The second of the four functions of management: organization (I)

The content of organization includes three parts, namely, organizational structure design, human resource management and team management. This paper will show the content of organizational structure design.

I. Organizational structure design

1. 1, basic organizational structure design

Definition of organization: arranging and designing employees' work to achieve organizational goals. It is a very important process for managers to design organizational structure.

Organizational structure is a formal work arrangement within an organization, which can be displayed intuitively in the form of organization chart and serve a variety of purposes at the same time.

1, design organizational structure

Organizational design is a decision-making process for managers to create or change organizational structure, which involves six key factors, namely, job specialization, departmentalization, chain of command, management span, centralization and decentralization, and regularization.

1) Work specialization, which divides work activities into individual tasks. Individual employees "specialize" in a certain part of an activity rather than the whole activity to improve work output.

The specialization of work effectively utilizes all the skills possessed by employees. At the beginning of the 20th century, the popularity of job specialization made it very credible that job specialization could greatly improve productivity. But the two extremes met. After reaching a certain level, people's diseconomy caused by division of labor-boredom, fatigue, low productivity, poor quality, frequent miners and high turnover rate-will exceed the original economic advantages.

Work specialization is still considered important by most managers today, because it helps to improve the efficiency of employees, such as McDonald's. However, it should be noted that beyond a certain level, job specialization will no longer bring about productivity improvement.

2) Department, the way of work combination. There are usually five kinds of department tables, namely:

Sectionalization of functions-merging work according to functions

Regional grouping-combining work according to regions.

Product classification-work according to product line combination

Process departmentalization-work according to the product or customer's process combination.

Customer departmentalization-combining work according to specific and unique customer combinations.

At present, most large enterprises adopt most or all of these department types. Nowadays, the popular trends of departmentalization are customer departmentalization (it is very important to correct and retain customers) and team approach (the work is becoming more and more complicated and needs various skills to complete). More and more organizations are adopting cross-functional teams, that is, work teams composed of individuals from different functional fields.

3) The chain of command extending from the highest level to the lowest level of the organization is used to define the authority chain of the reporting channel. It relates to three important concepts: authority, responsibility and unified command.

Authorization is the right of management position to issue orders and execute them. Permission can be delegated to lower-level managers, which can limit the scope of implementation of rights to a certain extent. Early management scholars emphasized that authority is related to a person's position in an organization, but not to the personality characteristics of managers themselves.

Another early management scholar, Chester Barnard, put forward another view of authority, namely the authority acceptance theory. The source of authority is whether subordinates accept it.

Early managers also distinguished two forms of authority: linear authority and employee authority. Linear power is the power granted to managers to directly direct the work of subordinates. Linear authority extends from the top of the organization to the employer-employee authority relationship at the bottom of the organization along the chain of command.

With the continuous expansion of the organization, line managers find that they don't have enough time, ability or resources to make the work go smoothly. As a result, employee authority comes into being, that is, the authority to provide support, help and advice to managers with straight-line authority, so as to reduce part of their information and intelligence burden as a whole, such as purchasing department and assistant to the chairman. However, it should be noted that the head of the purchasing department has direct power over his subordinate purchasing personnel.

B. Responsibility, the obligation or expectation to perform the tasks assigned by the manager, and employees need to be responsible for their own performance.

Unified command, advocating that a person should only report to one manager.

Authority, responsibility and unified command are not so important today. Information technology is one of the reasons, and the work carried out in the form of projects cannot follow the principle of unified command.

4) Management span, how many employees managers can manage efficiently and effectively, largely determines the number of organizational levels and middle managers-this is an important aspect of how an organization operates efficiently. All other factors being equal, the greater the management span, the higher the efficiency of the organization. From the cost point of view, a large management span can save managers' annual salary. However, if managers with long spans do not have enough time to make the organization run effectively, it will lead to the decline of employee performance, and vice versa.

Nowadays, people think that the number of employees that managers can effectively manage is influenced by many factors. The trend in recent years has expanded the management span, which is consistent with the efforts of managers to improve decision-making speed, enhance flexibility, be closer to customers, empower employees and reduce costs. Managers begin to realize that when employees fully understand their own work and organizational processes, managers can cope with a larger management span.

5) Centralization and decentralization. Centralization is the degree to which decisions are concentrated at the top of an organization. The higher the degree to which subordinate organizations can provide input or make actual decisions, the more dispersed the organizations are. The division between centralization and decentralization is relative, and an organization cannot be completely centralized or completely decentralized.

6) standardization, the degree of standardization of all work in the organization and the degree to which employees' behavior is guided by rules and procedures. A highly formalized organization, with a clear organizational description, a large number of organizational rules and regulations, and clear procedures covering all workflows. Employees have no autonomy over what they do, when they finish their work and how they finish their work. In organizations with a low degree of formalization, the opposite is true.

Considering that the rules and regulations may be too strict in many cases, many organizations allow employees a certain degree of freedom and give them enough autonomy to make decisions that they think are most suitable for their environment. But there are some important rules that employees must follow.

2. Mechanical structure and organic structure

Mechanistic organization (or hierarchical organization) is the natural result of the combination of six elements of structure, and it is a rigid and tightly controlled organizational design.

Organic organization is a kind of organization form with strong adaptability, and its looseness and flexibility are equal to the rigidity and stability in mechanical organization.

3. Contingency factors affecting the choice of organizational structure.

Including four contingency factors, namely, the uncertainty of strategy, scale, technology and environment.

1) policy

Alfred Chandler first studied the relationship between strategy and structure. By studying several large American companies, he came to the conclusion that the change of company strategy will lead to the change of organizational structure supporting strategy.

Research shows that some structural designs are most suitable for some specific organizational strategies. For example, when organizations pursue meaningful and unique innovations, the flexibility of organic organizations and the free flow of information are very effective; When the company wants to strictly control the cost, the efficiency, stability and strict control of mechanized organization are very effective.

2) scale

There is a lot of evidence that the size of an organization will affect its structure. Large organizations (more than 2000 employees) are usually more specialized, departmental, centralized and have more rules and regulations than small organizations.

However, when an organization grows beyond a certain scale, the influence of scale on the structure will be reduced.

3) Technology

Some studies show that organizations will adjust their structures to adapt to the technologies they adopt, depending on the degree of formalization of the technologies they use to convert inputs into outputs. Generally speaking, the more conventional the technology adopted by an organization, the more mechanized the organizational structure will become, and the more unconventional the organization, the more likely it is to implement an organic structure.

4) Environmental uncertainty

In a simple and stable environment, mechanized organization may be more effective; The higher the degree of uncertainty, the more the organization needs the flexibility of organic design.

4. Traditional organizational design

When designing organizational structure, managers can choose from some traditional organizational structure designs, which are usually more mechanized.

1) The structure is simple, the degree of departmentalization is low, the management span is large, the power is mainly concentrated on one person, and the degree of formalization is extremely low.

2) Functional structure, which combines professionals in similar or related occupations.

3) Division structure, consisting of relatively independent divisions or business units. Corporate headquarters often acts as an external supervisor, coordinating and controlling different business departments, and usually providing support services for these business departments, such as finance and law.

1.2 adaptive organizational structure design

The design of traditional organizations is described above, but these organizations are often not suitable for today's increasingly dynamic and complex external environment, and organizations need to be leaner, more flexible and more innovative. Next, look at the organizational design adopted by the organization to constantly adapt to the external environment.

1, Contemporary Organizational Design

Contemporary organizational design includes team structure, matrix structure and project structure, boundaryless organization and learning organization.

1) team structure

Form a working group or team to complete the task. In this organizational structure, employee authorization is very important, because there is no chain of administrative authority extending from the top to the bottom of the organization. The staff team designs and completes the work in the best way they think, and takes responsibility for all the work performance in their respective fields.

In large organizations, team structure is usually a supplement to the functional structure or business department structure, which makes the organization have the efficiency of bureaucratic structure and the flexibility of team structure.

2) Matrix structure and project structure

The matrix structure assigns professionals from different functional fields to engage in various work projects, and each work project is led by a project manager. The uniqueness lies in the establishment of a dual chain of command. The employees in the matrix organization have two managers, namely the functional manager and the product/project manager.

Project structure, employees continue to work in various projects. Different from the matrix structure, the project structure does not have a formal department, and employees can return to the department after completing a work project. After the project is completed, employees apply their unique skills, abilities and experiences to other projects. Moreover, all the work in the project structure is completed by the staff team.

3) boundaryless organization

An organization that is not defined or restricted by various predetermined horizontal, vertical or external boundaries.

Generally speaking, boundaries are generally divided into two types:

(1) internal boundaries, horizontal boundaries imposed by job specialization and departmentalization, and vertical boundaries that divide employees into different organizational levels and grades; (2) External boundary, which distinguishes the organization from its customers, suppliers and other stakeholders. In order to minimize or eliminate boundaries, managers can adopt virtual organization or network organization design.

Virtual organization usually refers to an organization composed of a few core full-time employees and external professionals temporarily hired for work projects.

Network organizations that use internal employees to engage in certain work activities and other necessary product components or workflows provided by external supplier networks are sometimes called modular organizations by manufacturers. This method enables organizations to focus on what they are best at and outsource other activities to companies that are good at these activities through contracts.

4) Learning organization

Refers to organizations that cultivate the ability of continuous learning, adaptation and change. Employees constantly acquire and share new knowledge and apply this knowledge to decision-making or work.

2. Organize cooperation.

Organizational collaboration may be internal collaboration, that is, collaboration among employees in an organization; It may also be external collaboration with any stakeholders. In these two types of collaboration, it is equally important that managers should be aware of how these collaborations "match" the organizational structure and how to deal with the challenges faced by these decentralized collaborations when they are successfully integrated.

1) internal collaboration

In order to improve cooperation among employees, popular organizational designs include cross-functional teams, special action teams and communities of practice.

Cross-functional team is a work team composed of individuals from different functional fields. The team will focus on working together to achieve organizational goals.

The special action group, also known as the special committee, is a temporary committee or working group set up to solve a specific problem that affects many departments in a short time.

A community of practice is a group of people who are concerned about a certain problem or a series of problems, or who are passionate about a certain topic and deepen their knowledge and professional skills in this field through constant interaction and communication.

2) External cooperation

Open innovation, which opens the research work to other people and organizations outside the organization, so as to obtain all kinds of new ideas and allow innovation to move in other directions without obstacles. Such as Xiaomi, constantly improve product development and design through user feedback.

Strategic partnership refers to the cooperative relationship between two or more organizations to achieve a certain business purpose by combining their resources and capabilities.

3. Flexible working arrangements

As organizations adjust their structural design to adapt to new changes, more and more organizations adopt flexible working arrangements. This arrangement not only makes full use of technology, but also makes the organization more flexible and can deploy employees on demand anytime and anywhere. These flexible work arrangements include telecommuting, compressed work week, flexible hours and job sharing. Managers need to consider and evaluate the impact of these structural designs on decision-making, communication, power relations and task completion.

1) telecommuting, which allows employees to work at home and connect with the company office through computers.

2) compressed work week, employees work longer hours every day in a work week, but work fewer days. For example, working four days a week and working 10 hours a day.

3) Flexible time, which requires employees to complete a fixed number of working hours per week, but can freely change the work arrangement system of specific working hours within specific limits.

4) Job sharing, where two or more people share a full-time job.

4. Flexible employment labor force

Flexible employees refer to temporary workers, freelancers or contract workers, and their work depends on the demand of employers for their services.

With regard to flexible employees, especially those independent contractors and freelancers, one of the main problems faced by the company is to ensure that they are truly qualified to become flexible employees.

Another problem is that when the company needs the skills and input of these flexible employees, it participates in the recruitment, screening and placement procedures of the company.

The last question is the importance of flexible employee performance. Managers need to have a set of methods to set goals, timetables and deadlines for flexible employees, and establish an appropriate assessment mechanism for flexible employees' work performance and goal realization.

5. Today's organizational design challenges

1) Keep the organization in close contact with employees. Managers need to find a way to provide flexibility while maintaining close ties between the organization and these widely distributed and mobile employees. The application of mobile computing and communication technology improves productivity, and also provides organizations and employees with various ways to keep in close contact with each other, such as email, daily watches, contacts and other applications provided by handheld devices ... but security is a big problem.

2) Managing the global organizational structure. The researchers concluded that the structure and strategy of organizations around the world are similar, "but the behavior within each organization has maintained its cultural uniqueness".

Remarks: This article is a reading note of Management 13 edition. The author will be slightly different in content arrangement because of his mastery of the content. Please read the original for more complete content.