People, Organisations and Management: Comparison of Organisational Structure of the Organisations - Term Paper Example

People, Organisations and Management Grade Contents Introduction 3 2. Comparison of Approaches to Team and Team working 3 2.1 Types of Teams 3 2.2 Comparative Analysis 4 3. Comparison of Organisational Design and Structure 6 3.1 Structure comparison 6 3.2 Comparison of Chain of command 6 3.3 Centralization and Decentralization 7 3.4 Design Comparison 7 4. Comparison of Cultures 8 4.1 Strong versus Weak culture 8 5. Conclusion 10 References 11 1. Introduction Organisational structure defines how work, tasks, are organized, structured, and grouped in a formal way. Specialization around work, division of departments, and hierarchy of command, control, centralized and decentralized culture, and formalized environment are key elements that define an organisation structure. Organisational culture represents a common phenomenon held by the organisation’s members. Every organisation establishes a core set of perspectives, goals and implicit rules that shape day-to-day behavior in the organisation. This paper is based on comparative analysis between two entirely different organisations. These organisations are different in terms of their culture, design, structure and human performance (Lichtenstein and Alexander, 2004). This paper will provide insight into how two different cultures, structures and their designs will impact on individuals, groups and structures within the organisation and ultimately towards improving organisation’s effectiveness. 2. Comparison of Approaches to Team and Team working 2.1 Types of Teams A work team can bring differences in organisation through coordination. Team combined effort always results in greater effort compared to individual work. Teams can do complex tasks together. Through teams organisations can increase their work performance with less cost. This combined effort will always results in outstanding performance and goal achievement. They can provide new product ideas, provide customer services, make contracts, coordinate projects, offer valuable deals, and make decisions (Lichtenstein and Alexander, 2004). Teams within organisations have more independent approach and positive attitude towards changing environment than are traditional types of working conditions or other forms of permanent groupings. Teams are more beneficial if multiple skills are needed to perform a job. Teams can be made on urgent basis have ability to be disband on quick basis as well (Chan, 2002). Case 1 Biogenia plc have a cross-functional teams while Case 2 Sleepeasy Hotels have problem –solving teams. 2.2 Comparative Analysis In Case 1 company has created teams made up of employees from four different functional areas Research and Development, Manufacturing, Sales and marketing and, finally, Support (covering financial services, human resources and legal services) to work on different projects. They are using cross-functional teams. Employees within teams are gathered from the same hierarchical level, but they belong to different departments to work together on company’s assigned project (Parker, 2003). Employees are from diverse backgrounds within organisations and they are working to combine for creating new ideology and shaping new project. They have teams which of-course is no easy to manage. One issue is important to consider in developing teams which is of diversity prevailing within organisations. It requires time to develop atmosphere of faith and trust among team members, especially in case of diversity where employees are from different backgrounds with different expectations and perspectives (Kakabadse and Bank, 2004). While in Case 2 Company is using problem-solving teams. Teams are composed of reception, bar tending, cooking and room-cleaning. Members within teams are from the same department. There is one supervisor in every department who called up for meeting in a week to discuss about important issues, problems and the team thinks for the ways of improving performance and efficiency. Different ideas got shared plus employees provide suggestions on how to improve work performance and which methods to introduce that can increase productivity. On other hands employees can only provide suggestions, they are not empowered enough to execute these ideas on their own (Sorensen, 2006). Unlike case 1 organisation didn’t allow employees to make decisions on their own related to their job activities. Supervisory positions took increased importance. Although by comparison company in case 1 seems to have more effective teams. As teams differs in form and structures. Effectiveness of teams can be judged by resource, leadership styles, and climate of trust, reward systems and contextual influences that make teams effective. Another important factor is team composition and task design. As per structure and design of both organisations both have the right type of team structure. Keeping in view today’s organisational behavior requirements Sleepeasy Hotels should have to review their team building style. To work differently and change the way they do things and by looking at important factors like fast decision making cycles, outsourcing, downsizing they should have to adopt cross-functional style of team building. In order to survive in todays complex environment, they should combine wide variety of styles, skills set, and ideas. They need to develop social collaboration and concept creation which can only be possible by making Cross-functional teams. They need to promote these types of teams across different departments to improve efficiency (Oliver, 2006). 3. Comparison of Organisational Design and Structure 3.1 Structure comparison By analyzing Case 1, here jobs and common tasks are coordinated through departmentalization. Biogenia plc has organized their plant and has made different departments for manufacturing, accounting, engineering, human resources, and supply chain. The major advantage to organisation for developing departments is to get maximum advantage by combining specialist across different areas. They have functional specialization that seeks them to achieve maximum profit by combining employees with outstand abilities and skills into one common project. Biogenia plc also has departmentalization on the basis of geography. Departments within all 80 countries organized around geography. They also have process departmentalization for product development and improvement activities. Ideas for developing new product for their improvement went through several departments before receiving final status (Daft, 2009). Case 2 organisation has rigid functional departmentalization. Sleepeasy Hotels have departments devoted to reception, bar tending, cooking, and room-cleaning. But these departments are working in their defined areas. No cross functioning is allowed by organisational structure. They don’t even have process departmentalization. Changing work requirements need more diverse workforce to implement new skills, so Sleepeasy Hotels should turn to cross functional departmentalization. 3.2 Comparison of Chain of command Chain of command authority lays in the hands of upper level management that later moves to lower levels and simplifies who reports to whom within organisation (Harris and Raviv, 2002). In Case 1, organisation has substantially less relevance of authority at top management with less formalized chain of command and control. They have more empowered employees as compare to those in case 2. Low-level employees can access information in seconds that is available to top managers. Employees don’t need to go through a formal process for communication and for combine working. Authority and chain of command are no longer important to maintain discipline. Employees are empowered to execute their ideas without formal permission. Sleepeasy Hotels consider themselves to be more productive by enforcing the chain of command. Rights are considered being heritage of top management who give orders and expect their employees to obey and follow them. To facilitate coordination, top management has important part in the chain of command. Only managers have the authority to make orders. Low-level employees have no access to information which is available to top employees. 3.3 Centralization and Decentralization In Sleepeasy hotels, top managers take all the decisions. Lower level employees are carrying out top management’s directives. It is a centralized organisation. At the other extreme, in Biogenia plc decision making power is in the hands of employees to make daily activities as per their job requirements. Employees are making more quick actions to sort out daily problems, different teams are providing input into developing ideas and making final decisions, and employee work life balance is maintained by top management in effective and efficient manner to decrease work stress (Zabojnik, 2002). 3.4 Design Comparison Sleepeasy hotels have a pure bureaucratic design with highly routine tasks to perform, have strict rules to follow and jobs are divided into various departments, authority is centralized and has narrow spans of control. All decisions are made by managers and lower level employees follow their chain of commands. Biogenia plc follows team structure design. Organisation is promoting the work across departments by breaking barriers between them and empowering the teams to make daily decisions by giving them authorities. Organisation design compliments what is typically a bureaucracy. Biogenia plc design considers to be bureaucratic that fulfils its standard requirements but on the same time provides flexibility to teams to work together across departments. That’s the reason whenever they need to design new products or improve them or coordinate major projects, they’ll structure activities around cross-functional teams. 4. Comparison of Cultures 4.1 Strong versus Weak culture Biogenia plc has a strong culture with employees who are empowered enough to make decisions and have less formalized rules and regulations. While Sleepeasy hotels don’t have weak culture but do have formalization in organisation which creates predictability, orderliness, and consistency. 4.2 Open versus Close Biogenia plc has a dynamic culture. Organisation is undergoing a rapid change and has openness towards accepting new technological changes (Van Welie and Van Der Veer, 2003). Organisation is hiring people that best fit to their culture in terms of personality, attitudes, experience and qualification. Staffs is encouraged to contribute to community work, and the company sponsors a number of projects working with schools in a number of countries on biological science projects (Tushman, 2006). Employees are sponsored by Biogenia for higher studies. Company emphasizes on training the current employees. They have employees who are empowered enough to make decisions by themselves about daily job routine tasks. They are providing opportunity to all new employees to be socialized into organisation’s goals and values. Top management is concerned about employee’s refreshment activities and always made sure the team had time for some fun. Management is providing opportunities to team members to spend quite a lot of time together outside work. Office environments and even factories are designed to be light, pleasant places to work. Company is sponsoring a large amount of art work for enhancing their environment. Sleepeasy hotels have dual policy. They are providing entirely different culture to their top management as compare to lower level employees (Herzog, 2010). Top management is recruited in more conventional and formal ways, and has very different working conditions and career prospects. While on the other hand turnover of housekeepers in most cities is high. Little training is provided and there are few opportunities for promotion. It has a strong culture which is providing them enough benefit since the past. But their strong culture becomes a barrier to change which is no longer effective. They have quite a formal and fixed cultural setting. 4.3 Investiture versus Divestiture Biogenia plc is an organisation who knows well that employee’s skills and qualifications are important enough to make them successful at workplace, so these qualities and qualifications are confirmed and supported by the organisation. On the other hand, Sleepeasy hotels didn’t consider important ingredients for the recruitment of lower level employees. All staff is employed directly or through references even when they do not employ subcontractors to perform their functions. 5. Conclusion Both organisations have different working styles and cultures. Sleepeasy hotels have extensive rules and regulations that employees are required to follow. To avoid deviations managers always keep an eye on performance of their lower level employees. Organisation focus is on high level of productivity and ignoring its diverse effects on morals of their employees. Individualism is highly supported rather than group work. Organisation has different departments and following strict lines of authority. Employees have formal contact with employees of their department only with no cross functioning allowed. Individual efforts are rewarded through formal performance evaluation and seniority is considered the main factor for promotion and pay raises. While in Biogenia plc have less formalized system in their organisation with few rules and regulations. Top management considers their employees to be trust worthy. Management does consider high productivity as an important issue, but they are aware of the fact that this is related only with handling their employees fairly. Team work is promoted in workplace, and organisation is providing their employees the opportunities to work across cross-functional teams. Both have contrasting organisational cultures. References Chan, Y. E., 2002. Why we haven’t we mastered alignment? The importance of informal organisation structure. MIS Quarterly Executive, 27(6), p.256-483. Daft, R. L., 2009. Organisation Theory and Design. Mason, OH: Southwestern Cengage Learning.  Herzog, P., 2010. Open and closed innovation-different innovation cultures for different strategies. International Journal of Technology Management, 11(4), p.65-72. Harris, M., and Raviv, A., 2002. Organisational design. Management Science 48 (7), 852–865. Kakabadse, A. & Bank, J., 2004. Working in Organisations. Gower Publishing. Lichtenstein, R. & Alexander. J. A., 2004. Status differences in cross functional teams: effects on individual member participation, job satisfaction, and intent to quit. Journal of Health and social behavior, 11(1), p. 66-96. Oliver, S., 2006. How to develop knowledge culture in organisation? A multiple case study of large distributed organisations. Journal of Knowledge Management, 62(5), p.25-65. Parker, G.M. (2003), Cross Cross-functional Teams: Working with Allies, Enemies, and Other Strangers. San Francisco: CA. Jossey-Bass. Sorensen, J. B., 2006. Bureaucracy and entrepreneurship: workplace effects on entrepreneurial entry. Administrative Science Quarterly, p. 96-169. Tushman, M. L., 2006. Ambidextrous organisations: managing evolutionary and revolutionary change. Managing Innovation and Change, 15(2), p.169-296. Van Welie, M. & Van Der Veer, G.C., 2003. Pattern Languages in Interaction Design: Structure and Organisation Rauterberg, eds. Design, 3(c), p.1–5.  Zabojnik, J., 2002. Centralized and decentralized decision making in organisations. Journal of Labour Economics, 11(4), p.12-20.  Read More