Organizational Structure, Essay Example

The organizational structure that should be adopted by companies is one that will maximize the firm’s performance by attaining balance between the technical and the social requirements. Since an organization entails coordination of activities amongst different stakeholders of the company, there is the need to develop powerful communication network and make sure that there is apparent understanding of interdependencies and relationships among the different members of the organization (Baligh, 2006). This will make the organization process simple and meet the objectives of the organization in a cost-effective manner. The system managers in a given organization should ensure that the managers are allocated different responsibilities in their different departments of the company and their responsibilities coordinated by the systems managers.

Organizational change is a tough activity to undertake, therefore, it is advisable to make announcement after consulting all the stakeholders in the company. Making announcements without informing all the members who will be affected by the announcement will spark some resistance. There is need before making any announcement to answer employees’ questions as well as responding to their issues and communicating all the elements contained in the announcement. Any appointment of the manager will be made during the announcement, which after consulting the entire major stakeholders in the company (Baligh, 2006).

While restructuring the organizational structure of the company it is essential that system managers invite all the stakeholders of the company and other consultants. This will ensure that feasible management decisions are made to avoid any conflict that may arise while implementing the management decisions.

In order to train people in the company concerning the organizational structure of the company, there is need to undertake it in an outside seminars. Outside seminars will eliminate the bore down on the usual environment and will impact the trainees on matters related to organization of the company (Hall & Tolbert, 2005).

The matrix organization structure has many complicated and it is not simple to adopt it. In this structure the organization is divided as per the functions and their services/products. For example, a company which produces consumer goods may have three functional divisions: personal care, foods, and cleaning products. In the same company, it may have three functional divisions, which include marketing, research and development, and distribution (Baligh, 2006). Therefore, every individual in the company serves two divisions, one product, and functional division. Consequently, this structure is confusing to both the employees and the managers. The matrix structure is extremely encouraging of knowledge sharing and collaboration between divisions. The matrix structure is not devoid of challenges, though. Since workers in a matrix organization report to two departments, there might be conflicts in their responsibilities.

Downfall of functional managers arises when these managers do not understand their responsibilities where their functions are not well defined in the organization. This will eventually lead to potential conflicts, which will affect their performance. Downfall among the functional managers develops poor reporting systems that do not meet the communication structures set by the company. This is true for the situation of matrix structure that has not clear structures. In some cases, the functional managers can delegate some management roles to inexperienced staff leading poor performance of tasks or projects being undertaken by the firm. Therefore, lack of understanding of their roles by the functional managers is the leading cause of downfall because conflicts always arise in such circumstances (Baligh, 2006).

References

Baligh, H. H. (2006). Organization structures: Theory and design, analysis and prescription. New York, NY: Springer.

Hall, R. H., & Tolbert, P. S. (2005). Organizations: Structures, processes, and outcomes. Upper Saddle River, N.J: Pearson Prentice Hall.