Analysis of an Organization's Vision, Mission and Strategic Goals and the Organizational Structure - Literature review Example

Health and Social Care According to scientific managers such as Fredrick Taylor, organizational structure can be defined as the formal system of responsibilities and power relationships that show how the managers should supervise their employees and the way the organizational resources is utilized so as to achieve the main goals and objective of the company. An organizational structure is the main factor which improves the ability of the organization to control the application of organizational resources in order to attain its objective. The form of an organization is very important because it direct and influence the activities in different levels of management, indicates the line of authority and the behavior of employees when relating to one another in the organization. According to the Salvendyb (2010) organizational form can also shape the relationship of employees in the organization. Various literatures argued that the structure of an organization is always revealed on an organizational chart. This will provide a real “picture” of an organization. This organizational chart directs various issues in an organization such as chain of command so that every employee will know his immediate boss, the lines of authority which will attend the employees’ problems and management level. Effective managers should clarify these issues so that employees will find it simple to address their own problems. Seek clarifications and give complements when it is appropriate to do so. Most organization especially hospital, use functional structures or line structures whereby the clear line of authority is shown. Everyone within the hospital knows whom to report to. Many psychologists discourage this structure claiming it to be a traditional way of managing the organization. They argue that the decisions are made by top managers without involving the line managers and other junior staff in the company. In these structures, there is poor communication system because communication is only downward. Employees find it difficult to air their views because of complex layers of bureaucracy. Employees such as nurses, doctors and corporate services find it difficult to communicate because of the nature of the system and this leads to various problems such as lack of coordination of patient care which will result to poor services in the hospital and thus creating a negative image in health care environment. The diagram below shows order of line structure. The advantages and limitations of that type of structure for health care delivery The major advantage of this structure is specialization. Everyone in the organizations knows his or her role. There are no issues of job ambiguity because the roles are clearly stated. Because of the central point of making decision, it is believed that the decision made is of high quality which can be prospects for advancement of the efficient nurses in the hospital. Every department has clear roles to play for the benefit of the organization thus improving coordination in the company across different functional departments. In summary, the main advantages are as follows: Line structure is simple which makes it easy to be understood and to be implemented. Most nurses and doctors have found it to be less complicated. This type of structure is also flexible in terms of expansion It makes possible for everyone in the hospital to clearly identify the division of authority and responsibility of each department. Since communication is download and not vice versa, there is a clear channel of communication from top management to the junior employees. A line structure facilitates a speedy action and fast decision making because there is no consultation to different departments. There is high level of discipline within the organization because of the unity of command. It is not only possible but also easier to arrange for in-hour training and development within the organization. Because of clear line of authority, it reduces unnecessary spending thus reducing daily operational cost of an organization. Line structure is very essential for development of top executive in an organization. The line structure reduces the likeness of confusion in an organization because each boss has one subordinate rule. However, the structures have various disadvantages attached to it. Some of these disadvantages include the misunderstanding and disagreement between nurses and doctors , ignoring nurses advice by doctors, nurses tend to have no responsibilities at all and high resistance of change in the organization. The decision making has been made to be complex since it has to start from top to the bottom. Only top managers are responsible in making this decision and this delays the implementation process since the top managers needs to agree on the same. Furthermore, this kind of organizational structure can reduce economies of scale because of diverse technical competence and the lack of the expertise in handling organizational issues. It also leads to unhealthy competition between different departments in the organization (Kurtz, 2009. p 269). As a result of this it can increase the cost because it will require duplication of the resources in the organization. Health care organization use top authority in order to achieve their goals and objectives of the organization. Some of the common key lines of authority used are the functional authority whereby the employees are directed on daily work activities of the company. This type of authority gives the middle managers more powers over the administrative staff and they direct the activities to be done in an organization. This kind of authority has been problematic to many organizations because of the time it consumes. For instance, it will take time for a new machine to be purchased due to tedious procedures to be followed. Other type of authority used in an organization is the staff authority. This kind of authority is mostly practiced in hospitals where specialized persons are required to carry out certain tasks. These two types of line authorities enable the company to achieve its goals and objectives (Harris, 2005. p 93). Organizational structure plays important role in achieving company’s objectives because it first portray the company’s image and positions the company well in the market. Organizations such as hospitals where competition is low can be quite non-adaptive, resilient and negative which make the patients to developed negative picture over the hospital. According to Kurtz (2009) competition is necessary so that the organization can improve its performance knowing that they will lose customers incase they failed to deliver quality services as per the wishes of the customers. This organization which enjoys monopoly in provision of the services in the market tends to provide a robust challenge to parties who talk of change and reforms in the organization. Many of these organizations which enjoy monopoly tend to have traditional structures whereby it resists change in all ways possible. Such structures frustrate employees in the organization and also affect the performance of the organization. Enthoven (1997, p. 49) in his book reflect the line structures in most organizations which have bureaucratic systems where they emphasized on central place of making decisions. The managers in these organizations with traditional structures practiced mechanistic management. This mechanistic management system is rigid and cannot adopt changes; top managers also tend to be authoritarian in the way they handle their employees. The current leaders and managers are looking forward to attaining the goals of the hospital i.e. to offer quality services to its patients in a professional manner and without any act which might suggest negligence. In laws governing nursing profession, nurses have implied obligation to offer the nursing services in a professional manner (Goergens, 2010. p 87). Effective services in health organizations are achieved by using appropriate strategies which will enable the organization to attain its mission and vision statements. The performance in the organization needs to be benchmarked so that the company can know its position in the provision of the services. At this point, employees need to be motivated so as to work hard and deliver as per the requirement of the hospital. Motivation is the key factor which will make the employees to work harder than before (Panayotis and Sophia, 2009. p 172). The vision and mission statement of any organization and strategy are normally designed depending on the structure of the organization. Many organizations today are redefining their strategies so that they can fit in the highly competitive market. Though it is beneficial to consider the mission and vision of the company and its strategy which is driving change, it is also equally important to recognize other factors such as employees and other subordinate staff in the organization. Besides, mission and vision statement are very important because it enable the employees to focus their efforts toward the same goal. This will develop a spirit of team work in an organization and can also improve the image of the company. According to Ahlstrom (2009) the vision and mission statement of the company should be used as a guide in decision making. Furthermore, the vision and mission statements should also be part of the strategic planning process so that much effort is put on achieving organizational goals. Managers in most organizations struggle to envision what the future holds for the organizations so that they can design effective strategies which will maintain the competitiveness of the companies in the market. Organizations especially those operating in competitive business environments adopt divisional structures because of it flexibility. This type of structure relates with the vision, mission and goals of the organization in various ways. The strategy which is adopted by the organization which is used to achieve the mission statement of the organization affects the organizational structure. This means that the strategies used in an organization will determine the kind of the structure of that organization. Furthermore, it will affect other factors such as the way the employees work in the organization, the level of management in the organization and the way information is passed. These factors are very important as it will determine the effectiveness of the company while serving the customers in the company. Some of the important frameworks which are commonly adopted for planning include the vision and mission statement, goals or the objective of the organization, values and the strategies used among others. In many cases doctors, nurses and other staff working in the hospital have been found to know various means of improving the services they offer. However, the top managers might be having different strategies in which they believe to be superior and can lead to obtain a leadership position in the market. Such managers believe that their strategies are the only means of obtaining mission and vision statements of an organization (Schwartz, 2010. p 180) Some scientists argue that an organization’s structure needs to be flexible so that the employees are able to adopt changes which are for the benefit of both the organization and employees. He further claims that change will create more opportunities with the company so that employees could get promoted. Psychologist such as Taylor have also emphasized on the issue of promoting employees. He believed that promotion will act as the motivation to many employees and will make them to look for more responsibilities in the organization (Rebitzer and Lowell, 2007. p 215). According to Fayol Work appraisal is very important because it leads and motivates employees while working because they know that their efforts will be rewarded though a vice versa is always true. The leaders should be very careful while assessing the work of employees to ensure that fairness is considered while awarding hardworking employees (Salvendy, 2010. p 49). However, some of the employees have been found to show lack of participation and interest in such appraisals task because of various reasons such as traditional managers who might interfere with the promotional activities for the best ranked employees in terms of performances. Furthermore, traditional managers have been found to be problematic especially when change is introduced in an organization. According to David (2007) traditional managers are high tempered because they fight to preserve their position in the company. They are not prepared for committee meeting which talks of empowering employees in terms of sponsoring them for further training (Andrew, 2009. p 258). They don’t value the need of training employees because they fear that these employees will occupy their position in the company. They are disorganized and are not ready to be changed in any sense. Most of these managers prefer bureaucratic way of managing organization thus they don’t see any need of carrying out performance appraisals. I agree with these psychologists because many employees in the current organization are looking for the security in their work. Motivated employees are also creative because most of them are looking forward to be rewarded and be recognized. Fredrick Taylor in his theory believe that employees are interested with the power and they will do anything possible to obtain power; this was recognized by McGregor in his order of priority in every normal human being. He had ranked the need for power to be the last priority when all other basic needs have been obtained. Many leading organizations in the world have supported this idea of valuing employees. They contrast with old managers in traditional structures where they were focusing on the out put of an organization instead of focusing on both the employees and the nature of the work. Employees in every company are very important because they reflect the company and they determine the competitiveness of the company. It is for this reason that the human resources of any company consider motivating their employees in an appropriate manner. The best way is to carry out investment appraisal so that they can easily identify employees who are working hard and those who are not working hard (Tan, 2009. p 131). They should then reward those who are working hard so that they motivate them further and even encourage others to work extra harder. Other factors which should be exercised in an organization concerning motivation are the provision of short training for the new employees among others. New employees should be thoroughly trained so that they can learn the systems of the company well. This will reduce the occurrences of many pitfalls such as the misuse of the resources, delay of customers because employees are incompetent and offering the services in an awkward manner. The senior managers who have served for a longer period of time should also be taken for refresher courses so as to refresh their skills and be thought on new skills and other management skills so that they can carry out their work of management effectively. It is also important for an organization to consider using the latest technology for it to compete effectively in the market. Every organization needs to carry out market research to identify exactly the need of customers in the market and provide the products that can satisfy those needs beyond the expectations of the customers. Customer satisfaction is the key success in every organization and therefore organizations should employ competitive employees who are in a position to deliver quality services (Dzimbiri, 2009. p 112) In conclusion, the structure of an organization is very important because it is the major determinant of the success of an organization. It is responsible for designing important functions which motivates employees and reduces the cases of employees moving to other companies. Besides, the organizational goals and objectives are very important because they direct the organization to accomplish the main purpose of being in business. Bibliography Andrew. 2009. Human Resource Management: Tb for hospitality. Tata McGraw-Hill, (4) 257-259 Ahlstrom, D. 2009. Management: Strategy and Culture in the Emerging World. Cengage Learning, (5) 304-309 Blazey, L. M. 2009.Insights to Performance Excellence 2009-2010: An Inside Look at the 2009-2010 Baldrige Award Criteria. American Society for Qualit. 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