The Structure of the Organization

Basic directorial structure has three components.  The first is involvedness: To what extent are activities broken up? The second is formalization: How much are rules and measures used? And the third is centralization: To what level is decision making kept at a central headquarters unit? All these factors have been shown to pressure managerial performance.

High difficulty means work is not working down and is thus easy to control and monitor, but tend to lead to employees missing the "big picture." Low difficulty, usually resulting in a "flat" association, can give increase to high essential enthusiasm, but places enormous demands on communication and time. High formalization can lead to highly conventional behaviors (creating a constantly "strong" situation), but it can also reduce modernization and create strong pressures for agreement. Low formalization allows modernism, but makes it difficult to produce consistency, or to measure presentation impartially. High centralization gives an organization tight controls and good information on the rest of the division, as well as ensuring that all division is working to a common policy. However, the low autonomy experienced by the divisions and employees may cause other problems for motivation and performance. High devolution allows local response to customers and a large amount of autonomy to divisional managers, but reduces the control and influence that the central organization has for producing a reliable strategy crossways the board.

One classic way of looking at organizational structure is the mechanistic/organic dichotomy. A mechanistic structure is characterize by high complexity; high formalization; a limited, mostly downward information network; and high-level decision making-the typical "pyramid" organization.  An whole structure is low in intricacy and formalization; has

Inclusive, free-flowing information network; and has highly participative decision making. These two structures clearly have very different penalty for the behavior of the people working in them.

Almost all organization is broken into work division. These work divisions are set up in many different ways-by function, by geographic location, by product, by procedure, by customer-or a grouping of any of these (a matrix structure). Which structure is best depends on what your company does and how it does its work. The thing to bear in mind is that people will tend to recognize with their "in-group," and that announcement crosswise division will need to be actively managed.

Relaxed systems evolve within each separation, leading to other division being viewed as "different" and therefore not as precious. As a manager, you need to be aware of this and be prepared to actively manage cross-separation information flows, communications, and the interaction between the divisional cultures, particularly when the tasks are exceedingly interdependent.