ORGANISATION STRUCTURE AND CHANGE

Organization Structure and Change

Organization Structure and Change

This paper explains the relationships of organizational design, structure, culture and change. Organisational theory seeks to understand the principle that govern how organizations operate, evolve, and change their structures and cultures and the factors that affect the way organizations operate, evolve, change. Its focus is on the organization as a whole. An organisations behavior is the result of its design and the principles behind its operations.

An organisation can be described as a means by which management can co-ordinate the efforts of individuals to achieve an objective. It can be looked at, as an intentional structure of roles where the process involves both the structuring of activities together with the allocation of roles within the workplace. In a formal organization it shows the authority relationship, the formal communication channel and the formal lines of accountability. The informal structure is linked to personal characteristics and social relationships which reflects the political nature of the organization.

1) ORGANISATIONAL THEORY

Organisational theory is designed to understand the nature of the organisations. By which organizations can evaluate its overall business by putting the right structure and operate in different ways. Organisational theory also helps us understand how processes such as change and decision making can be managed. It deals with different structures and cultures such as large organizations have different structures and cultures than small ones, and the manufacturing organisations operate in a different way than those in the service sector.(Burton & Obel, pp. 11 to 12)

2) ORGANISATIONAL DESIGN

Organization Design is a formal, guided process for integrating the people, information and technology of an organisation. It is used to match the form of the organisation as closely as possible to the purpose the organization seeks to achieve. Through the design process, organizations act to improve the probability that the collective efforts of members will be successful.(Burton & Obel, p. 13)

3) ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURE

Organisational structure has long been described as a mechanism through which effort is integrated through the coordination and control of activities There are many different types of structures and for years researchers and practitioners attempted to determine what type of structure was in fact the most effective. This line of inquiry has led ultimately to a contingency view of structure, that is, the most appropriate structure for a given organisation is a function of the type of environment that organisational operates within and the technology it utilizes.

4) ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE

Organisational culture is the personality of the organisation. Culture is comprised of the assumptions, values, norms and tangible signs (artefacts) of organisation members and their behaviours. Members of an organisation soon come to sense the particular culture of an organisation. Culture is one of those terms that's difficult to express distinctly, but everyone knows it when they sense it. For example, the culture of a large, for-profit corporation is quite different than that of a hospital which is quite different that that of a university. You can tell the culture of an organisation by looking at the arrangement of furniture, ...