Organizational Structure and Culture

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Organisational Structure and Culture

Definition
Organizational structure refers to the levels of management in a company. It mainly defines how job tasks are formerly divided, grouped and co-ordinated. The organizational structure of a company reflects its culture, management style and leader attitude which is adopted with the addition of the environment around in which it operates. It also determines how the roles, power and responsibilities are assigned, controlled and co-ordinated respectively, in-order to realize the flow of information between the different managerial levels. An organizational structure is important because it determines how the organization will be run in order to meet its aims and objectives, (Cunnee, 2008). He defines an organizational structure as the number of ways used in a business to set up division and specialization of labour focusing on maintaining co-ordination to achieve the same targets. An organisational structure may be flat or high and centralized or decentralized. In a centralized or small organization, the top layer of management has the power to make decisions for the company and has a tight control over the below divisions. In a decentralized or large organization, the decision making power is distributed to extent of the company and greater workload is divided and delegated downward. Some of the key elements which are required to design organizational structure are:
- Work specialization
- Departmentalization
- Chain of command
- Span of control
- Centralization and decentralization
- Formalization

Organisations structure can be organized in four different ways which are:
- By function (Operations, Marketing, Finance)
- By region ( Marketing manager in south, Marketing manag...

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...approach gives a single expanded and detailed framework to diagnose the problem and decide which tool or their combinations will be suitable to handle the problem. This approach helps in getting quick perception about the problem. Better planning is secured through it. The main problem of this approach is that it’s complicated as well as expensive to adopt.
- Contingency approach
This approach concerns only on the practical situations and circumstances and believes it to be the best way of managing. It requires vast knowledge on situational variables and external factors. The structure of organization must match the demand of its environment and technology. The leadership styles must be appropriately adopted according to the situational demands. It is mainly complex and has difficulty in empirical testing. It is termed as reactive rather than proactive.

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