Organizing

Elements of Organizing

“Every company has two organizational structures: The formal one is written on the charts; the other is the everyday relationship of the men and women in the organization. “
Harold S. Geneen

A.   Background Information

  1. Definitions –Organizing – “Deciding how best to group organizational activities and resources.” (Management, 2013, pg.296)

Organizing – “Arranging several elements into a purposeful sequential or spatial (or both) order or structure.

  1. Similar Terms used in Business Organizations for Organizational Structure

Adapt

Construct

Coordinate

B.  Organizing – thoughts

  1. Why is Organizing Important – Organizing is important because it shows the flow of your business from one employee to another.  Managers who are efficient at organizing their workplaces will inspire employees and please clients. Organizing is continuous and incredibly important in the workplace.  Please see below for a video showing the changes of organization over the many years.

Video –  http://youtu.be/3xHFfLTgjJI

Once managers have their plans in place, they need to organize the necessary resources to accomplish their goals. A manager is assembling required resources to attain organizational objectives.  The organizing process transforms plans into reality through the purposeful deployment of people and resources within a decision-making framework known as the organizational structure.

The organizational structure is defined as:

  • The set of formal tasks assigned to individuals and departments
  • The formal reporting relationships, including lines of authority, decision responsibility, number of hierarchical levels, and span of managerial control
  • The design of systems to ensure effective coordination of employees across departments

Video  http://youtu.be/Kx_Vfx3y7nQ

C.   The Elements of Organizing

  • Job Specialization – when breaking down a job into small parts so as it is easy to learn from one employee to another.  The problem with this is the monotony of the position creates boredom for the employee which eventually leads to low production.
  • Departmentalization – is grouping positions together by their similarities in the overall organization.  Examples of this would be having all marketing or jobs similar to this grouped together.
  • Establishing Reporting Relationships – Basically the reporting relationships is distributing the chain of command.  This is where you have your tall versus flat organizations where is it better to have many different managers with less subordinates or less managers with many subordinates.

Example of a Flat Organization – 1 manager for each group with many subordinates

Example of a Tall Organization – many managers with few subordinates

Video – Organizational Structure   http://youtu.be/STED8sSHJU8

  • Distributing Authority – Here is where a manager has the opportunity to delegate work to subordinates to help develop them as well as to take tasks off the managers plate so they are able to concentrate on other issues or tasks.  In this area you have the separation of organizations by whether they are decentralized (delegate authority to subordinates) or centralized (keep all authority in the management positions).

  • Coordinating Activities – This is linking the different departments in an organization together.
  • Differentiating Between Positions – This is separating the positions by direct line (direct chain of command) and staff (those offering support to the direct line).

      

Click on any of the links below to explore the many different aspects of Organizing in Management.

Managing Organization Design
Managing Organization Change
Human Resource and Organization

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