What is Organisational Structures ?

Organisational Structures

The word organisation has two different meanings in this area of study.

* an institution or functional group such as a business or a society
* the process of organising. This is the way in which work is arranged and allocated among members of an organisation so that the goals of the "organisation" can be most efficiently achieved.

The process of organising is dividing up the work that is done among areas and employees and linking together these areas and jobs in order to form a unified whole, (a single working unit where all of its parts work together to achieve the organisations goals).

The Division of Work.

The division of work is the breaking down of the jobs that your organisation needs to do in order to achieve its goals. A craftsperson who is making, selling and designing chairs would do a lot of different things in the course of that activity. If the chair was being mass produced in a large company the tasks would probably be broken down into smaller sections handled by different people such as purchasing, design, sales and marketing, production etc. All of these areas could be broken down even further.

It is believed that job specialisation leads to greater efficiency and higher output per person than a more general approach but it does have its problems such as creating boring and repetitive jobs, but there are strategies for helping to deal with these problems.

Structure of Organisations

In order to structure your organisation you need to take these divisions of work and organise them into logical groupings . You need to show how these areas are linked to each other, the hierarchy, levels of authority and responsibility and its formal channels of communication.

Types of Organisational Structures

o The General structure
o Functional Structure
o Geographical Structure
o The Matrix Structure