Business
Simple Structure
Simple structure in business refers to an organizational design with a clear, centralized authority and a low level of departmentalization. It is characterized by a flat hierarchy, direct lines of communication, and a focus on flexibility and adaptability. This type of structure is commonly found in small businesses or startups, where decision-making is centralized and there is minimal bureaucracy.
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5 Key excerpts on "Simple Structure"
eBook - PDFOrganizations
Management Without Control
- Howard P. Greenwald(Author)
- 2007(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications, Inc(Publisher)
But organizations differ in the number of levels of their hierarchies. Organizational structures are often characterized as “tall” versus “flat.” A tall organizational structure has many levels of decision-making and supervision between the top manager and the operative. A flat orga-nizational structure has very few levels of hierarchy. Researchers have observed that large manufacturing firms, such as steel and automobiles, tend to have tall hierarchies. Research and development organizations as well as start-up firms tend to be flat. While people often refer to the hierarchy in their organizations as a chain of command, this is not always accurate. Supervisors may issue guidelines or define objectives rather than issuing detailed instructions or direct orders. The degree to which directives from a supervisor to a subordinate actually resemble commands depends on the organization’s degree of formalization. Complexity The dimension of complexity refers to the number of hierarchies or other foci of communication and control in an organization. Traditionally, organizations have only one hierarchy. Organizations with a single, identifiable hierarchy are charac-terized as monarchic. Inspection of the organizational landscape reveals exceptions to the monarchic model. Hospitals are traditionally regarded as having multiple hierarchies. All such organizations have an administrative structure forming the traditional, tall pyra-mid. An “administrator” resides on top, directly supervising department heads in areas such as finance, operations, and marketing. Each department head supervises The Rule of Structure —— 111 several managers, who in turn supervise operatives such as bookkeepers, salespeople, and maintenance workers. Health care professionals, though, have traditionally operated outside the man-agement hierarchy. Physicians, for example, operated outside the hospital manage-ment hierarchy through most of the 20th century.
eBook - PDF- James L. Bowditch, Anthony F. Buono, Marcus M. Stewart(Authors)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Wiley(Publisher)
An organization’s structure: 6 1. Designates formal reporting relationships, encompassing the number of levels in the hierarchy and the span of control held by managers and supervisors 2. Identifies groupings of individuals into specific positions, work units, teams, departments, divisions and so forth, as well as the grouping of these subunits into the total organization 3. Comprises the design of systems in an attempt to ensure effective communication, coordination, and integration of effort across these subunits In order to fully appreciate the design-related decisions facing an organization’s management, three key dimensions of organizational structure—complexity, formal- ization, and centralization—should be examined. 7 These variables not only differen- tiate organizations, but they can also be used to examine differences between main units within a particular organization. In reality, of course, organizations are not com- plex or simple, formal or informal, or centralized or decentralized. Each of these core dimensions should be conceptualized as a continuum and, as will be explored through- out the chapter, organizational structures can be analyzed in terms of their degree of complexity, formalization, and centralization. 284 Chapter 9 Organization Structure and Design Complexity Complexity refers to the different number of components or extent of differentiation that exists in a particular organization. More complex organizational structures have a greater degree of differentiation compared with organizations having less complex structures. The more complex a particular organizational structure, the greater the need for both direct and indirect control (integrative) mechanisms. In highly complex organizational structures, therefore, managers are required to spend more significant amounts of time and attention in dealing with communication, coordination, and control needs.
eBook - PDF- Derek S Pugh, David J Hickson(Authors)
- 2007(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications, Inc(Publisher)
“To the extent that conditions favor one over the others, the organiza-tion is drawn to structure itself as one of the configurations,” or designs. It is pulled toward one more than toward the others. The first type, the entrepreneurial organization, in which the strongest pull is by the strategic apex toward centralization, is as simple as its name indicates. It has little or no technostructure, few support staff, minimal dif-ferentiation between departments, and a small hierarchy. Coordination is by direct supervision, downward from the strong apex where power is in the hands of the chief executive; therefore, it does not need formal plan-ning or training or similar procedures and can be flexible and organic (see Burns, Chapter 2). The conditions favoring this form are those of the clas-sic entrepreneurial owner-managed firm—a small organization in a simple yet dynamic environment that can be understood by one leading individ-ual. Most organizations pass through this structure in their formative years, and some stay small enough to continue it. They could be as diverse as an automobile dealership, a retail store, a new governmental department, or a vigorous manufacturer on a small scale. The Structure of Organizations — 35 Some people enjoy working in such an organization because of the sense of mission it gives and its flexibility. Others resent the domination from the top; they see it as paternalistic or autocratic, unfashionable in democratic times. The organization is also precarious: “One heart attack can literally wipe out the organization’s prime coordinating mechanism.” The machine organization is far more secure (see Weber). It does not depend on a single person. The strongest pull on it is from its technostruc-ture, the planners, financial controllers, production schedulers, and their kind. They pull toward standardization. Once work has been divided into standard routine tasks, it can be controlled by them through formalized rules and regulations.
eBook - PDFManagement Under Differing Value Systems
Political, Social and Economical Perspectives in a Changing World
- Günter Dlugos, Klaus Weiermair, Wolfgang Dorow(Authors)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter(Publisher)
When possible, the interviews were completed by an examination of company book-lets, union contracts, advertising brochures, and organization charts. In order to ensure response and interpretation equi-valance, with some exceptions, the relatively standardized methods for collecting and analyzing organizational and con-textual data developed by Pugh and his colleagues (Pugh et al., 1968 and 1969; Hickson et al., 1969), and abbreviated by Inkson and associates (1970), are used in the study. The organization structure has thus been made operational through formalization, functional specialization, and central-ization. Formalization denotes the extent to which rules, procedures^ instructions, and communication are written in the organization and (in some cases) the extent of their applica-tion and distribution? functional specialization refers to the degree to which the activities of an organization are divided into mutually exclusive sets; and centralization is the extent to which the authority for decision-making rests at the higher levels in the organization. Bureaucratic Structures 54 3 TABLE 2 Size, Main Product Lines, and Status of Organizations in the Three Countries Firm No.
eBook - PDF- Lawrence J. Gitman, Carl McDaniel, Amit Shah, Monique Reece, Linda Koffel, Bethann Talsma, James C. Hyatt(Authors)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Openstax(Publisher)
It’s much easier to be successful with decentralized decision-making, for example, if you have only 50 employees. A company with that few employees is also more likely, by virtue of its size, to have a lesser degree of employee specialization. That’s because, when there are fewer people to do the work, those people tend to know more about the entire process. As a company grows, it becomes more mechanistic, as systems are put in place to manage the greater number of employees. Procedures, rules, and regulations replace flexibility, innovation, and independence. That isn’t always the case, however. W. L. Gore has nearly 10,000 employees and more than $3 billion in annual revenues, but, as noted earlier, uses an extremely organic organizational structure. Employees have no bosses, participate on teams, and often create roles for themselves to fill functional gaps within the company. 15 Lastly, the business in which a company operates has a significant impact on its organizational structure. In complex, dynamic, and unstable environments, companies need to organize for flexibility and agility. That is, their organizational structures need to respond to rapid and unexpected changes in the business environment. For companies operating in stable environments, however, the demands for flexibility and agility are not so great. The environment is predictable. In a simple, stable environment, therefore, companies benefit from the efficiencies created by a mechanistic organizational structure. 268 Chapter 7 Designing Organizational Structures This OpenStax book is available for free at http://cnx.org/content/col25734/1.7 M A N A G I N G C H A N G E Google Learns the Alphabet A little less than 20 years ago, Larry Page and Sergey Brin built a search engine that used links to determine the importance of individual pages on the web. Today, Google has grown from two founders to more than 60,000 employees in 50 different countries.
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