Organizational Theory Design and Change - Essay Example

25 January, How can the design of the organization's structure and culture give some subunits more power than others? An organization’s structure and its culture play a decisive role in determining the power that individual subunits, that make a part of it would attain. The organization’s structure decides role of subunits as per the requirements of its strategic goals that it maintains in order to get competitive advantaged. The level of interdependence of subunits varies from one organization’s structure to another.

Some factors arising from the organization’s structure and culture that assign subunits varying degree of power are as follows: An organization fundamentally gets hold of resources from the environment. Therefore, the subunit that assumes greater control over the organizational resources, retains greater power as compared to other subunits, that so not have as strong a hold over them. In addition to the organizational resources, a subunit’s approach to the strategic information and its control of it are the cardinal sources of its authority.

Subunits assuming a central responsibility to the flow of resources are able to minimize the vagueness that other subunits face (Jones). Therefore, any subunit that is able to control an organization’s principal sources causing uncertainty retains considerable power, though, as the contingencies an organization faces change, the distribution of power between individual subunits changes. Besides, if a subunit assumes such a role in the organization’s structure that no other subunit can play, then it becomes vital for the organization’s success.

Such a subunit becomes quite nonsubstitutable, in comparison to other subunits, that may be meddled with or replaced as per the need of the hour. Works cited: Jones, Gareth. Organizational Theory, Design, and Change. 6th ed. NJ: Prentice Hall. 2007.