Management and Organizational Studies 2181A/B Lecture : chapter 14 - structure

• School: Western University
• Department: Management and Organizational Studies
• Course: Management and Organizational Studies 2181A/B
• Professor: Tony Francolini

Document Summary

The manner in which an organization divides its labour into specific tasks and achieves. What is structure? coordination among these tasks: organizational design, arranges lines of authority, allocates rights and duties, facilitates information flows, horizontal and vertical dimensions. Division of labour (primary concerns: vertical, decision making. Flat enough to make vertical communication and coordination possible: horizontal, job and department tasks, trade-offs. Autonomy & control hierarchy increases. in more decisions. Communications: as labour is progressively divided vertically, timely communication and coordination can become harder to achieve, as the number of levels in the hierarchy increases, filtering is more likely to occur. Work specialization: differentiation is the tendency for managers in separate units, functions, or departments to differ in terms of goals, time spans, and interpersonal styles, under high differentiation, various organizational units tend to operate more autonomously. Structural characteristics: result of vertical and horizontal dimensioning.