Management structures essay

Efficient management structure that meets the needs of an organization is definitely a must in every company. Needless to say, there are various management structures, but each one of them does affect both daily and long term activities of a company.

Departmentalization

In general, departmentalization refers to grouping activities into separate departments that are coordinated by a specialist or a group of specialists depending on the size of an organization (Torbiorn, 2004). Whether departmentalization is functions, product, customer, geigraphic, process, or a mixture of the stated above types, the affect on daily activities varies accordingly.

As a result of departmentalization, the work process is built around certain products, services, or locations; the effeiciency of the production process also increases. To be more specific, the need for extensive external coordination reduces, since ability for the internal coordination within one unit increases, which means that daily company activities are more structured better organized around a certain factor, i. e. customer support department is built around the customer.

Matrix Organizations

In matrix management, workers in a company are grouped based on their skills, i. e. high-tech specialists work in the IT department (Shell, 2003). In this case, several projects can be assigned to a single department, which then leads to employees reporting to several project managers. Given workers are engaged in narrow activities and are grouped based on their specialization field, the depth of knowledge of employees increases. For instance, Java programmers, being involved solely in programming on this language, have their daily activities centered on this narrow activity, which then leads to narrow professional growth.

The Project Team

In the case of the project team, people are grouped together based on the common function, project they need to carry out (Shell, 2003) Given people are viewed as a one team, the performance is assessed based on mutual work, which then increases the “ team spirit”. The daily work of team members is more supportive especially in situations when, for instance, one of the the members of a group team failed to carry out a task assigned.

The Collegial Model

Under the collegial model, the deision making process consensual and involves representatives of all parties affected by the decision (Nicholl, 2006) This management structure is more of idealistic, as daily activities of an organization are centered around meaningful progress, which even though leads to a greater level of empowerment and increases the level of interest, is still less efficient. This includes situations when a decision must be taken that has a negative impact on one or more parties that still must be taken for the mutual benefit. As the daily decision making process is more complicated, time and efforts consuming.

It should be noted, that all management structures have positive and negatives sides, whereas implementation of a definite structure is a matter of specific organizational needs of a given company.

References

• Nicholl, P. (2006). Organisational Structures Do Matter for Good Governance and Good Performance. Comparative Economic Studies, 48(2), 214.
• Shell, R. L. (2003). Management of Professionals (2nd ed.). New York: Marcel Dekker.
• Torbiorn, I. (1994). Operative and Strategic Use of Expatriates in New Organizations and Market Structures. International Studies of Management & Organization, 24(3), 5.