Business

Last week’s topic on Organizational Structure was the foundation for this fascinating six-week leadership course. We began by summarizing how structure effects an organization and discussed how this influences strategy and organizational planning. Then we differentiated management and leadership and examined how organizational behavior shapes management’s purpose, positions, and essential skills. Henry Mintzberg, one author of The Strategy Process states, “The ONE BEST WAY approach has dominated our thinking about organizational structure since the turn of the century. In other words, there is a right way and a wrong way to design in an organization.” Recent management theory, however, tends to follow contingency theory, the idea that structure should reflect the organization’s situation. This can be the age of the organization, the size, the production system or the complexity and dynamics of the organizational environment.

Although leadership and management functions overlap, there are some crucial differences. Managers are expected to keep the organization running smoothly. They are expected to manage people with an effective balance between attention to tasks and attention to employee needs. Managers focus on processes and procedures and ensure that compliance with standards. Leaders, on the other hand, inspire others. They set the pace for the organization, lead organizational change, find, and grow talent, and even act as catalysts for developing a shared future vision with buy-in from the organization.

The impact of structure on an organization is not the same for each organization. The larger or the more complicated the organization the greater the impact the structure has. The size of the organization often determines the type of structure used. According to Mintzberg “coordinating mechanisms can be considered the most basic elements of structure, the glue that holds organizations together” (Mintzberg, Lampel, Quinn & Ghoshall,...