Organizational structure

Your goal here is to identify and evaluate the kind of structure used by your orgaization.

Start by reading the summary further below.

1. Draw a diagram of each kind of structure.
2. Describe the structure of your organization.
3. Which of those types (if any) fit your organization?
4. Considering your organization's existing types, what are the strengths and weakness of your structure?
5. What changes do you think need to be made?
6. What implications does it have for reframing it:
1. how you instigate changes?
2. risk management (e.g. control and communication)?
3. how money is made?
7. Draw a tree diagram of your organizational structure and evaluate it.
1. Where do you have too many staff? Not enough staff?
2. Where do you have the right and wrong kinds of staff?
3. How you allocate decision-making responsibility?
4. Do you have the right number of levels.

 

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Reading: Your present organizational structure

Based on "The structuring of organizations" Harry Mintzberg in Australian and New Zealand Strategic Management 2nd ed. Sydney: Prentice Hall, 1999 pp. 176-195. Originally published as Mintzberg and Quinn The Strategy Process: Concepts, Contexts, and Cases 2nd ed. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, Prentice Hall, 1991 pp. 330-50.

Organizations can differ greatly in their structures. This affects you in ways such as:

• how you instigate changes (e.g. if some sections are semi-autonomous)
• some of your risks (e.g. communication)
• how money is made (e.g. different business units/profit centres)

The structure of a large organization normally has six elements:

1. Top level leadership
2. Middle management
3. Technostructure (technical analysts)
4. Support staff who provide internal services
5. Staff: the people who do the work of the business
6. ICV (Ideology, Culture, and Values)

These different types of organizations below are pure types. It's unlikely that your organization will exclusively fit only one;  might have elements of more than one.

Entrepreneur

An entrepreneur leading a new business

• Strong leader who manages
• Staff who do as they're told.

Machine structure (e.g. mass production):

• Strong top level leadership
• Middle management is hierarchical and controlling
• Technostructure has great deal of informal power.
• Has support staff to provide internal services
• Staff do highly specialized and standardized jobs.
• ICV (Ideology, Culture, and Values) is often quite strong and used unconsciously to reinforce power structures.

Professional organization

• Little or no technostructure
• Middle management is small
• Staff are professionals who are given considerable power and autonomy

Diversified or conglomerate organization

• A head office has its own top level leadership a technostructure and support staff.
• Divisions have their own top level leadership, middle management, technostructure, support staff, and staff.
• Divisions might also have separate, different ICVs. In a conglomerate, a separate ICV can be good, in that each division needs to understand its industry niche. However, separate ICVs can be destructive when they hinder cooperation and synergy between divisions.

Innovative technology organization

• The structure is defined primarily as flexible self-leading teams of collaborating experts working on projects. It doesn't use the six categories.

The missionary organization

• The ICV is the controlling factor, so consensus, vision and purpose are essential to determining direction and activities.
• The top level leadership exercise minimal control and the organization is generally loosely structured. It may even be quite disorganized and lack significant expertize.

The political organization

• Political organizations are poorly organized and structured; their direction is determined by the horse-trading and lobbying of various power groups within it. They can be long-term if they are entrenched, such as a monopoly or a government department.

The "feminine" organization

• The top level leadership provide direction and vision, but try to avoid being seen as controlling people.
• The middle management and technostructure are minimal.
• The organization encourages members to give each other mutual support and to meet personal fulfilment goals.
• The ICV (vision and purpose) are essential to determining direction and activities and to motivating members.

 

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