When studying the types of organization, different classifications are found that obey features such as its economic rationality, its degree of formalization, its level of centralization, the direction of its internal communication, its culture, its objectives or the form of association of its members., among others. Next, the question " what are the types of organization " is answered based on a brief literature review and from the perspective of organization theory.
Organization types
To begin with, Koontz, Weihrich, Cannice, Díaz and Staines (2012, pp. 200–202) basically distinguish two types of organization, the formal organization and the informal organization. The first type of organization, the formal organization, is understood as the intentional structure of functions in a formally organized company; The second type of organization, the informal organization, is a network of interpersonal relationships that arise when individuals associate with each other.
In a similar way, Schein, EH, cited by Johansen and Bertoglio (1982, p. 23), establishes three types of organization, to the two already mentioned he adds a new one and defines them as follows: (1) the formal organization, is the coordination rational of the activities of a number of people for the achievement of some explicit and common purpose or objective through the division of labor and functions, and through a hierarchy of authority and responsibility; (2) social organization is that coordination model that arises spontaneously or implicitly from the interaction of people, without enclosing rational coordination for the achievement of explicit common objectives; and (3) informal organization, which refers to the coordination model that arises between the members of a formal organization that are not indicated in the design of its structure.
While Amaru (2009, p. 89), citing Mintzberg, indicates that there are seven types or configurations of organizations and that each one is characterized by the most important part of the organization for its operations, summarizing them in the following table:
| Organization type | Most important part | characteristics |
|---|---|---|
| Business | Strategic dome | Centralization of decisions in the figure of an executive or entrepreneur |
| Machine | Technostructure | Energy produced by specialized technicians and managers |
| Professional | Operating core | Control exercised by independent specialists |
| Diversified | Middle line | Managers of managers who manage business units |
| Innovative | Research and development staff | Emphasis on the search for knowledge to cope with the dynamic environment |
| Missionary | Ideology | Control of people by means of symbols and symbols |
| Politics | There is not | Conflict and changes |
Table 1. Seven Mintzberg organization types or configurations; Amaru (2009, p. 90)
To learn more about Mintzberg's organization settings, we suggest the following video:
Also Amaru (2009, p. 93), making a brief analysis of the approaches of Charles Handy in his book Understanding Organizations, explains the existence of four types of organizations based on their culture, each one symbolized by a god from Greek mythology, the symbolic god defines the culture of the organization. (1) Zeus. Centralized organization, club culture. All roads lead to the boss. Similar to the Mintzberg business organization. (2) Apollo. Mechanistic organization, culture of paperwork. Similar to Weber's bureaucracy and Mintzberg's machine. (3) Athena. People-oriented organization, task culture. Similar to the organic model of Burns and Stalker - which will be seen later -. (4)Dionysus. People-oriented organization, existential culture. Similar to the Mintzberg pro model.
For his part, Martínez (1999, pp. 49 and 50), proposes a typology of organizations based on their purpose or economic rationality, thus having for- profit organizations and non-profit organizations, on which in turn he performs the following classification:
- For-profit organizations
- For the product:
- Of goods: manufacture of tangible goods. Of services: health, educational, financial, etc.
- Microenterprises: Family, artisanal Small: Less than one hundred workers Medium: Hundreds of workers Large: Holding type, thousands of workers
- Local or regional National Multinational
- Private Public companies, State companies Mixed
- Of the state or public with social and political purpose
- Centralized
- Ministries Administrative departments Public establishments
- Local Departments Municipalities
- The army the church
- NGOs Non-Governmental Organizations Clubs Associations Foundations
- Centralized
- For the product:
Alonso and Ocegueda (2006, pp. 12-16), make a review of what they consider to be the most important criteria for establishing the typology of organizations:
They begin by remembering that Talcott Parsons, an influential sociologist of the mid-20th century, highlighted four types of organization based on their function or goal:
- Production (company), is responsible for developing products that are consumed by society. Oriented to political goals, it seeks objectives that generate and distribute power within society. Integrative, it is aimed at motivating the satisfaction of institutional expectations and ensuring that the parts of society function in a compact manner. For the maintenance of patterns, they try to ensure the continuity of the average society of educational, cultural and expressive activities.
They also indicate that Peter Blau and Richard Scott, scholars of organizational structures and organizational development during the 1960s, consider that the survival of the organization is based on its ability to be useful and who benefits from it, having thus four types of organization:
- Mutually beneficial associations (unions, political parties, sects, clubs and professional societies) Commercial firms that benefit owners and / or managers (industries, banks, warehouses, insurance companies) Service companies that benefit customers (hospitals, schools, social promotion agencies) Common welfare organizations that benefit the general public (government offices, police, firefighters, scientific research institutes).
They also highlight the typology proposed by the German sociologist Renate Mayntz who classified organizations according to their objectives and in her description it can be seen how the differences affect their structure and mode of operation:
- Organizations whose objective is limited to the coexistence of the members, their common action and the reciprocal contact that this requires. Recreation circles, clubs and other recreational associations belong to this category, participating in characteristics such as: their democratic structure, the voluntary membership of the members, and the little differentiated and little bureaucratized structure. group of people who are admitted for this purpose, at least temporarily, in the organization. Schools, hospitals, churches, prisons are some examples. Subgroups can be distinguished in these organizations: those who participate voluntarily or those who do so forced; those who act and on those who act. The acting group is generally made up ofvolunteers who act professionally and organize themselves, thus enhancing bureaucratization and rational management. The lower group is less articulated. And between the two groups there is usually no mobility, organizations that have as their objective the achievement of a certain result or the achievement of a certain action towards the outside. Three subgroups are in turn derived from the objective-person relationship. Normally, the organizations of the two initial subgroups are structured according to the democratic model, and the membership of their members is voluntary, while those of the third group have an authoritarian, hierarchical structure and membership in them is not always voluntary.And between the two groups there is usually no mobility, organizations that have as their objective the achievement of a certain result or the achievement of a certain action towards the outside. Three subgroups are in turn derived from the objective-person relationship. Normally, the organizations of the two initial subgroups are structured according to the democratic model, and the membership of their members is voluntary, while those of the third group have an authoritarian, hierarchical structure and membership in them is not always voluntary.And between the two groups there is usually no mobility, organizations that have as their objective the achievement of a certain result or the achievement of a certain action towards the outside. Three subgroups are in turn derived from the objective-person relationship. Normally, the organizations of the two initial subgroups are structured according to the democratic model, and the membership of their members is voluntary, while those of the third group have an authoritarian, hierarchical structure and membership in them is not always voluntary.The organizations of the two initial subgroups are structured according to the democratic model, and the membership of their members is voluntary, while those of the third group have an authoritarian, hierarchical structure and membership in them is not always voluntary.The organizations of the two initial subgroups are structured according to the democratic model, and the membership of their members is voluntary, while those of the third group have an authoritarian, hierarchical structure and membership in them is not always voluntary.
- Organizations in which members participate without seeking personal advantage. Charitable associations would be a good example: Organizations whose objective is identified with the personal interest of their members, such as cooperatives, unions, etc. Organizations that provide their members with personal advantages not necessarily identified with the objective of the organization. Examples of this subgroup can be companies, police, the Administration, etc., in which most of the members belong, not because they look for the goods they produce or the services they provide, but because they earn their livelihood in the organization..
The fourth source to which they refer is that of the psychologists Robert L. Khan and Daniel Katz, who specialized in organization theory and organizational psychology, in their book Social Psychology of Organizations (1966) they proposed a classification based on what What they called first-order factors that are the functions they perform as a subsystem of society in general, there are four types of organizations:
- Productive. They are responsible for manufacturing goods, providing services and creating wealth for the public or for some sector of the economy. They include mining, manufacturing, transportation, communication, and agriculture, among others. Maintenance. Dedicated to social interaction and the training of people for roles in other organizations and in society in general. Schools and churches are the most visible examples of maintenance organizations. Adaptive. Its intention is to create knowledge and develop innovative solutions to social problems. The research laboratory and the research branches of the universities are the prototype of this kind of organization. Administrative political. These organizations have to do with the coordination and control of people and resources and with arbitration between competing groups. The state, government agencies, and other organizations such as unions and similar groups are examples of this category.
They end by mentioning the German sociologist Amitai Etzioni, who postulated that organizations are divided into three categories based on the type of power they exercise over their members, namely:
- Regulations. Also called volunteers, they are based on shared interest, whoever joins them does so voluntarily because they consider that belonging produces an intangible gratification (prestige, respectability, knowledge, among others). A religious organization, a political party, or a sports club can be examples of this type of organization. There is then talk of a positive, moral involvement, in which people are highly committed to organizational objectives. Coercive. They are groups that their members are forced or pushed to join, those who join them live under a controlled and punitive lifestyle. Examples can be prisons and concentration camps. It is said that involvement in this type of organization is alienating, negative and that there is a dissociation between the individual and the organization. Utilitarian. Their members join them out of a specific need for material reward. The school, where the student pursues a diploma, and the workplace, where the employee goes after her salary, are examples of this organizational model. Etzioni refers to calculating involvement, middle-class commitment, in these organizations.
The following video presents the vision about the typology of the organizations of two of the authors mentioned so far, Renate Maintz and Amitai Etzioni:
Pugh and Hickson (2007, p.65), recall that, in The management of innovation (1961), Burns and Stalker established two ideal types of organization, the mechanistic type and the organic type :
- The mechanistic type of organization adapts to relatively stable conditions. In it, management problems and tasks are broken down into specialties within which each individual carries out an assigned and precisely defined task. There is a clear hierarchy of control and responsibility for general knowledge and coordination rests exclusively with the upper part of the hierarchy. Vertical communication is emphasized and it is emphasized that the interaction between superiors and subordinates exists within the framework of loyalty and obedience to superiors. This system is closely related to the rational-legal bureaucracy Weber.El type organicThe organizational structure adapts to unstable conditions when new and unknown problems continually arise that cannot be broken down and distributed among existing specialist roles. Thus, there is a continuous adjustment and redefinition of individual tasks, with an emphasis on the contributory (rather than restrictive) nature of specialized knowledge. Interactions and communication (information and advice rather than orders) can occur at any required level of the process, generating a much greater degree of commitment to the goals of the organization as a whole. In this system, the organization charts that establish the exact functions and responsibilities of each individual are not found; in fact,its use can be explicitly rejected as an obstacle to the efficient functioning of the organization.
Parallel between the types of mechanistic and organic organization. Robbins and Coulter (2005, p. 241)
Although the different theorists cited have studied the sociology of organizations hard to identify the different types of organization mentioned so far, and to which some more can surely be added, it is likely that each organization consists of a mixture of more than one. of these classes, which is not evidence that these authors were wrong, but rather corroborates what their studies managed to capture and describe.
Organizational structures
Some of the most prominent types of organizational structure are described below:
Formal organization
It is a system of well-defined tasks, each of which has in itself a specific amount of authority, responsibility, and accountability.
This organization facilitates the determination of objectives and policies, it is a fixed and predictable form of organization, which allows the company to anticipate its future achievements.
Linear Organization
It originated with the ancient armies and in the ecclesiastical organization of the medieval era.
It is a very simple and pyramid-shaped organization, where each boss receives and transmits everything that happens in their area, each time the lines of
communication are rigidly established.
It has a basic or primary organization and forms a foundation of the organization. Its characteristics will be listed below.
- Linear and unique authority: It is the authority of the superior over the subordinates. Each subordinate reports only to his superior, has a single boss and does not receive orders from any other. Formal lines of communication: Communication is established through the existing lines in the organization chart. Each superior centralizes the communications in the ascending line of the subordinates. Centralization of decisions: Its characteristic is the doubling and convergence of authority towards the top of the organization. There is only one supreme authority that centralizes all decisions and controls the organization.
The functional organization
The fundamental principle is the Staff.
This type of organization was replaced in the linear organization by the functional one in which each operator reports, not only to his superior boss, but
to several, but each one in his specialty.
The main characteristics of the functional organization are:
- Functional or divided authority: This is based on specialization, is knowledge authority and expands to the entire organization. Direct communication line: Communications are made directly without the need for intermediaries. Decentralization of decisions: It is not the hierarchy but the specialty that promotes the decisions. Emphasis on specialization: Each body or position contributes its specialty to the organization.
Functional organization. A large industrial fabric manufacturer
Staff
The Staff is the result of the linear and functional organization, in this organization there are decision-making bodies in the consultancy.
Line bodies are characterized by linear authority and the scalar principle, while staff bodies provide advice to
specialized services.
- Fusion of the linear structure with the functional one, predominating the linear structure. Each organ reports to a single and unique superior organ; Principle of
authority. But each body receives specialized advice and service from the various staff bodies. Coexistence between formal lines of communication and direct lines of communication. Separation between executive bodies and advisory bodies.
Committees
The committee is a group of people with line and staff authority, to whom a matter is given for study. These characteristics differentiate the
committee from other organs of the administration.
There are different kinds of committees, those that carry out administrative functions, those that carry out technical functions, and those that carry out the study of problems and those that provide recommendations.
The main features are:
- The committee is not an organ of the organizational structure. Committees can be formal, informal, temporary or permanent.
- Formal: When they are part of the company structure, with specifically delegated duties and authority. Informal: When it is organized by a person who wants a study or decision on some special problem. Temporary: When the study of a special problem is carried out for a relatively short time. Permanent: Formal committees are generally permanent.
There are numerous applications for committee activity:
- A fair conclusion requires a variety of information; This would be the case of research committees on products, prices, salaries, etc. If necessary, obtaining several qualified people to make important decisions If the success of the fulfillment of these actions depends on the perfect understanding of all their Aspects and details When effective coordination requires that the activities of some departments or divisions be well adjusted.
The following video makes a good synthesis of the characteristics of the different types of organizations and organizational structures: formal and informal organizations, linear or hierarchical structure, functional structure, online and staff structure, committee structure, matrix structure and structure in clover.
Bibliography
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