Organization Design

Designing an organization structure is an important step in starting businesses. This designing is divided into some bolded elements, which are: work specialization, when works are separated into tasks; departmentalization, which is basically the grouping of jobs; chain of command, that are ways to control; span of control, which is the capacity policy of what each supervisor can handle at a time; centralization-decentralization, which is a structural decision maker rule; and last is formalization, which focuses on the regulations made to keep the organization in control.

There are two types of structures existing: mechanistic and organic. A mechanistic structure is what so they called a fixed and well-organized structure — not more to be changed. An organic structure, on the other hand, is more to something flexible, can be changed anytime depending on the needs.

The thing is, there is always a relation between organization structure and the strategy used. If one needs to be renewed, then the other needs to be as well. It is known that an organic structure will be more useful with unit and process production technology, and that a mechanistic structure is most convenient with mass production technology.

There is, in fact, a simpler way of designing an organizational structure. Through the traditional option, organizations are allowed to make more of an uncomplicated structure involving wider spans of control, but less departmentalization and formalization. This is built up by also knowing a functional structure — which is a structure dividing groups based on their similarity in tasks/specializations, or a divisional structure — which involves the process of business units or divisions separation.

I personally think that organizational design is something crucial to be built in a well-thought way as a base of an organization to start working in an efficient and effective way possible.

Resource: Pearson’s Management (Global Edition) written by Stephen P. Robbins and Mary A. Coulter.