Structure defines the official relationships of people in organizations. Different jobs are required to accomplish all of an organization’s activities. There are managers and employees, accountants and assemblers. These people have to be related in some structural way so that their work can be effective. The main structure relates to power and to duties. For example, one person has authority to make decisions that affect the work of other people.
Some of the key concepts of organization structure are listed as below:
Some of the key concepts of organization structure are listed as below:
- Hierarchy of Authority: This refers to the distribution of authority among organizational positions and authority grants the position holder certain rights including right to give direction to others and the right to punish and reward.
- Division of Labor: This refers to the distribution of responsibilities and the way in which activities are divided up and assigned to different members of the organization is considered to be an element of the social structure.
- Span of Control: This refers to the total number of subordinates over whom a manager has authority
- Specialization: This refers to the number of specialities performed within the organization.
- Standardization: It refers to the existence of procedures for regularly recurring events or activities
- Formalization: This refers to the extent to which rules, procedures, and communications are written down
- Centralization: This refers to the concentration of authority to make decision.
- Complexity: This refers to both vertical differentiation and horizontal differentiation. Vertical differentiation: outlines number of hierarchical levels; horizontal differentiation highlights the number of units within the organization (e.g departments, divisions)
Organizations can be structured as relatively rigid, formalized systems or as relatively loose, flexible systems. Thus the structure of the organizations can range on a continuum of high rigidity to high flexibility. There are two broad categories of organization: i)Mechanistic form of organization ii) Organic form of Organization