What Are the Five Basic Organizational Forms

What Are the Five Basic Organizational Forms

If a company relies on more than a few experts in its field, the company can leave with a professional organizational model. Examples of these types of businesses may include law firms, schools, consulting firms, or innovative technology companies. Hiring skilled employees is just the first step in building a high-performing organization. You need to make sure that each team member fits in. They need a clear organizational structure. With a new organizational structure, conduct a performance review and talk to executives. It`s important that you monitor the contribution of each department – chances are the changes won`t work equally well for everyone in the company. Of course, the organizational design can be rebuilt if necessary. The business landscape is constantly changing, and sticking to a structure that has worked for years can simply become inefficient. Within a matrix organizational structure, team members report to multiple managers at the same time. Wait, what`s the point? From functional reporting to flat decision-making, these five types of organizational structures offer unique benefits. To adapt to changes in the market, you may need to resort to organizational transformation that impacts not only your strategy, but also your structure.

Whether you want to create an organizational structure from scratch or reorganize the existing one, you need to focus on the basics. Once you`ve set up an organizational structure, it`s never too late to make adjustments. In addition to performance reviews, survey your employees to find out what they think of a new structure. Their input may help you refine the organizational design without additional cost or effort. To build an organizational structure, you need to consider your company`s size, life cycle, goals, and positioning. In addition to considering the current environment in which your company operates, you should also think about where you want to see the organization in five years, as it is a pillar of organizational health. An organizational structure helps companies assign tasks and responsibilities to different employees and departments. It also helps everyone understand where they fit into a business operation and who they report to. Examining management guru Henry Mintzberg`s original organizational structures into five different models will help you choose the best one for your small business.

Talk to stakeholders and set deadlines for setting up a brand new organizational structure. Prepare a list of recommendations for senior managers and team leaders that will help communicate the change to the rest of the organization. In some divisions, the different business units share certain functions performed by the head office, such as insurance, telecommunications, real estate and even support for human resources, IT and accounting. With other models, each business unit is almost completely independent. Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick and GMC, all operated under the supervision of General Motors, fall into the “division” category of Mintzberg`s organizational structure examples. An innovative organization differs from an entrepreneurial organizational model in that the former refers to greater control by new founders, while the latter refers to the continuous development of new products. Innovative organizations often hire temporary workers to develop a new product or service, explains business management website MindTools. You must already have an idea of what a hierarchical structure is. This is the most common type of organizational structure that follows a direct chain of command. This lack of structure leads to misunderstandings, work delays, poor processes, low morale, and other serious consequences that hinder the company`s growth.

In contrast, a strong organizational structure helps coordinate teamwork, reduce conflict, and increase productivity. This type of model gives experts more autonomy to create and achieve their goals. Management always sets the company`s long-term strategic goals, but professionals have more influence over the development of new products or services and product development. Every professional running a division often has staff who follow a more traditional “totem” organizational hierarchy. In a flat organizational structure, there are only a few middle managers between employees and senior managers. The structure requires less oversight, increases employee involvement and increases trust in the workplace. To create a functional organizational structure, you need to train leaders to encourage cross-departmental collaboration. From there, leaders should create an implementation plan that includes training their teams to take on new roles and skills, as well as adhering to a new decision-making and reporting framework.

Week after week, employees get used to their new organizational structure and adapt to change. They need a project charter that outlines the purpose of building a clear structure, the main stakeholders and their responsibilities. This is your rough plan for implementing an organizational structure that will give you direction for your next steps. The biggest disadvantage of a centralized organizational structure is the time it takes to make the decision-making process in large companies. Imagine that a customer support manager is asked to implement an exclusive package for a high-ticket customer. To obtain authorization, they would have to execute the request in the chain of command and wait for it to be processed by senior management. If the request is approved, a high-ticket customer may no longer be there. Let`s take a look at the seven types of organizational structures and choose the one that strengthens your business.

An organizational structure is based on a number of elements, including: As mentioned earlier, decisions in a centralized organizational structure are made by senior management and distributed throughout the chain of command. The functional structure groups positions into work units based on similar activities, skills, expertise and resources (see Figure 1 for a functional organizational chart). Production, marketing, finance and human resources are common groupings within a functional structure. A clear understanding of your company`s strategy allows you to filter out irrelevant types of organizational structures and choose the one that aligns with your core values, mission, and goals. The people involved are experts at what they do, and they often work for multiple companies. Imagine a film studio that makes a film and uses a director, producer, screenwriter and actor to make a film. Pharmaceutical companies often use this business model to build temporary scientific teams to develop new drugs, which are then handed over to the marketing team. The main goal of any organizational structure is to simplify processes.

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