Structure as a Process

An organisation is a systematically planned activity directed to achieve an objective. The activities can include various levels of responsibilities and roles. The organisational structure is also responsible for the flow of information within the different levels of the company in a determined way. The organisation as a structure is an essential virtue for an efficient company. Businesses of any shape or kind utilise the organisational structure heavily and process it in every sector. It defines the job of every employee working in that organisation, how different positions of employees complement each other, and how their job fits within the overall system.

The Organisation

The organisation describes how well a business is structured and helps them achieve its aim. Business is usually aimed at profiting while improving society. When an organisation focuses on profiting, it is known as a profit- organisation, while the one that focuses on the community is called a non-profit organisation. While running these organisations, there are several risk factors; to minimise that, we should use the assets wisely. To do so, one needs to work out the framework. An organisation as a structure and process helps build the framework and fill the gap between employees and the responsibilities. The more a company expands, the more profit grows, but many obligations and liabilities come. The organisation as a structure and process nurtures a business along its path. 

Organisation as a Structure

The organisation as a structure defines the outline of the activities, which, when accomplished, helps achieve the goal. Business of any kind or size exercises organisation as a structure and process extensively. It defines every employee’s job and how it fits and favours the overall system. It can be simply concluded that an organisation as a structure represents a visual outline of the shape of the company and how it can achieve better shape and size in the future. 

The structure clarifies employees at every level to achieve their aims efficiently. Organisation structure can either be centralised or decentralised. Centralised organisational structures have a leader in the centre who passes on the chain of defined commands. It is a traditional organisational system, for example, the organisation of the military, which is a high and efficiently centralised structure. In a conventional centralised organisation, every individual has clear responsibilities under the guidance of their superiors. A decentralised system of organisation structure is seen in the new startup of the technologies, where the company chooses to stay more adaptable and agile instead of stiff with a system of commands. Every employee in a decentralised system receives more of a personal agency. Although these systems also have built-in hierarchies, a team can decide together after studying the conclusion and inference of a proposal without approval from any rankings. Most companies follow the decentralised system to empower their employees and work-friendly organisations. 

An organisation as a structure can be of four broad types. Functional structure is the most commonly implemented type of structure in the business market. It is also often known as the bureaucratic structure of an organisation as it breaks the company based on the specialisation of its workforce. The business is divided into different departments like sales, marketing and operations. The second type of organisational structure is a division or multidimensional structure; here, the company structures the leadership based on the projects; for example, a company has different lines of business like clothes, perfumes and shoes, so each line will have its very own president or leader who will guide the employee under them. Thus, every line is a whole new business, creating the divisional or multidivisional idea of the business structure. A new structure called flatarchy is the third type known to flatten or suppress the hierarchy to give the employees a lot of flexibility and autonomy. Flatarchy is used for speedy implementation. The fourth and last type of organisational structure is the matrix structure which is the least used type as it is a very confusing structure. Here the employees are matrixed across different divisions and have a lot of mixed-up roles and responsibilities. 

Organisation as a Process

When implemented in a process, the discussed four types of organisational structure unifies all the factors and are practically applicable to the organisation of structure. The organisation as a process consists of five steps. The very first step is job determination or reviewing the plans and objectives. The objectives should be specified to plan the further activities. The second step is departmentalisation; jobs can be analysed and listed to ease the task. Here, the tasks are classified and grouped based on the four departmentalisation models: the product, geographical, functional, and customer. The third step is delegation, giving an individual an authority on behalf of the company to make decisions regarding a particular department. The fourth step is the span of management; that is, a person should be in charge of a specific department or shift responsibilities from one individual to the other. The final and fifth step is to maintain the chain of command. The hierarchy body should decide the vertical chain of command or decision making and even the horizontal order or the coordination between employees and the responsibilities. A chart can be handy in making an organisation horizontal and vertical commands to diagram the relationships. 

Conclusion

An organisational structure is very beneficial for any company despite its shape and size. The implementation of structure makes each employee’s responsibilities and roles very easy and eases the complexity of the hierarchies. If a proper organisation of structure is implemented carefully and accordingly, the company can perform various functions at a single time seamlessly. This can track the company’s growth and the employees, which helps development. There is no such structure of a company; it has to be studied to implement and optimise the best structure. Seniors should consider various factors to decide the type of structure for their organisation.