee bar becomes successful, you decide that expanding the number of branches might be a good idea. What changes to the structure might you make?

44. Words-in-Sentences Company • Raw materials • Letters • Product • Words • Packaging • Sentences (words go out the door in sentences rather than boxes) • Production run • All sentences created during a ten minute period. No word repeated in any sentence.

45. Rules to Pass Quality Control • A letter may appear only as often in a manufactured word as it appears in the raw material phrase; for example, “organizational behaviour is fun” has one L and one E. Thus “steal” is legitimate, but not “teller”. It has too many l’s and e’s. • Raw material letters can be used again in different manufactured words. • A manufactured word may be used only once during a production run; once a word (e.g., “the”) is used in a sentence, it is out of stock for the rest of the production run. No other sentence may use the word “the”. • A new word may not be made by adding “s” to form the plural of an already used manufactured word. • Sentences must make grammatical and logical sense. • All words must be in the English language. • Names and places are acceptable. • Slang is not acceptable. • Writing must be legible. Any illegible sentence will be disqualified. • Only sentences that have a minimum of three words and a maximum of six words will be considered.

46. Raw Materials • Outside, the wind teased the palm fronds into rattling conspiracies.

47. Raw Materials • The place had bevelled windowpanes, pecan paneling and traditional furniture in mahogany.

48. Raw Materials • A Connecticut Yankee said “parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme.”

49. Raw Materials • King Arthur’s court feared the wrath of Khan.

50. Learning Points • What structure did you use at first? • What structure evolved? • How did the task affect structure?