Benefits of Specialization

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•Job –The degree to which the overall task of the organization is broken down and divided into smaller

maller component parts


specialization

Benefits of Workers can become proficient at a task.


Specialization Transfer time between tasks is decreased.
Specialized equipment can be more easily developed.
Employee replacement becomes easier
•Limitations Workers who perform highly specialized jobs quickly become bored and dissatisfied.
of Anticipated benefits of specialization do not always occur.
Specialization
•Alternatives –Job rotation
to •An alternative to job specialization that involves systematically moving employees from one job to another
Specialization –Job enlargement
•An alternative to job specialization that increases the total number of tasks that workers perform
–Job enrichment
•An alternative to job specialization that attempts to increase both the number of tasks a worker does and the control the worker h
–Job characteristics approach
•An alternative to job specialization that suggests that jobs should be diagnosed and improved along five core dimensions, taking in

Job Skill variety:The number of things a person does in a job


Characteristic Task identity:The extent to which the worker does a complete or identifiable portion of the total job
s Approach: Task significance:The perceived importance of the task
Core Autonomy:The degree of control the worker has over how the work is performed
Dimensions Feedback:The extent to which the worker knows how well the job is being performed

•Work teams –An alternative to job specialization that allows an entire group to design the work system it will use to perform an interrelated set o
•Departmental The process of grouping jobs according to some logical arrangement
ization
Functional Grouping jobs involving the same or similar activities
Departmentali •Advantages
zation –Each department can be staffed by experts in that functional area.
–Supervision is facilitated because an individual manager needs to be familiar only with a relatively narrow set of skills.
–Coordinating activities inside each department is easier.
Disadvantages
Decision making tends to become slower and more bureaucratic.
Employees may begin to concentrate too narrowly on their own function and lose sight of the total organizational system.
Accountability and performance become increasingly difficult to monitor.
Grouping jobs involving the same or similar activities
•Advantages
–Each department can be staffed by experts in that functional area.
–Supervision is facilitated because an individual manager needs to be familiar only with a relatively narrow set of skills.
–Coordinating activities inside each department is easier.

Product Grouping activities around products or product groups


Departmentali •Advantages
zation –All activities associated with one product or product group can be easily integrated and coordinated.
–The speed and effectiveness of decision making are enhanced.
–The performance of individual products or product groups can be assessed more easily and objectively.
•Disadvantages
–Managers in each department may focus on their own product or product group to the exclusion of the rest of the organization.
–Administrative costs rise because each department must have its own functional-area specialists.
Customer Grouping activities to respond to and interact with specific customers or customer groups
Departmentali •Advantage
zation –Skilled specialists can deal with unique customers or customer groups.
•Disadvantage
–A fairly large administrative staff is required to integrate activities of various departments.

Location Grouping jobs on the basis of defined geographic sites or areas


Departmentali •Advantage
zation –It enables the organization to respond easily to unique customer and environmental characteristics.
•Disadvantage
A large administrative staff may be required to keep track of units in scattered locations

Establishing •Chain of command


Reporting –A clear and distinct line of authority among the positions in an organization
Relationships –The chain of command has two components:
1.Unity of command
–Suggests that each person within an organization must have a clear reporting relationship to one and only one boss

•Span of –The number of people who report to a particular manager


management –There are no universal, cut-and-dried prescriptions for an ideal or optimal span of management.
•Tall Organizations
–Are more expensive because of the larger number of managers involved
–Foster more communication problems because of the increased number of people through whom information must pass
•Flat Organizations
–Lead to higher levels of employee morale and productivity
–Create more administrative responsibility because there are fewer managers

Distributing Authority:Power that has been legitimized by the organization


Authority •The Delegation Process
–Delegation
•The process by which a manager assigns a portion of his or her total workload to others
–The delegation process involves three steps:
1.The manager assigns responsibility or gives the subordinate a job to do.
2.The individual is given the authority to do the job.
3.The manager establishes the subordinate’s accountability—that is, the subordinate accepts an obligation to ca

•Decentralizat –Decentralization
ion and •The process of systematically delegating power and authority throughout the organization to middle- and lower-level managers
Centralization –Centralization
•The process of systematically retaining power and authority in the hands of higher-level managers
–Factors that determine an organization’s position on the decentralization–centralization continuum:
•The organization’s external environment
–In general, the greater the complexity and uncertainty of the environment, the greater is the tendency to decentralize.
•The history of the organization
•The nature of the decisions
–The costlier and riskier the decisions, the more pressure there is to centralize.

Coordinating Coordination
Activities The process of linking the activities of the various departments of the organization
•The Need for Coordination
–The primary reason for coordination is that departments and work groups are interdependent—they depend on one another for in
•The greater the independence between departments, the more coordination the organization requires if departments are to be ab
There are three major forms of interdependence:
1)Pooled interdependence
–When units operate with little interaction; their output is pooled at the organizational level
2)Sequential interdependence
–When the output of one unit becomes the input for another in a sequential fashion
3)Reciprocal interdependence
–When activities flow both ways between units

Structural Structural Coordination Techniques: Management Hierarchy,Rules and Procedures,Managerial Liaison Roles,Task Forces,Integratin
Coordination
Techniques

The •Bureaucracy
Bureaucratic –A model of organization design based on a legitimate and formal system of authority
Model of According to Weber, the ideal bureaucracy exhibits five basic characteristics:
Organization A distinct division of labor with each position filled by an expert
Design A consistent set of rules to ensure uniformity in task performance
A hierarchy of positions or offices that creates a chain of command from the top of the organization to the bottom
Impersonal management with appropriate social distance between managers and subordinates
Employment and advancement based on technical expertise, and employees protected from arbitrary dismissal
•Advantages
–Improves efficiency
–Helps minimize favoritism or bias
–Makes procedures and practices very clear to everyone
•Disadvantages
–Results in inflexibility and rigidity
–Making exceptions to or changing rules is difficult
–Results in the neglect of human and social processes within the organization

Situational •Situational view of organization design


Influences on –Based on the assumption that the optimal design for any given organization depends on a set of relevant situational factors
Organization •Situational factors include:
Design –Technology
–Environment
–Organizational size and life cycle
•Technology
–Conversion process used to transform inputs to outputs

•Technology
"Three basic forms of technology were identified by Woodward:
Unit or small-batch technology
The product is custom-made to customer specifications or produced in small quantities.
Example: a printing shop that produces business cards
Large-batch or mass-production technology
The product is manufactured in assembly-line fashion by combining component parts into another part of finished product.
Example: an automobile manufacturer
Continuous-process technology
Raw materials are transformed to a finished product by a series of machine or process transformations.
Example: a chemical refinery
"
"Woodward found:
Unit or small-batch technology and continuous-process firms tend to have very little bureaucracy, whereas large-batch or mass-prod
Organizational success was related to the extent to which organizations followed the typical pattern appropriate to their technology
"

Environment "research focused on identifying extreme forms of organizational environment.


Stable environments that remain constant over time
Unstable environments subject to uncertainty and rapid change
"
"they studied the designs of organizations in each type of environment.
Mechanistic organizations occur most frequently in stable environments.
Organic organizations are most often found in unstable and unpredictable environments.
"
"These ideas were extended by Paul R. Lawrence and Jay W. Lorsch.
They predicted that each organizational unit has a unique environment and responds by developing unique attributes.
Lawrence and Lorsch suggested that organizations could be characterized along two primary dimensions:
1. Differentiation
Extent to which the organization is broken down into subunits
2. Integration
Degree to which the various subunits must work together in a coordinated fashion
The degree of differentiation and integration needed by an organization depends on the stability of the environments that its subun
"

Organizationa Organizational size


l Size and Life Total number of full-time or full-time equivalent employees
Cycle Research findings:
Small firms tend to focus on their core technologies.
Large firms tend to be characterized by higher levels of job specialization, more standard operating procedures, more rules and regu
Organizational life cycle
Progression through which organizations evolve as they grow and mature—birth, youth, midlife, and maturity.

6-4 Basic Most organization designs fall into one of four basic categories:
Forms of Functional (U-form) design
Organization Conglomerate (H-form) design
Design Divisional (M-form) design
Matrix design
Others are hybrids based on two or more of the basic forms.

Functional (U- Functional design


Form) Design Based on the functional approach to departmentalization
Has been termed the “U-form” (for unitary) approach
The members and units in the organization are grouped into functional departments.
For the organization to operate efficiently in this design, there must be considerable coordination across departments.

The basic advantages are that it allows the organization to staff all important positions with functional experts, and it facilitates coor
On the other hand, it promotes a functional, rather than an organizational, focus and tends to promote centralization.
Functionally based designs are most commonly used in small organizations.

Conglomerate "Conglomerate design


(H-Form) Used by an organization made up of a set of unrelated businesses
Design Has been termed the “H-form” (for holding, as in holding company) approach
This approach is based loosely on the product form of departmentalization.
Each business or set of businesses is operated by a general manager who is responsible for its profits or losses, and each general ma
"
"In an H-form organization, a corporate staff usually elevates the performance of each business, allocates corporate resources acros
The basic shortcoming of the H-form design is the complexity associated with holding diverse and unrelated businesses.
Managers usually find comparing and integrating activities across a large number of diverse operations difficult.
Research suggests that many organizations following this approach achieve only average-to-weak financial performance, and many

6-4c Divisional Divisional design


(M-Form) Based on multiple businesses in related areas operating within a larger organizational framework
Design (slide 1 Has been termed the “M-form” (for multidivisional) approach
of 2) This design results from a strategy of related diversification.
Some activities are decentralized down to the divisional level; others are centralized at the corporate level.

Matrix Design "Based on two overlapping bases of departmentalization


A set of product groups, or temporary departments, is superimposed across the functional departments.
Employees in a matrix are simultaneously members of a functional department and of a project team.
The matrix creates a multiple-command structure in which an employee reports to both a functional supervisor and one or more pro
"The matrix form of organization design is most often used in one of three situations:
When there is strong pressure from the environment
When large amounts of information need to be processed
When there is pressure for shared resources
"
"Advantages
It enhances flexibility because teams can be created, redefined, and dissolved as needed.
It fosters high motivation and increased organizational commitment.
The matrix design provides considerable opportunity for employees to learn new skills.
It provides an efficient way for the organization to take full advantage of its human resources.
It allows team members to serve as bridges between their functional unit and the team.
The matrix design is a useful device for decentralization.
"
"Disadvantages
Employees may be uncertain about reporting relationships.
Some managers may view the matrix as an anarchy in which they have unlimited freedom.
The dynamics of group behavior may lead to slower decision making, one-person domination, compromised decisions, or a loss of fo
More time may be required for coordinating task-related activities.

Hybrid Some organizations use a design that represents a hybrid of two or more of the common forms of organizational design.
Designs Few companies use a design in its pure form; most firms have one basic organization design as a foundation for managing the busine
Some organizations use a design that represents a hybrid of two or more of the common forms of organizational design.
Few companies use a design in its pure form; most firms have one basic organization design as a foundation for managing the busine

The Team Team organization


Organization An approach to organization design that relies almost exclusively on project-type teams, with little or no underlying hierarchy
Within such an organization, people float from project to project as necessitated by their skills and the demands of those projects.

6-5b The Virtual organization


Virtual One that has little or no formal structure
Organization Such an organization typically has only a handful of permanent employees and a very small staff and administrative headquarters fa
As the needs of the organization change, its managers bring in temporary workers, lease facilities, and outsource basic support servi
Increasingly, virtual organizations are conducting most—if not all—of their businesses online.

The Learning Learning organization


Organization One that works to facilitate the lifelong learning and personal development of all its employees while continually transforming itself
The idea is that the most consistent and logical strategy for achieving continuous improvement is by constantly upgrading employee

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