Organizational theory & design
Chapter 1 ‘Organizations and Organizational Effectiveness’
People have a casual attitude toward organizations because organizations are
intangible. Grouping people and other resources to produce goods and services is
the essence of organizing and of what an organization does.
Organization: a tool people use to coordinate their actions to obtain something
they desire or value, to achieve their goals. An organization is a response to and
a means of satisfying some human need.
Entrepreneurship: the process by which people recognize opportunities to
satisfy needs and then gather and use resources to meet those needs.
Most of us don’t think about the organizations that produce the products we use
until have a problem with those products.
The increasing use of mobile computing devices is revolutionizing the way all
organizations operate.
The way in which an organization creates value takes place at three stages:
input, conversion and output.
Organizational environment: the set of forces and conditions that operate
beyond an organization’s boundaries but affect its ability to acquire and use
resources to create value. Pressures from the organizational environment in
which they operate also make organizations the favored mode for transforming
inputs into outputs. An organization’s environment is the source of valuable input
resources and is the marketplace into which it releases outputs. It is also the
source of economics, social and political pressures that affect an organization’s
ability to obtain these resources.
,The way an organization chooses and obtains from its environment the inputs it
needs to produce goods and services determines how much value the
organization creates at the input stage.
For example: Jeff Bezos chose to design software to make Amazon.com’s website as
simple and user-friendly as possible as he could and he only recruited people who could
provide high-quality customer-friendly service.
The way an organization uses human resources and technology to transform
inputs into outputs determines how much value is created at the conversion
stage. The amount of value the organization creates is a function of the quality of
its skills, including its ability to learn from and respond to the environment.
For example: Jeff Bezos decided to offer wide choice and low prices and to ship books
quickly to customers. His skills at these activities created the value that customers saw in
his concept.
The result of the conversion process is an output of finished goods and services
that the organization releases to its environment, where they are purchases and
used by customers to satisfy their needs. The organization uses the money
earned from the sale of its output to obtain new supplies of inputs, and the cycle
begins again.
A value-creation model can be used to describe the activities of most kinds of
organizations.
Service organizations interact directly with customers or clients, who are the
“inputs” to their operations. In the conversion stage, service organizations create
value by applying their skills to yield an output.
McDonald’s inputs: McDonald’s conversion process:
Obtained from its environment Transforms inputs and adds value to
them
Raw materials (ground beef, potatoes) Machinery (grills, toasters)
Human resources (cooks, managers) Computers (ordering systems, cash registers)
Information and knowledge (knowledge of Human skills and abilities (personnel trained in
fast-food industry) sandwich preparation, ordering)
Money and capital (shareholders’
investments)
Customers
McDonald’s environment: McDonald’s outputs:
Sale of outputs to customers Released to its environment
Satisfied customers Fast and cheap food
Potential customers Satisfied customers
Suppliers of meat/potatoes Satisfied shareholders
Population from which to choose
employees
Government health regulations
Competitors (Burger King, KFC)
,The use of an organization allows people jointly to:
Increase specialization and the division of labor
The collective nature of organizations allows individuals to focus on a narrow area.
Use large-scale technology
Organizations are able to take advantage of the economies of scale and scope
that result from the use of modern automated and computerized technology.
Economies of scale: cost savings that result when goods and services are
produced in large volume on automated production lines.
Economies of scope: cost savings that result when an organization is able
to use underutilized resources more effectively because they can be shared
across several different products or tasks.
Manage the organizational environment
Manage complex environments is a task beyond the abilities of most individuals,
but an organization has the resources to develop specialists to anticipate or
attempt to influence the many pressures from the environment. This specialization
allows the organization to create more value for the organization, its members and
its customers.
Economize on transaction costs
When people within an organization learn what to do and how to work with others
to perform a task effectively, people jointly have to decide who will do which
tasks, who will get paid what amounts and how to decide if each coworker is doing
his or her share of the work.
Transaction costs: the costs associated with negotiating, monitoring and
governing exchanges between people to solve these kinds of transaction
difficulties. Organizations’ ability to control the exchanges between people
reduces the transaction costs associated with these exchanges.
Exert power and control
Organizations can exert great pressure on individuals to conform to task and
production requirements in order to increase production efficiency. To get a job
done efficiently, people must come to work in a predictable fashion, behave in the
interests of the organization and accept the authority of the organization and its
managers. All these requirements make production less costly and more efficient
but put a burden on individuals who must conform to organizational requirements.
The upper five factors explain why often more value can be created when people
work together, coordination their actions in an organized setting, than when they
work alone.
Organizational theory: the study of how organizations function and how they
affect and are affected by the environment in which they operate.
People and managers knowledgeable about organizational design and change are
able to analyze the structure and culture of the organization for which they work,
diagnose problems and make adjustments that help the organization achieve its
goals.
Organizational structure: the formal system of task and authority relationships
that control how people coordinate their actions and use resources to achieve
organizational goals.
, The principal purpose of organizational structure is to control the way people
coordinate their actions to achieve organizational goals and to control the means
used to motivate people to achieve these goals.
Organizational culture: the set of shared values and norms that controls
organizational members’ interactions with each other and with suppliers,
customers and other people outside the organization.
An organizations’ culture is shaped by the people inside the organization, the
ethics of the organization, the employment rights given to employees and the
type of structure used by the organization.
The organizational culture influences how people respond to a situation and how
they interpret the environment surrounding the organization.
Organizational design: the process by which managers select and manage
aspects of structure and culture so an organization can control the activities
necessary to achieve its goals.
Organizational structure balances the need of the organization to manage
external and internal pressures so that it can survive in the long run.
Organizational change: the process by which organizations move from their
present state to some desired future state to increase their effectiveness.
The goal of organizational change is to find new or improved ways of using
resources and capabilities to increase an organization’s ability to create value
and hence its performance.