BUS 010 Lecture Notes - Lecture 18: Moe Williams, Railways Act 1921
Document Summary
Hierarchy is a fundamental feature of organizations. Organizational design: the advantages of using hierarchies to achieve coordination; and, the different ways in which organizations can be structured along hierarchal lines. Hierarchal structures can reduce costs of coordination. Hierarchies are a flexible way of coordinating activities because they allow specialist units to. Hierarchy & coordination act independently of each other. Some of the principal bases for grouping employees are: Defining organizational units: common tasks, products, geography, process. The fundamental issue is achieving the coordination necessary to integrate the efforts of different individuals. Alternative structural forms: the functional structure, the multidivisional structure, the matrix structure. Grouping together similar tasks is conducive to exploiting scale economies, promoting learning and capability building, and deploying standardized control systems. High degree of centralized control by ceo and top management. Different functional departments have their own culture, making integration difficult. Key advantage is the potential for decentralized decision making.
