Organizational design is important for the development of the functions of a company.
5 natural configurations are proposed, each one being a combination of certain structural and situational elements, which are like pieces of a puzzle. Trying to combine elements of different combinations does not produce good results.
It should not be assumed that all organizations are equal, that is, a set of components that can be removed or added at will.
The effective organization is one that achieves coherence between its components and that does not change one element without evaluating the consequences for the others.
Mintzberg's argument is that the characteristics of organizations fall into natural groupings or configurations. When there is no accommodation or coherence, the organization malfunctions, it does not achieve natural harmony.
Derivation of Configurations
Five basic components are proposed:
- Strategic top or top management: is the person who had the idea that gave rise to the organization. Operational center: which is made up of the people who carry out the core or basic work of the organization. Middle Line: intermediate managers between the top executive and the operators. Technical structure: they are the analysts who design systems related to the formal approach and work control. Support staff: they provide indirect services to the rest of the organization.
Not all organizations require all 5 components.
The fundamental purpose of the structure is to coordinate the work that has been divided.
Structure Types
- Simple Structure: coordination is carried out by the strategic summit through direct supervision. Minimum of staff and midline. Mechanical Bureaucracy: coordination through standardization of work, which creates the entire administrative structure. Professional Bureaucracy: Coordination through the knowledge of employees, so highly trained professionals are needed in the operational center and considerable support staff. The structure and midline I am not very elaborate. Divisionalized Structure: coordination is carried out by standardizing products from different production units. The middle line of each of these units or divisions has great autonomy. Adhocracy: more complex organizations, in which the combination of work through teams and coordinated through common commitment is required. The line and the staff tend to disappear.
SIMPLE STRUCTURE
Made up of one or a few administrators and a group of operators who carry out the basic work.
The most common: small business organization.
It is characterized by the absence of elements. Only a small part of the behaviors are standardized or formalized and planning is minimal.
There is little need for consulting analysts.
Few middle-line managers, as coordination is done by upper management.
It is generally a flexible organization because it operates in a dynamic environment.
Control is highly centralized.
Usually young and small organizations.
MECHANICAL BUREAUCRACY
It is the consequence of industrialization, where the standardization of work is emphasized.
Prepare your administration.
You need many analysts to design and maintain your standardization systems. The dependence that is generated on these grants them a certain degree of informal authority (which generates a certain horizontal differentiation).
A broad hierarchy emerges in the middle line to supervise work and to resolve conflicts that inevitably arise from the mentalization department. In general: Vertically centralized, with formal authority concentrated at the top.
Wide support staff because it needs stability to operate.
Vertical integration (producers and consumers of services simultaneously).
More common in large, mature companies with massive production systems.
Generally externally controlled companies.
Big problems: repetitive and stultifying work, alienation, obsession with control. Machines made for specific purposes.
UES: Automotive, insurance companies, railways. McDonald's.
PROFESSIONAL BUREAUCRACY
It relies on the standardization of knowledge and skills, rather than on processes. Hospitals, universities.
Relying on well-trained professionals to perform operational tasks empowers not only them but those who select and train them. The structure is highly decentralized. Professionals work independently.
Few front-line administrators are needed.
Support staff is great, doing the simple, routine work that professionals don't want to do.
It is more effective for organizations embedded in stable, but complex media.
Standardization is both strength and weakness. It allows professionals to be effective and efficient, but creates adaptation problems. It is not a structure to innovate, but to perfect what is already known. If the medium is stable it will work well.
Democratic and highly autonomous (the two things that made it fashionable in the early 80s).
DIVISIONALIZED STRUCTURE
It is a series of rather independent entities that are united by a loose administration. Unlike the professional bureaucracy, the divisions are in the middle line and not in the operational center (like the professionals).
Unlike the other four, it is not a complete structure, but a partial one, superimposed on others.
Why this structure is chosen: Products have diversified, which makes it necessary to create market-oriented units for each product line, which guarantees the autonomy of operation in each business. Divisionalization does not mean decentralization. Decentralization implies dispersion of authority for decision making. Divisionalization refers to a structure of semi-autonomous units in which the administrators in charge of each retain much of the authority. Divisionalization is often accompanied by a high degree of centralization.
Top management control over divisions: direct supervision and performance measurement.
Internal structure of divisions tends to become bureaucratic and centralized, resulting in mechanical bureaucracy in divisions.
Solve the adaptation problems of the mechanical bureaucracy.
Defects to apply to companies in the non-commercial area:
- displacement of social goals for economic ones. The success of the divisional structure depends on measurable goals; Social goals are by nature not quantifiable. Divisions need structures other than mechanical bureaucracies.
ADHOCRACY
It is the most complex and standardized.
It is tremendously flexible, where authority is constantly moving. Control and coordination are carried out by mutual adjustment, through informal communications and expert interaction.
It relies on trained and specialized experts to do most of the work. But unlike professional bureaucracy, they must work together rather than separately. In other words, it is based on a common commitment to carry out coordination, which is stimulated by the use of integrating mechanisms (liaison roles), task groups and matrix structure.
In the adhocracy, the experts are dispersed throughout the entire structure (and not only in the operational center but also in the professional bureaucracy). Authority is unevenly distributed. It does not flow according to status or hierarchy, but to where the expert who is needed at that moment to make a certain decision is located.
There are many administrators in the adhocracy. This creates small areas of control, a product of the small size of work teams. Administrators do not exercise control in the traditional way, but rather are concerned with the integration of different teams.
Authority is based on competence and not on hierarchy, losing the line-staff separation. The difference between the top and the rest of the structure is blurred.
The strategies do not flow from above but rather are developed by virtue of the decision making associated with each project, that is, they are generated as new projects are accepted and developed. Everyone involved is a strategist.
2 kinds of adhocracy are identified:
- Operational Adhocracy: carries out projects on behalf of clients. Treat each problem as unique, to creatively solve it. The operational center and administrative structure work together in a single effort. The project itself is not separated from its actual execution. Administrative Adhocracy: a structure made up of two parts. The administrative side does the design work, combining line management with expert project team consultants. The operational part puts the results into production; It is separate, so that your need for standardization does not interfere with the project.
Adhocracy is applied in media that are complex and dynamic, since they are the conditions that require sophisticated innovation, which implies integrated efforts of experts.
Operational adhocracy is normally found in youth organizations.
This more fashionable, however, has the disadvantage of being effective at the cost of efficiency.
Configurations as a diagnostic element
They are abstractions of reality, simplifications of the complex world of structures, which can be used to diagnose organizational design problems, especially problems of adjustment between its component parts.
Each organization experiences 5 trends underlying each configuration:
- tendency for centralization by the upper executive pressure of the technical structure to formalization pressure of the operational staff to professionalize pressure of the middle line managers to divide into small groups pressure of the collaboration support staff.
Where a trend dominates, along with favorable conditions, the organization will lean towards some configuration.
A trend does not always dominate.
Administrators can improve their organizational designs by considering the different pressures their organizations are going through and the configurations they are dragged into.
Adjustment problems:
- Inconsistency of internal elements Functionality of external controls (which can affect internal coherence) Component that does not adjust Structure does not adapt to the situation (it may be necessary to change the context instead of changing the structure)
It is better to adapt than to follow fashion. Consistency, coherence, and fit (in a word, harmony) are critical in organizational design.
Configuration Items
Structural elements:
- Job specialization: number of tasks of a given job and worker control over them. Behavioral formalization: degree of standardization of work processes. Training and education: formal use of training programs to establish and standardize skills, knowledge and standards.Grouping of units or Departmentalization: criteria for grouping charges in units. Size of the unit: number of positions contained in a unit.
It is also equivalent to speak of scope of control.
- Planning and control systems: used to standardize products. Integration mechanisms: used to coordinate intra and inter. units. Liaison roles, task groups, interdepartmental committees, management liaison roles.Vertical differentiation: degree to which decision-making is delegated to managers below the middle line.
- Vertical and horizontal centralization (concentration at the top) Limited horizontal decentralization (top shares authority with the technical structure) Limited vertical decentralization (managers of product units are delegated authority) Vertical and horizontal decentralization (concentrated in the operating center) Decentralization vertical and horizontal selective (power is dispersed throughout the organization) Situational Elements:
STRUCTURAL ELEMENTS
| Simple Structure | Mechanical Bureaucracy | Professional Bureaucracy | Divisionalized State | Adhocracy | |
| Size
Units ( Scope of control) |
Large | Wide at the base Narrow in
the rest |
Wide at the base Narrow in
the rest |
Spacious at the top base | Narrow throughout the structure |
| System of
Planification and control |
Little
planification and control |
Active | Little
planification and control |
Much performance control | Limited planning |
| Integration mechanisms | Few | Few | In the administration | Few | Many already work
of the entire structure |
| Decentralization | Centralized | Decentralization
limited horizontal |
Horizontal and vertical decentralization | Limited vertical decentralization | Selective decentralization |
SITUATIONAL ELEMENTS
| Simple Structure | Mechanical Bureaucracy | Professional Bureaucracy | Divisionalized State | Adhocracy | |
| Age and Size | Young and Small | Mature and Big | Varied | Ripe and very large | Generally Young |
| Technological System | Simple and not adjustable | Dimmable; not very complex | Not dimmable or complex | Divisible
Same as bureaucracy mechanics |
Very complex and automated (In Ad.
Administrative) Not regulable or complex (Operational) |
| Environment | Simple and dynamic | Simple and stable | Complex and stable | Relatively simple and stable. Markets
diversified. |
Complexes and
dynamic |
| Power | Control by maximum
executive |
Technocratic and external control | Professional operational control | Midline control | Expert control |
