ORGANIZATION STRUCTURE

An organizational structure consists of activities such as task allocation, coordination and supervision, which are directed towards the achievement of organizational aims. It can also be considered as the viewing glass or perspective through which individuals see their organization and its environment.

Organizational structure affects organizational action in two big ways. 

a) Provides the foundation on which standard operating procedures and routines rest. 

b) Determines which individuals get to participate in which decision-making processes, and thus to what extent their views shape the organization’s actions.

The set organizational structure may not coincide with facts, evolving in operational action. Such divergence decreases performance, when growing. E.g., a wrong organizational structure may hamper cooperation and thus hinder the completion of orders in due time and within limits of resources and budgets. Organizational structures shall be adaptive to process requirements, aiming to optimize the ratio of effort and input to output.

4 Basic Elements of Organizational Structure

a) Span of Control: Number of people directly reporting to the next level in the hierarchy.

b) Centralization: Degree to which formal decision authority is held be a small group of people, typically those at the top of the organizational hierarchy.

c) Formalization: Degree to which organizations standardize behavior through rules, procedures, formal training, and related mechanisms.

d) Departmentalization: Organizational charts that specifies how employees and their activities are grouped together.

TYPES OF ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURES

a) Functional Organization

 

This type of organizational structure:

 - Brings together in one department everyone engaged in one activity or several related activities that are called FUNCTIONS. 

   For example: As shown, the organization is divided by functions into different departments like sales, finance, engineering, HR. A sales manager would be responsible for the sale of all the products which are manufactured by the firm.

  - This leads to operational efficiencies within that group. However it could also lead to a lack of communication between the functional groups within an organization, making the organization slow and inflexible.

 - Mainly used by the smaller firms that offer a limited line of products.

 - Makes supervision easier as each manager must be expert in only a narrow range of skills. It also helps to group a particular set of people with the specialized kind of skill set.

 - But as the organization grow and diversify, some of the problems begin to surface:

   i) As each department functional managers need to report to central headquarters (President), it can be difficult to make quick decisions.

   ii) Harder to judge performance because which department to blame when a new product fails.

   iii) Difficult to coordinate the functions of members of the entire organization as each department may have difficulty working with other departments in a unified way to achieve organizational goals.

b) Product/Market/Divisional Organization

  - Brings together in one work unit all those involved in the production and marketing of a product or a related group of products, all those in a certain geographic area, or all those dealing with a certain type of customer.

  - Can follow three patterns as described above:

    i) DIVISION BY PRODUCT

As shown the categorization (division) has been done on the basis of broad category of products. And each category of related group of products has its own marketing, sales, purchasing and inventory manager.

    ii) DIVISION BY GEOGRAPHY

 

Geographical organization is logical when a plant must be located as close as possible to sources of raw materials, to major markets, or to specialized personnel.

   iii) DIVISION BY CUSTOMER 

The organization is divided according to the different ways customers use products.

 

c) Matrix Organization/ Multiple Command System

 

  - Employees have in effect 2 bosses ie. 2 chains of command. One chain of command is functional or divisional and the second is a horizontal overlay that combines people from various divisions or functional departments into a project or business team led by a project or group manager who is an expert in the team's assigned area of specialization.

 - For example, many large companies have a corporate human resources division, with individual HR representatives stationed at local facilities. At the local level, the HR representative may report to the operations manager charged with responsibility for that facility. However, the operations manger does not likely have specific expertise in human resource management and is not directly involved in setting corporate HR initiatives. For that reason, the HR representative may also report to a corporate HR manager or director, resulting is a matrix structure

 - Bring together the diverse specialized skills required to solve a complex problem.

 - Problems of coordination are minimized here because the most important personnel for a project work together as a group. They come to understand the demands faced by those who have different areas of responsibility.

 - Gives the organization a great deal of cost-saving flexibility because each project is assigned only to the required people and unnecessary duplication is avoided.

 - To be effective, team members must have good interpersonal skills and flexibility and cooperation.

- Additional Business Structure Considerations: Flat vs. Tall

In addition to defining the reporting structure, businesses structures can also be described in terms of whether the organization is tall or flat. This characteristic refers to how many layers of management there are in an organization.

A tall organization is quite hierarchical, with several different levels of management. Individual managers have a narrow span of control, with a relatively small number of employees in their direct reporting line. Decision making tends to be centralized with management in tall organizations.

A flat organization is one where there are relatively few levels of management. Supervisory employees tend to have a wide span of control, which means they are likely to have a relatively large number of direct reports. Decision making is less centralized, with employees being empowered to exercise discretion in their work and having an opportunity to participate in much of the decision making that takes place.

- Choosing an Organizational Structure

Choosing among the types of business organizational structures is a big decision that should not be taken lightly. It's important to look an organization's size, number of facilities located in different geographic areas, marketing strategy, business philosophy, and other factors when making this decision. Regardless of the type of structure you choose, it's important to clearly communicate expectations to employees at all levels, making sure that each member of the team is clear about his or her reporting lines.

Written By

Jubin Dey

PGDIM-20,NITIE

MY DIGITAL CV

   My first take at making a DIGITAL CV thanks to Prof. Mandi at NITIE,Mumbai.
   Please take a look at it where I had correlated the Principles of Organization & Management with
   my leadership qualities at my work place.Hope you all will like it and don't forget to give
   feedbacks.
 
                   
                     




Jubin Dey
PGDIM -20
NITIE

THE MIXED BAG of Magnet,Pyramid,Fibonacci.........

The principles of organisation and management can be best understood by taking in examples from our practical life.The utility of such things are known to all of us but their implementation in understanding the nitty-gritty of management requires rational thinking.In this article I shall be taking up each parameter required for forming and guiding a team to success.

ALIGNMENT:    
"There is a magnet in your heart that will attract true friends. That magnet is unselfishness, thinking of others first; when you learn to live for others, they will live for you."
Magnates are like magnets which hold a team together.The attracting property of a magnet aligns the dipoles in a specified direction which can be correlated to the concept of unity of direction.The influence of a magnet can bring out the aligning properties in the individual dipoles just as a magnate can lead a team to the summit.The alignment of roles of people is one of the important task that any influential manager should perform.Theory Y of McGregor can be applied for such type of hopeful managers who brings out the best from the subordinates.

STABILITY:Just as the force of attraction between the nucleus (consisting of the protons)and the constantly revolving electron in an atom makes  it stable, a successful manager can bring stability to the organisation if he has the power to hold his team at all times.The onus is on the manager to be charismatic enough to bring out the synergistic effects of his subordinates and provide the team with motivation and determination.

OPTIMISTIC:The concept of magnet can be related with  the principles of organization and management if we consider that positive and negative oulooks are part of every human being and like a magnet which helps in aligning the bipolar particles in a given direction it is the duty of an empathetic manager to minimise as much negativities as possible within the team to make it achieve its realistic goal.

CO-ORDINATION:Now how can we  connect between the repulsive property of a magnet and principles of organization and management? We can consider that on bringing in two magnets of same poles  from two opposite directions  they repel each other just as two managers working in two different directions and straying away from the common goal of the organisation can do no good to the organisation as a whole.

 HIERARCHY:Thus in accordance with the principles of organisation the pyramidal structure should be maintained in order to assign stability to the hierarchical structure. The foundation should always be strong so that it can hold the apex in times of disaster.The unity of direction is followed and every block in the pyramid is of equal size so as to abide by the law of the organisation that

                                                     "Every employee is equal and special"

The above structure will look the same from whichever angle we look thereby denoting equality.

EVOLUTION: The word evolution reminds me of giving rise to diversity for  propelling forward.The shell of a snail illustrates the concept of spiral which every manager should harp on and instill in the minds of every subordinate for continuous improvement.Each addition in each step should be like the Fibonacci spiral where the rate of acceleration is ever increasing.The hunger to have more in terms of improvement productivity, efficiency and excellence should always remain as the top priority for every team member.













With this another POM blog comes to an end.
Do send in the feedbacks.


JUBIN DEY
PGDIM-20,NITIE

MANAGEMENT OF THREE IDIOTS

    

INTRODUCTION  

The adjacent situation shows that three people have to cross a valley where they can use a pole but can’t jump to go to the other side.With much thought the plan was chalked out and it was found that only by the following nine steps they can accomplish their target. But to accomplish the target they need to take a deep introspection on factors like risk factor, team work, leadership,distribution of work ,etc.

WHAT IS TEAM WORK?

Team Work is an important entity for propelling a team forward. It is the bonding between the individual persons of the team based on trust and faith. The manager of the team has to ensure that there is proper esprit de corps in his team. Without it the team is going to fall apart no matter how skilful the persons are within that team. A team can stand only if it is united. Even in the world of Mother Nature we find that 

migratory birds fly in a team travelling long distances enduring the harsh climatic conditions and finding the right directions to achieve their goals. Co-ordination is the key to success.



THE RISK FACTOR
The risk factor associated with all three persons is loss of life.If any one of them commits a mistake then there would be apocalyptic consequences. Mathematically all three persons are entitled with the same risk factor where each one has 6 safe conditions ,2 half safe conditions and 1 unsafe condition in these 9 steps.

STRUCTURING THE TEAM
1. Psychological: The  first person has to be of the strongest mentality in order to show the path to the other two so that they can emulate him. He has to be the MAN OF STEEL  among the three since no one prior
to him has done it. The man with the weakest heart among the three should be in the middle so as to give him the confidence that there is someone behind him.

2. Physical: The strength of any two persons should be such that they can hold the pole straight when the  third person will be in fully unsafe condition. At every time FOUR legs are bearing the load of ONE person.
The person with the MAXIMUM weight should be in the middle(fulcrum) to avoid unstable equilibrium.



LEADERSHIP
In this situation the leadership is key to the completion of the task. The participative  form of leadership is  important to maintain harmony throughout the work.Each person should be motivated to do the work and made him realise his importance.

DISTRIBUTION OF WORK
Division of work is important so as to ensure each of the three person was undertaking equal and similar work without any variation.  However, important point to be noted is that all though same and equal work is being done by the three people, the sequence of the same work varies among the same three persons. This variation in distribution of work has its own implications for each of the individuals.


With the above views this blog comes to an end.

Do send in the feedbacks

JUBIN DEY
PGDIM-20,NITIE

THE NITTY-GRITTY OF TOWER BUILDING

         
  Can anyone say what foundations are required to build a tower?
  Think,think and think............

  the answer is organisation management.....
 As a kid I use to place cards on top of one another trying to  build a storeyed building but would fail all time after reaching a particular height.At such a tender age I was unable to decipher the real reason behind the failure.It was only through the Principles of Organisation and Management lectures of Dr. Mandi made me realize that the target set was not SMART.

Experiment 1: Dr.Mandi gave us a stimulating lecture on the Tower Building lessons and helped us in correlating the idea with modern management.He gave us a class activity where one student was asked to build a tower with
small wooden cubes such that the tower would be resting only on a single cube and not more than that.Prior to building the tower he was asked as to what target he would like to set for himself. With the set goal in mind the activity started but finally the tower made was of a lower height than the set target. Here he explained us the concept of goal setting where A>B>C>D as shown in the adjacent picture.

A= Goal set
B= Potential
C= Goal achieved
D= History


Inferences:
 1. The potential of the workforce is to be realized before setting the goal 
 2. The goal set should always be higher than the goal achieved.
 3. Aiming high is the key to success for any organisation.
 4. Goals set should be specific,measurable,achievable,realistic and time-bound.


Experiment 2: After completion of the first activity Dr. Mandi modified the task and asked for seven more students to volunteer so that the newly appointed seven students would be guiding the previous student in building the tower as he would be blindfolded.With a set target the group started their activity but could not build the tower in time.Here  again he explained us the concept of POSDCORB.



Inferences:
1. Without proper POSDCORB an organisation cannot sustain.
2.  Proper planning and organizing are the strongest backbones of setting an organisation.The absence of any one would shake the foundation.It is always better to do homeworks rather than fail in exams.
3. Proper staffing, directing and co-ordinating among the managers and the workers are a must for accomplishment of the goal of an organisation.
4. Proper reporting and budgeting are directly related to an organisation's profit margins and should never be neglected.



Realization: The team of migratory birds that travel long distances from one place to another with a set goal of reaching a destination of cold climes is a perfect example of organising,staffing,directing and co-ordinating.Similar to them,the human body is another example of such co-ordination. Now keeping aside Mother Nature I find that for an organisation to have a firm footing in the corporate world the managers and the workers should restore to POSDCORB among themselves.From my personal experience of working in a petrochemical company I can say that lack of any co-ordination between two or more departments can lead to bottlenecks.Improper planning and coordination between procurement department of naphtha and operations department of my previous organization led to naphtha shortage( being the raw material of my previous organisation) and untimely increase of plant throughput  incurred huge losses for the organisation.What the system lacked was POSDCORB.


These are some of my inferences to the above two experiments
Do send in the feedbacks.....


Jubin  Dey
NITIE - PGDIM-20

THREE MONKS - FRAGMENTED............

 

  Three Monks is a Chinese animated film produced by the Shanghai animation film studio and directed 

   by A Da is  based on the proverb that

     

 "One monk will shoulder two buckets of water, two monks will share the load, but add a third and    no one will want to fetch water".

 The story is about three priests who show the concept of team work after realising that only planning, co-ordination, co-operation, staffing could make them achieve their set goal with increased productivity. 

Fragmenting the story we can see that that there are 5 parts to it.

Part 1: The story starts with a monastery located on a cliff where one monk visits it and finds that the religious flower in front of the deity is in wilted condition as there was no water in the flower vase. He starts searching for stored water inside the monastery but all in vain. Hence he goes all by himself to fetch two buckets of water placed on either side of the bamboo stick which rested on his shoulders.

Calculating the productivity (P) of the above mentioned job,we find that P = 2buckets/1person. Had the first monk carried one bucket of water on his head without using the bamboo stick then the productivity(P) would have been equal to 1bucket/1person.

Part 2:  The arrival of the 2^nd  monk changes the framework of the story where both gets reluctant to fetch water alone. So they thought of placing the bamboo stick on the shoulder of  each one with the bucket in the middle. However the confrontation still continued as to where exactly the bucket is to be placed. Finally the bucket was placed in the middle of the bamboo stick after measuring the spot with a scale so as to ensure even load distribution on each of the monks.Here the productivity improves as compared to the cases where each person carries a bucket on his head or both the persons carry two buckets separately using two different bamboo sticks.

Part 3: The entry of the 3^rd monk into the scene does no help as conflict starts among them. No one was willing to fetch water as there was lack of co-ordination and team building skills. Each one demonstrated selfishness and tried to satisfy one’s own thirst.

Part 4: The incident of a fire inside the monastery set the platform where all three monks with a common goal of dousing the flame toiled hard to get water from the nearby river and was finally successful in extinguishing the inferno.

Part 5: The realisation that the three monks had after this incident are basically the learnings of this animated story. They resorted to a pulley system for fetching the water from the river to the monastery with proper team dynamics and structure that eased their efforts.

Learnings:

1. Common and clear goal sets the foundation of work in an organisation. Managers and workers know what they have to achieve so that they could be a part of a team believing in participative management.

e.g. the goal of dousing the flame to prevent catastrophe.

2. Proper co-ordination and team work can easily accomplish the set goal.

e.g. the fetching of water with the equimodal method.

3. “United we stand divided we fall”  should be the backbone of every organisation.

e.g. no unity no water to drink .

4. Innovation leads to a spiralling growth of the productivity of an organisation.

e.g. the pulley system.

5. The structure of an organisation is an important parameter for it to sustain.

e.g. the obese monk at the bottom of the cliff and the supposedly strong and agile monk with the task of carrying the bucket.

Real life example: In a relay race it is seen that the runners running with the baton have a set goal with proper co-ordination, proper team dynamics and proper staffing. The sequence of the runnners that are to follow is always pre-determined to achieve the maximum productivity out of the runners with the goal of  reaching the finishing line first.If the proper structure is not made then the goal can never be reached.Only a proper synchronization between the runners can achieve them the feat.

These are some of my observations regarding this story .
Would love to hear your comments/suggestions/criticisms. 

Jubin Dey
PGDIM-20

SMARTness with PYGMALION effect and Theory Y

 INTRO to SMART: Are  you  SMART?????

This is what Prof.Mandi taught us in the Principles of  Organization and Management.

Now  lets decode  SMART.

S=  Simple, Specific, Sustainable

M= Measurable, Motivating               

A= Achievable, Ambitious

R= Realistic, Rational, Relevant, Result-focussed

T= Tangible,Time-bound

Does it make sense…….for an organisation to follow the above code to reach its set goal or mission. Let us explore them further ,one by one.

EXPLORING SMARTness:

S= The set goal of an organisation should be apt enough to reach its employees,customers and peers.Specifically mentioning it and proving its sustainability is the onus that the management of the organisation has to take.

M= The achievement of the goal can be measured by means of the performance of the organisation and comparing them with its peers.The motivation to the employees is to be  provided by the management in accordance with McGregor’s Theory Y for reaching the goal.

A= Achievable and ambitious goals prove the management of the organisation to be rational and practical. It shows the degree of trust the management of an organisation has in the potential of its workforce.

R= The organisation’s strive for excellence is brought forward through its result-focussed goal.

T= Time bound goal proves the value of time that an organisation considers for reaching the summit. 

Now taking an example the above concept can be proved where a person wants to lose 10kgs of weight and only by applying the concept of SMART goal setting he can perform to achieve it.

 SMART,PYGMALION and THEORY Y:

For an organisation to achieve the realistic set goal, the "PYGMALION EFFECT" should be brought forth where the managers of the organisation of Theory Y type should put on greater expectations on their subordinates to enhance their performance.

Thus ,

                                    Realistic Goal Set  X  Realistic Goal Achieved = Performance

One can summarize the Pygmalion effect, often known as the power of expectations, by considering:

• Every supervisor has expectations of the people who report to him/her.
• Supervisors communicate these expectations consciously or unconsciously.
• People pick up on, or consciously or unconsciously read, these expectations from their supervisor.
• People perform in ways that are consistent with the expectations they have picked up on from the supervisor.

 Similarly for the tower building exercise  persons with closed eyes can reach the SMART goal of setting up the tower provided the PYGMALION EFFECT is instilled in them positively by THEORY Y managers.

Another example that can be brought forth is that disabled persons under proper tutelage of Theory Y instructors get motivated positively under PYGMALION effect and do achieve their SMART goal.

With this the blog ends.............

do read and give suggestive feedbacks

Jubin Dey

PGDIM-20