13-2 organizational design: how a structure connects employees and tasks copyright © 2008 by the...
TRANSCRIPT
13-2
Organizational Design: How a Structure Connects Employees and Tasks
Copyright © 2008 by the McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.McGraw-Hill/IrwinOrganizational Behavior, Core Concepts
13Organizational Behavior
core concepts
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Learning Objectives
• Define organizations and their basic dimensions
• Explain commonly used metaphors for organizations as closed or open systems, military/mechanical bureaucracies, and biological and cognitive systems
• Describe basic criteria for organizational effectiveness
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Learning Objectives
• Summarize what is involved in the contingency approach to organizational design
• Discuss new-style and old-style organizations, including virtual organizations
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What is an Organization?
• Organization – system of consciously coordinated activities
of two or more people.
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What is an Organization?
• Four common denominators– Coordination of effort– Common goal– Division of labor– Hierarchy of authority
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Designing Effective Teams
See an article from Administrative Science Quarterly on designing effective teams
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What is an Organization?
• Unity of command principle – each employee should report to a single
manager.
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Organization Charts
• Organization chart – boxes-and-lines illustration showing chain of
formal authority and division of labor.
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Organization Charts
• Hierarchy of authority
• Division of labor
• Span of control – the number of people reporting directly to a
given manager
• Line and staff positions
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Line and Staff Positions
• Staff personnel – provide research, advice, and
recommendations to line managers.
• Line Managers – have authority to make organizational
decisions.
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Needed: Open-System Thinking
• Closed System – self-sufficient entity, closed to the
surrounding environment.
• Open System – organism that must constantly interact with
its environment to survive
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Organizations as Military/Mechanical Bureaucracies• Bureaucracy
– Max Weber’s idea of the most rationally efficient form of organization
• Weber’s Bureaucracy– Division of labor– A hierarchy of authority– A framework of rules– Administrative personality
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Organizations as Biological Systems• The complex organization is a set of
interdependent parts which together make up a whole because each contributes something and receives something from the whole, which in turn is interdependent with some larger environment
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Organizations as Cognitive Systems
• Organizations have mechanisms to interpret ambiguous events and to provide meaning and direction for participants
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Question?
Which effectiveness criteria is the most widely used?
A. Goal accomplishment
B. Resource acquisition
C. Internal processes
D. Strategic constituencies satisfaction
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Generic Effectiveness Criteria
• Goal accomplishment – most widely used effectiveness criteria,
measured by comparing key organizational results with previously stated goals
• Resource acquisition – organization is effective if it acquires
necessary factors of production
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Generic Effectiveness Criteria
• Internal processes – healthy system if information flows smoothly
and if employee loyalty, commitment, job satisfaction prevail
• Strategic constituencies satisfaction– Strategic constituency: any group of
people with a stake in the organization’s operation or success.
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Mixing Effectiveness Criteria: Practical Guidelines
• Goal accomplishment – approach is appropriate when goals are
clear, consensual, time-bounded, and measurable
• Resource acquisition – approach is appropriate when inputs have a
traceable effect on results or output
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Mixing Effectiveness Criteria: Practical Guidelines
• Internal processes – appropriate when organizational
performance is strongly influenced by specific processes
• Strategic constituencies – appropriate when powerful stakeholders can
significantly benefit or harm the organization
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The Contingency Approach to Designing Organizations• Contingency approach to organization
design – creating an effective organization-
environment fit.
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Mechanistic versus Organic Organizations• Mechanistic organizations
– Rigid bureaucracies with strict rules, narrowly defined tasks, and top-down communication.
• Organic organizations – Flexible networks of multitalented individuals
who perform a variety of tasks
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Question?
In what type of decision making do top managers make all key decisions?
A. Centralized
B. Decentralized
C. Fundamental
D. Primary
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Approaches to Decision Making
• Centralized decision making – top managers make all key decisions
• Decentralized decision making– lower-level managers are empowered to
make important decisions