Organizational Structure

Organizational Structure

Clive S. Choat

Ken Blanchard College of Business, MGT-605

3 December 2013

Organizational Structure (OS) is the graphical arrangement of the rights, duties, responsibilities and communication channels of a company. It shows how power, responsibilities and managerial roles are assigned, controlled, and coordinated, between the different levels of management. The type of structure a company employs will depend on both the organization's objectives and its strategy. For example, in a centralized structure, upper management maintains the decision making power and keeps tight control over the various departments and divisions within the company. However, in a decentralized structure, decision making authority is spread throughout the various levels of mangers, and the company may grant its departments various degrees of autonomy. So, having looked at the term organizational structure, this paper will now attempt to look at some potential failure points.

To begin with, I took a look at the first of two of the eight points that Hax and Majluf in their report “Organizational Design: A Survey and an Approach” noted could be a potential failures to an organizations structure, this being “how allowing insufficient time to be devoted to strategic thinking due to too much concentration on operational issues; excessive decision making at the top; or overworked key personnel.” (Hax, Majluf 1981) It is imperative for companies to plan out and remain focused on the organizations long-term goals in order to continue to be both in business and turn a profit. Therefore the need for strategic planning will be bound to the existence of a well-organized company configuration. This structure should be constructed so that proper plans and procedures are set in place that gives senior leaders decision making authority on major issues, while granting lower level department heads the freedom to run their...