The Five Basic Parts of an Organization, Essay Example

Abstract

The paper puts into consideration the work of Mintznerg on the five basic parts of an organization. It analyzes the parts into details by providing their functions and how they can affect the organization. The work also gives the diagram that summarizes all the aspects and puts into a clear understanding.

Introduction

The organizations perform better if each person has been provided his or her part to perform. Therefore, there is always an opportunity that the organizations be divided into five main parts. These comprises of the following: (Mintzberg, 1999).

• The strategic Apex
• The Techno-structures
• The support staff
• The Middle Line
• The operating Core

Henry Mintzberg has illustrated it better using the diagram. This provides us with much understanding of how the organization should perform and how they should follow each other.

The strategic apex is considered to be the top manager of an organization. The strategic apex tends to work under the direct supervision. The structure is less complex and centralized, which means that it is compounded with only simple, the environments which are energetic together with the strong and energetic managers. The strategic apex is mostly found in the organizations that mostly face a number of problems. But sometimes it comes as a result of the growth experienced with an organization or the company. The strategic apex assumes all the work of a manager like understanding and challenging the employee in whatever he or she does. It is always healthy for him or her to do that since it ensures that an employee has done the correct thing at the required time (Mintzberg, 1999). A good manager should be loyal which is sometimes considered as the first practice that a manager should have. A manager can be loyal to the country organization he or she is operating from and also to the employees who work under him. A manager should also be a positive thinker.

A manager must adjust on the new ideas and changes as they come out on the organization. He or she can do this by having an open mind to everything around, since the positive thinkers look at the future with contagious opportunities. A manager is always enthusiastic regarding the role they play within the area of specialization. A manager should be friendly to everyone. Being friendly motivates the person working under him or her to look very important by attending to all what the person have to say. A manager must have time of knowing all those who work under him for a better understanding between them. This helps him or her to allocate duties to the employees at the correct place and at the correct time. But most importantly, a manager should avoid being too much close to the employees. This results to a problem when need arises for punishment to the employees. The manager finds it not very easy to deal with such issues since they are always much close and perhaps the person might be his or her close friend. Many of the managers have fallen into this trap and at the end of the year they find that they have failed to perform their duties as required. Many managers tend to have problems within their organizations according to how they pass communication to their employees. Therefore, a good manager must have excellent communication skills, since communication is essential to the institution and is also part of the factor affecting the production (Christine, 2002).

After every instruction, an employee is required to repeat what the manager has said. It ensures that the person has understood what is being said. In turn, it avoids the misunderstanding of the communication between the managers and the employees. A number of the employees do not react positively to what they know is not good to them. Therefore, when it comes to the delegations of duties, the manager must ensure that he or she delegates the fair and the unfair duties equally among the employees. For the allocation of the resources belonging to the organization, a manager’s intervention is much required. The person must have the knowledge of knowing where everything belongs and at what time will it be required. A manager is also partly responsible for training of the employees.  The manager should not take the rank to be above every person therefore the work is just to supervise.  The manager must be responsible for everything taking place within the organization, unless there is a case of disobedient, and then it should be forwarded further (Jacob, 2004).

The manager should also be ready to allocate the next duties for the following day to avoid delay whenever the employees report to their duties. This ensures that there is no delay on the productions and the institution will be performing like a clock, meaning that the work is continuous. A manager must also be ready to manage any changes efficiently the way they come, even if they do not agree with your position, it is a must to do them.

As the organization becomes larger, the responsibilities increase. In this case, the managers form a category of people to analyze an organization’s technology and the organization’s procedure. Therefore the analysts automatically form the second aspect of the organization structure known as the techno-structure. They do coordinate through standardization, which always remains as part of their mission within an organization. For example the work processes is always standardized by the industrial engineers, the outputs are standardized by the strategic planners while the skills are mostly standardized by the recruiters as well as the personnel trainers.

Sometimes people might be exhausted within the organization due lots of work. Therefore, the organization requires the third structure called the support staff. Their work is to maintain all the administrative duties like the public relations, cafeteria, legal counseling and the mailroom. They sometimes perform their duties directly regarding the main products of an organization or to take care of the employees who do that. This is different from long time ago when their work was to give advice to the people who always perform the work on the main products of the organization.

The organization can continue growing in such away that only one manager cannot handle every issue including all the workers. This results to the middle line structure. They can also be referred as the small managers that bring the message from the managers to the employees. But in a simple term, it is sometimes good to call them supervisors. They are always guided by the law and they are able to punish any employee like taking him or her out of work in any case they do mistake. But on the other side, the law requires that when it comes to the dismissal of any employee from work, it should be done on a polite way following the correct channel. By this I mean that the name of search an employee can be forwarded to the director in case it is beyond the supervisor. This act of just firing an employee just because of a small issue that can be handled is not healthy, and all the supervisors should learn this. This action should not be done in front the other work mates since no one is perfect, meaning that everybody makes a mistake. Today the mistake might land on the employee and tomorrow it comes on the side of the same supervisor, who made out of the work. I hope that it will not make any sense to the employees. Therefore, every employees secrete should be hold by the supervisors and it should not be let out to the others. Let also the supervisors not shout to their subjects since it leads to being resentful and unhappy. Never be afraid to praise your team for a task well done since the carrot always works better than the stick. Hope this portrays some of the best practices and qualities that a supervisor must possess (Samuel, 2000). The last structure is the operating core. Their work is to deliver the services for the organization or producing the products.

Conclusion

It is always good that the structure of an organization be changed with time due to its expansion. The changes ensures that the organizations mostly survive and to create room for them to adopt the new structure for their growth in future. Culture, size, technology and the adjustment strategy factors are also emerging to be important and closely are taken into serious examination. Careful management of these aspects can help to give a smoother and restrained evolution, while implementing these periodical and critical phasing procedures.

Reference

Mintzberg, H. (1999). “The Five Basic Parts of an Organization.” Shafritz, Ott & Jang, p 222.

Samuel, C. (2000). Supervision Concepts & Skill Building. 6th edition.

Christine, B. (2002). Side Effect Mintzberg’s Five Basic Parts of an Organization. (3^rdEd.).Delhi: Pearson education Limited.

Jacob, H. (2004). The functions of the strategic apex in an organization. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.