What are the basic types of organizational structure? Describe their adaptation, advantages and disadvantages respectively?

Organizational structure refers to how to divide labor, group and coordinate cooperation.

Organizational structure is a model that shows the arrangement order, spatial position, aggregation and dispersion state, contact information and the relationship between various elements of the organization, and it is the "framework" of the whole management system. [Edit this paragraph] Six elements of organizational structure design When designing organizational structure, managers must correctly consider six key factors: work specialization, departmentalization, chain of command, control span, centralization and decentralization, and normalization.

1, job specialization

At the beginning of the 20th century, Henry Ford became rich and famous by building an automobile production line. His approach is to assign specific and repetitive tasks to every employee in the company. For example, some employees are only responsible for assembling the right front wheel of the car, while others are only responsible for installing the right front door. By dividing the work into smaller, standardized tasks so that workers can perform the same operations repeatedly, Ford can produce a car every 10 second by using employees with relatively limited skills.

Ford's experience shows that if employees engage in specialized work, their productivity will be improved. Today, we use the term "job specialization" or words like division of labor to describe the degree to which tasks in an organization are divided into several steps.

The essence of job specialization is that a person does not completely complete a job, but is divided into several steps, and each step is completed by a person independently. Essentially, it is a part of work activities, not all activities.

In the late 1940s, most production fields in industrialized countries were completed through job specialization. Managers think this is the most effective way to make use of employees' skills. In most organizations, some jobs need highly skilled employees to complete, while others can be done well without training. If all employees are involved in every step of the manufacturing process, then everyone needs not only the skills needed to complete the most complex tasks, but also the skills needed to complete the simplest tasks. Therefore, employees spend part of their time on low-skilled jobs, except for tasks requiring higher skills or more complicated tasks. Because the salary of high-skilled employees is higher than that of low-skilled employees, and the salary generally reflects a person's highest skill level, it is undoubtedly a waste of organizational resources to pay high salaries to high-skilled employees but let them do simple work.

Through the implementation of job specialization, the management also seeks to improve the operational efficiency of the organization in other aspects. Through repetitive work, improve the skills of employees and reduce the time for changing work tasks or installing disassembly tools and equipment during work. Equally important, from the organizational point of view, the implementation of post specialization is conducive to improving the training efficiency of the organization. It is easier and cheaper to select and train employees who are engaged in specific and repetitive jobs. This is especially true for highly sophisticated and complex operations. For example, let an employee produce an entire plane. Can Boeing build a large Boeing passenger plane in one year? Finally, by encouraging inventions and improving machines in professional fields, job specialization helps to improve efficiency and productivity.

Before 1950s, managers thought that job specialization was an inexhaustible source to improve productivity. Maybe they are right, because the application of job specialization was not widely enough at that time. As long as it is introduced, productivity will almost always increase. However, after the 1960s, more and more evidence showed that a good thing that was overdone turned into a bad thing. In some fields of work, it has reached a climax: due to the specialization of work and the influence of non-economic factors (such as boredom, fatigue, stress, low productivity, low quality, rising absenteeism rate, rising turnover rate and so on). ) exceeds the advantage of its economic influence.

At present, most managers do not think that job specialization is out of date, nor that it is an inexhaustible source of improving productivity. They are aware of the role of job specialization in some types of work and the problems that may be caused by excessive use. For example, in McDonald's fast food restaurants, managers use job specialization to improve the efficiency of producing and selling hamburgers and fried chicken. Medical experts in most health care organizations also use job specialization. However, companies like Oticon and Saturn have achieved success by enriching employees' work content and reducing the degree of job specialization.

2. Departmental

Once the tasks are subdivided by job specialization, they need to be grouped by category so that the same work can be coordinated. The basis of job classification is department a- regionalization.

The classification of work activities is mainly based on the function of the activities. Managers of manufacturing industry organize their factories by dividing experts in engineering, accounting, manufacturing, personnel, procurement and other fields into the same departments. Of course, the division of departments according to functions applies to all organizations. Only the change of function can reflect the goals and activities of the organization. The main functional departments of a hospital may include research department, nursing department and accounting department. A professional football team may have player personnel department, ticketing department, travel and logistics department, etc. The main advantage of this functional grouping method is that it can improve work efficiency by bringing together similar experts. Functional departmentalization realizes economies of scale by assigning people with similar professional skills and research directions to the same department.

Tasks can also be divided into different departments according to the types of products produced by the organization. Take Sun Petroleum products as an example, its three major fields (crude oil, lubricating oil and wax products, and chemical products) are all under the jurisdiction of a vice president, who is an expert in this field and is responsible for all issues related to its production line. Every vice president has his own production and marketing department. The main advantage of this grouping method is to improve the stability of product performance, because all activities related to a specific product in the company are directed by the same supervisor. If an organization's activities are related to services rather than products, then each service activity can be naturally divided. For example, an accounting service company will have a tax department, a management consulting department, an audit department and so on, and each department will provide a series of services under the guidance of a product or service manager.

There is also a departmental law, which divides departments by region. For example, as far as marketing work is concerned, it can be divided into four regions: east, west, south and north. In fact, every place K is a department formed around this area. If a company's customers are widely distributed, this departmental method has its unique value.

The production process of aluminum test tube factory of Renault Metal Company in upstate New York consists of five departments: casting department, forging department, pipe making department, finished product department and inspection, packaging and transportation department. This is an example of departmentalization according to the production process. The main reason for the company to do this is that in the production process of aluminum test tubes, each department is responsible for a specific production link. Metal is first cast into a huge blank; And then sent to a forged piece to be extruded into an aluminum tube; Then the aluminum tube is transferred to the test tube department, which is responsible for making test tubes with different volumes and shapes; Then send these test tubes to the finished product department, which is responsible for cutting and cleaning; Finally, the products enter the inspection, packaging and transportation departments. Because different links need different technologies, this departmental method provides a basis for the merger of similar activities in the production process.

The process departmentalization method is suitable for product production and customer service. For example, to get a driver's license from a state-owned motor vehicle management office, you have to run several departments. In a certain state, the driver's license test has to go through three steps, and each step is taken charge of by an independent department: (1) Motor Vehicle Department responsible for verification; (2) The driver's license department is responsible for the specific work of the driver's license; (3) The Finance Department is responsible for charging.

The last method of departmentalization is to departmentalize according to the type of customers. For example, a company selling office equipment can be divided into three departments: retail service, wholesale service and government service. Large law firms can set up departments according to whether clients are companies or individuals.

According to customers; The theoretical assumption of dividing departments by type is that customers in each department have the same problems and needs, so; By providing them with relevant experts, their needs can be met.

When a large organization is departmentalized, the comprehensive application of the above methods can achieve better results. For example, a large Japanese electronics company organizes its branches according to functional types when it is departmentalized; Organize its manufacturing department according to the production process; Divide the sales department into seven regional work units; In each region, it is divided into four customer groups according to customer types. However, there are two trends in the 1990s. First, customer-based departmentalization is becoming more and more popular. In order to better grasp the needs of customers and effectively respond to the changes of customer needs, many organizations put more emphasis on the method of dividing departments based on customers. For example, Xerox cancelled the establishment of the company's marketing department and excluded market research experts in this field. This enables the company to better understand who its customers are and meet their needs more quickly. The second trend is that stable functional departments are replaced by work teams that cross the boundaries of traditional departments.

3. Command chain

Twenty years ago, the concept of chain of command was the cornerstone of organizational design, but today its importance has been greatly reduced. However, managers still need to consider the significance of the chain of command when deciding how to better design the organizational structure.

The chain of command is an uninterrupted power line, extending from the highest level to the lowest level of an organization, and defining who reports to whom. It can answer questions raised by employees: "Who do I go to if I have questions?" "Who am I responsible for?"

Before discussing the chain of command, let's discuss two auxiliary concepts: authority and unity of command. Authority refers to the inherent power of a management position, which can issue orders and expect them to be executed. In order to promote cooperation, each management position has its own position in the chain of command, and each manager must be granted certain authority in order to complete his duties and tasks. The principle of unified command helps to maintain the continuity of the power chain. It means that a person should be directly responsible to one supervisor, and only to one supervisor. If the unity of the chain of command is broken, a subordinate may have to deal with the conflict between different orders of multiple supervisors or the choice of priority.

Times are changing, so are the basic principles of organizational design. With the development of computer technology and the influence of the trend of fully empowering subordinates, the importance of concepts such as command chain, authority and command unity has been greatly reduced. Two paragraphs in a recent article in Business Week illustrate this change well:

On a Wednesday morning in mid-March, Charles Cather took a puzzled look at the inventory report sent by the company's distribution center. According to the report printed by computer, the gloss oil on the Rose brand can only guarantee three days' supply, which is far lower than the three-and-a-half-week inventory demand required by the company. However, Kaiser knew that the company had just delivered 346 boxes (each box 12 bottles) of varnish two days before its factory in Jefferson City, Missouri, and the varnish on the Rose brand must have been snapped up. He turned on the computer connected to the production line and entered the instruction: another 400 cases of varnish will be produced on Thursday morning.

Is this an episode in the work schedule of a planning manager? But in fact, Kaiser is not a manager. He is just a worker on the production line. The official title is "production line coordinator". He is one of the hundreds of workers engaged in computer network work in the company. They have the right to check the delivery of goods, arrange their own workload, and often engage in jobs that used to belong to managers.

Now a grass-roots employee can get the information that only senior managers could get 20 years ago in a few seconds. Similarly, with the development of computer technology, employees in any position in an organization can communicate with anyone without formal channels. Moreover, the concept of authority is less and less relevant to the maintenance of the chain of command, because the decisions that could only be made by the management in the past have now been authorized to the operators to make their own decisions. In addition, with the prevalence of self-management teams, multi-functional teams and new organizational design ideas including multi-bosses, the concept of unified command is becoming more and more irrelevant. Of course, many organizations still believe that the productivity of the organization can be maximized by strengthening the chain of command, but today there are fewer and fewer such organizations.

4. Control span

How many subordinates can a supervisor effectively guide? This question about control span is very important, because it largely determines how many levels an organization should set up and how many managers it should have. Other things being equal, the greater the control span, the higher the organizational efficiency, which can be proved by examples.

Suppose there are two organizations with 4096 grass-roots operators. If one control span is 4 and the other is 8, then the organization with wide control span has two fewer management levels than the organization with narrow control span, and it can be equipped with about 800 fewer managers. If the average annual salary of each manager is $40,000, an organization with a wide range of control can save $32 million in managers' salary every year. Obviously, in terms of cost, organizations with large control spans are more efficient. However, in some aspects, too large a span may reduce the effectiveness of the organization, that is, if the control span is too large, the performance of employees will be adversely affected, because the supervisor does not have enough time to provide necessary leadership and support for his subordinates.

Narrow control span also has its advantages. By keeping the control span at 5-6 people, managers can strictly control employees. However, the narrow control span mainly has three shortcomings: first, as pointed out by S, the management level will be improved and the management cost will be greatly increased. Second, make the vertical communication of the organization more complicated. The increase of management level will also slow down the decision-making speed and make senior managers tend to be isolated. Third, the control span is too narrow, which easily leads to the strict supervision of subordinates and hinders their autonomy.

The trend in recent years is to expand the scope of control. For example, in large companies such as General Electric Company and Renault Metal Company, the control span has reached 10-12, which is twice that of 15 years ago. Tom smith is the regional manager of Carboline Company, directly under the jurisdiction of 27 people. Twenty years ago, people in his position usually had only 12 subordinates.

Broadening the control span is in line with the company's efforts to reduce costs, reduce general management expenses, speed up the decision-making process, increase flexibility, shorten the distance with customers and authorize subordinates. However, in order to avoid the reduction of employee performance due to the expansion of control span, companies have greatly strengthened the intensity and input of employee training. Managers have realized that when their subordinates fully understand their work or when they can get help from their colleagues, they can control a wide range of control problems.

5, centralization and decentralization

In some organizations, top managers make all decisions, while bottom managers only carry out the instructions of top managers. At the other extreme, organizations delegate decision-making power to the lowest-level managers. The former is a highly centralized organization, while the latter is a highly decentralized organization.

Centralization refers to the degree to which the decision-making power in an organization is concentrated at one point. This concept only includes formal authority, that is, the power inherent in a position. Generally speaking, an organization is highly centralized if its top managers do not consider or rarely consider the opinions of grassroots personnel when deciding its main issues. On the contrary, the higher the participation of grass-roots personnel, or they can make decisions independently, the higher the degree of decentralization of the organization.

Centralized organization and decentralized organization are essentially different. In decentralized organizations, the speed of taking actions and solving problems is faster, and more people provide suggestions for decision-making. So there is little or no gap between employees and decision makers who can influence their work and life.

In recent years, the trend of decentralized decision-making has become more prominent, which is consistent with the management idea of making organizations more flexible and proactive. In large companies, grass-roots managers are closer to the actual production and have a more detailed understanding of related issues than senior managers. Therefore, large retail companies such as Sears and J.C.Penny give their store managers greater decision-making power when choosing inventory goods. This enables their stores to compete with local stores more effectively. Similarly, the Bank of Montreal has combined its 1 164 branches in Canada into 236 communities, that is, a group of branches in a limited area. Each community has a manager who can patrol freely between branches under its jurisdiction, and the longest distance between branches is only 20 minutes. He responds to the problems within his jurisdiction much faster than the executives at the company headquarters and will handle them more appropriately. Lei Natuo Rivoso, director of IBM Europe, took a similar approach, dividing companies in continental Europe into 200 independent business departments, each with its own profit targets, employee incentives and key customers. "We used to be used to top-down management, just like in the army." Rivoso said, "Now, we try our best to let employees learn to manage themselves.

Step 6 normalize

Normalization refers to the degree of standardization of work in an organization. If a job is highly formalized, it means that the people who do it do not have much autonomy in work content, working hours and working methods. People always expect employees to work in the same way, which can ensure stable and consistent output results. In a highly standardized organization, there are clear job descriptions, complex organizational rules and regulations, and detailed regulations on work processes. For jobs with a low degree of standardization, relatively speaking, the job executors and schedules are not so rigid, and employees have wider authority to handle their own work. Because personal permission is inversely proportional to the organization's regulations on employee behavior, the higher the degree of standardization of work, the less power employees have to decide their own working methods. Work standardization not only reduces the possibility of employees choosing work behavior, but also makes employees not need to consider other behavior choices.

The degree of formalization varies greatly between organizations or between different jobs within organizations. At one extreme, as we all know, some jobs are poorly formalized. For example, university booksellers (publishers' agents who sell the company's new books to university professors) have greater freedom to work, and their marketing terms do not need to be standardized. In terms of behavioral constraints, it is to submit a sales report once a week to make suggestions for the publication of new books. At the other extreme, those who are in staff and editorial positions in the same publishing company. They should go to work at 8 o'clock in the morning on time, or they will be deducted for half an hour. In addition, they must abide by a series of detailed rules and regulations formulated by the manager.