管理学第五章概要

Basic Organization Designs

Where We Are

Organization design means to develop or change (create) the organization’s structure:

•How specialized job be allocated

•Rules to guide employees behavior

•At what level decisions to be made

It is the top manager’s main concern, while others managers ... Chapter guide

We will discuss in this chapter

•6 basic structural elements

•4 contingency variables

•5 types of designs

•10 characteristics of culture

6 Basic Elements of Structure

•By definition, an organization is a systematic arrangement of

people to accomplish some specific purpose, where the

systematic arrangement is what we call structure here.

•How can you say 2 organizations are different ---- the difference between organizations in term of their structure?

•The bases of organization design formulated in 1900s, most of

them still apply

Work Specialization

•Work specialization, or Division of labor describes the degree

to which organizational tasks are subdivided into separate jobs.

In 1700s Adam Smith found dividing job into small pieces can increase the productivity. (Wealth of Nations). An entire job is not done by one person. Instead, it is divided into discrete steps, each one completed by a different person. In his pin factory story: •1-20 per day each worker when work independently,

•48000 per day when 10 workers work together but each

only do a part of 200---5000 times!

•Why can division of labor increase productivity?

Individual: skill and training, tools and special equipment, focus, ….

Group: use labor skill

Ex: PC assembly line

•The changes of people’s belief and attitude towards the

economies of work specialization:

Early proponents believed that work specialization could lead to indefinitely increasing productivity. Since specialization was not widely practiced at the turn of the twentieth century, their belief was reasonable.

By the late 1940s, work specialization enabled manufacturing firms to make the most effective use of their employees’ skills. So, managers believed that division of labor offered an unending source of increased productivity.

By the 1960s, however, the human diseconomies resulting from work specialization began to offset the economic advantages. Managers today realize that while division of labor is appropriate for some jobs, productivity in other jobs can be increased through enlarging, not narrowing, job activities. ---- Job enriching trend Chain of Command

•Chain of command: the route of orders go through in the

organization ---- the mechanism make the organization a whole •Chain of Command Principle: No person should report to more than one boss

Past: a logical concept to simple structure organizations

Now: sound for most organizations/many cases but too strict adherence may lead to inflexibility

Span of Control

•Span of control: the number of subordinates a manager directly