ADMS 1000 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Hierarchical Organization, Job Enrichment, Scientific Management

• School: York University
• Department: Administrative Studies
• Course: ADMS 1000
• Professor: Peter Modir

Document Summary

The traditional, bureaucratic organizational structure emphasizes factors such as job specialization, a formal hierarchy of authority, a clear system of control, and rules and regulations to guide behaviour. Therefore, it achieves the fundamental goals of organizations: predictability and reliability. Rules and standardized jobs ensure workers are doing what the boss wants, the formal hierarchy ensures that how the work is conducted is clearly controlled. After the 1980s that the bureaucratic structure was replaced with new designs. The traditional strengths of the bureaucratic structure (i. e. , focus on reliability and control), can become weaknesses when the environment changes. Traditional or bureaucratic organizations were characterized as: tall/hierarchical with lots of layers of managers and employees rigid and rule-oriented: buffered from the environment, and with a narrow market. Flatter organizations: a flat organization allows an increase in the speed of decision-making. Since there is less bureaucracy, it can react faster to the changes in its external environment, such as competitive changes or economic changes.