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Organizational design deals with aligning structures and resources to accomplish the vision and mission of the organization. It includes evaluating differentiation, strategy, growth, and efficiency. It also includes people, workflow process, and technological impacts. The types of designs consist of traditional designs and contemporary designs. Traditional designs include simple structures with few employees and wide spans of control, functional structures with departmentalization, and divisional structures that are organized and managed as divisions. Contemporary designs include team structures, project structures, learning organizations, matrix, and boundaryless organizations. Organizations redesign regularly to improve profitability, improve customer service, improve productivity and sales, cut cost, and improve efficiency. Organizations also reorganize to change behaviors in leaders and employees, improve environments, and to increase employee satisfaction and retention. 3
Organizational structures emphasize employee behaviors and reporting structures to determine how the works gets done. The structure defines authority and how it impacts performance, motivation, and corporate culture. In Unit I, we discussed how centralized structures determine vertical lines of authority, and decentralized structures consist of authority at lower levels of the organizations. Tall structures have tall layers of managers versus flat, a few layers of management. 4
Bureaucratic designs include formalized control, narrow spans of control, centralized authority, and standardized processes. Although bureaucratic designs still exist, it is important to understand how these designs have changed and have become more flexible. Many organizations are flattened and have moved to more fluid structures. Boundaryless designs incorporate participative decision making, cross functional teams, and virtual teams with open lines of communication and collaboration. The progressive, newer designs of today s organizations include networks, clusters, and more flexible designs (Buhler, 2011). These designs are more contemporary in nature with perks that attract, motivate, and retain employees. Other structures that are relevant include product based, marketbased, and geographical structures. The matrix structure combines several structures and allows for dual reporting. These structures are designed for multi level organizations with different products and divisions. The strength of these designs is in increased efficiency and productivity. Learning organizational structures are common in team and cross functional network structures. These teams are continuously learning, adapting, changing, and sharing knowledge within their work environment. Each structure has advantages and disadvantages, but it is all about getting the right balance in the span of control, decisionmaking process, and how the reporting structure affects motivation, organizational behavior, and customer satisfaction. Organizations strive to achieve a balance between control, productivity, flexibility, incentives, and cultural norms. 5
Organizations can quickly change their strategic direction concerning complex changes in the competitive environment when strategic options are available (Feurer & Chaharbaghi, 1997). Speedy implementation can be attained with horizontal, vertical, and crossalignment to ensure that operations and supporting strategies are aligned. Once a shared vision is communicated, employees can get on board with sales growth, market share, performance goals, and reward systems. Employees are more satisfied and more creative when there is a flow of information and a decrease in decentralization and formalization. Organizations must not be reactive; they must continuously change and reorganize their structures for improved processes (Verle, Markic, Kodric, & Gorenc Zoran, 2014). 6
The next few slides consist of self check questions for you to test your knowledge regarding the content covered in this unit. The correct answer will be indicated on the next slide. True or False: Contemporary designs include simple structures with few employees and wide spans of control, functional structures with departmentalization, and divisional structures that are organized and managed as divisions. 7
The answer is False! Contemporary designs include team structures, project structures, learning organizations, matrix, and boundaryless organizations. Traditional designs include simple structures with few employees and wide spans of control, functional structures with departmentalization, and divisional structures organized and managed as divisions. 8
True or False: The progressive, newer designs of today s organizations include networks, clusters, and more flexible designs. 9
True! The progressive, newer designs of today s organizations include networks, clusters, and more flexible designs (Buhler, 2011). These designs are more contemporary in nature with perks that attract, motivate, and retain employees. 10
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