Changing Organizational Structures to Learning Organization

Organizations have set goals and objectives that should be achieved within a specified period. For organizations to achieve them, they should have structures that would ensure that the needed activities are done in the desired way. Maguire (2012) defines the organizational structure as the way in which people are grouped to get work done in a firm. It forms the basis for the development of an effective relationship between different stakeholders such as managers and the employees. Organizational structures can be grouped into different types that include matrix, functional, and divisional structures among others. Evidence shows that the type of structure used in an organization influences its members significantly.

Organizational structures affect job satisfaction among the staff of a firm. According to a literature review performed by Thomas (2015), it became evident that nurses who worked in hospitals where decentralization was used in task execution and decision making reported high levels of job satisfaction. According to them, centralization provided nurses with their desired autonomy that resulted in their increased productivity and satisfaction with their job. When this occurs, employees are ready to explore new ways of executing their assigned responsibilities and take up new tasks (Baligh, 2006). The review also showed that organic structure was associated with high productivity among the employees. This is attributed to the alignment of the structure's practices with employees' personality variables such as the need for achievement, autonomy, and dominance (Thomas, 2015). In a similar study, Sollund (2006) found that enterprises that had organic and mechanistic structures were associated with high rate of job satisfaction among female employees due to structure's focus on organizational commitment, inclusiveness in decision-making, and promotion.

A structure adopted by any firm encompasses three main dimensions. It can either have organic, mechanistic, or bureaucratic dimensions depending on aspects such as the levels of formalization, centralization, and complexity (Srivastava, 2005). Each of these dimensions has a direct effect on employee behavior. For example, employees are highly likely to work under strict policies and play a minimum role in making decisions related to their firm in organizations characterized by mechanistic structures. In these structures, enterprises have highly complex, centralized, and formalized environments where task specialization is promoted and strict procedures are followed when making decisions. This also applies to the bureaucratic dimension where senior level managers make decisions for other the other stakeholders to follow (Buhler, 2011). When adopted, they are associated with employee behaviors such as low morale, motivation, and job satisfaction that lowers productivity and increases the rate of employee turnover (Srivastava, 2005).

Organizational structures also have considerable effects on employees' adaptive behaviors and performances. Adaptive behavior refers to those that individuals use to adjust to a new behavior or situation. A study by Kanten, Kanten, and Gurlek (2015) to investigate the effect of organizational structure on employee adaptive behavior, performance, and job commitment showed that different types of organizational structures affect employee behavior in varying ways. In specific, they found that organic organizational and mechanistic structures have no effect on employee adaptive behaviors and performance. This implied that the ability of the employees to respond to new changes in their firms is relatively reduced. However, organizations with learning organizational structures enjoy the benefits of positive adaptive behaviors and performance from their employees since they are highly motivated and autonomous to take new responsibilities in the firm. Therefore, the authors recommend the need for the use of learning organizations in organic and mechanistic structures as a way of improving the employee adaptive performance and behaviors (Kanten et al., 2015). In this case, learning structure will play the mediating role in these two structures.

The type of structure within an organization also influences the attitude the employees have towards their managers and other organizational stakeholders. Schminke, Cropanzano, and Rupp (2002) hypothesized in their study that dimensions of organizational structure that included size, formalization, centralization, and complexity influence the perception of the employees towards procedural, distributive, and interactional fairness. As asserted by them, organizational structures such as learning structures where the focus is on individuals at the lower organizational levels are characterized by positive perception towards different organizational aspects used in promoting fairness. This is contrary to what is associated with organizational structures such as bureaucracy where the focus is on individuals at the high organizational levels. Therefore, for employees to have a positive perception of the firm's fairness, organizations should place more emphasis on using formalized and centralized organizational structures (Schminke et al., 2002).

King (1999) conducted a study that aimed at examining the where organizational structure influences employee behavior. In specific, he focused on examining structure's effect on whistleblowing among the employees. Whistleblowing enables employees to take the responsibility of reporting any negative behaviors in their firms to the external stakeholders or environment of the firm. The major structures that were examined included centralized, matrix, horizontal, divisional, and hybrid structures. According to them, bureaucracy in decision-making and implementation of interventions characterizes a centralized structure. As a result, the management suppresses negative views, which contributes to internal suppressing of whistleblowing. Employees reporting to heads of functional departments and heads of the projects characterize the matrix structure. Thus, external whistleblowing is limited due to the presence of clear channels of communication. Horizontal structures are characterized by information flowing between the same organizational levels. This increases the risks of external whistleblowing due to the lack of proper structures of communication in the firm. Finally, the hybrid structure is characterized by decentralization where decision-making is done collectively. As a result, whistleblowing is unlikely since all issues are discussed internally among and between departments (King, 1999). Therefore, the type of organizational structure influences employee behavior significantly.

Question 2

According to literature, specific organizational structures are found to be highly effective in delivering the desired objectives when compared to others. For example, a firm might be reporting excellent results with the use of decentralized structures when compared to similar firms using centralized structures. However, this does not imply that decentralized organizational structure is superior to the centralized organizational structure. Therefore, in this section, I argue that no specific organizational structure superior to the other.

According to Vance & Paik (2015), different companies have varying periods of historical development. Some have gone through a series of a historical continuum where they have adopted the use of different organizational structures to meet their operational needs in specific markets. For example, most international firms have moved from using functional structures to global business structures to internationally integrated firms. As they do this, their organizational structures undergo a series of metamorphosis that ensures their adaptation to their new environment, needs, and operational costs. Therefore, the fact that a firm currently users globally integrated business structure such as a learning organizational structure does not imply that its earlier structures such as functional structures were inferior. It simply means that the earlier is no longer effective in meeting the current needs, hence, the need for a different structure. For these companies, there is no best-fit structure for them, hence, the lack of superiority of one to another.

Globally, not all the companies involved in the production of similar product or provision of similar services have the same organizational structures. For example, Medtronic and 3M Companies both engage in the manufacture of medical devices. They are highly competitive companies that target similar market niches. However, a careful analysis of their structures shows that they use different organizational structures to achieve their goals. 3M Company focuses mainly on the use of line business structure where its units specialize in an area of production such as security tools, office supplies, or health care products. By contrast, Medtronic uses functional structures where each line of production has a top-level department that oversees the overall activities of the firm such as human resources, strategy implementation, and management of legal issues. Therefore, this shows that organizational success does not depend on the superiority of the structure but its ability to promote the realization of the set goals and objectives.

When starting a company, stakeholders should determine factors like the size, aims, and industry. These factors are influential about the type of structure to be adopted (Puffer, 2004). In this case, a small company will not demand the use of a complex organizational structure such as matrix structure where series of communication between stakeholders exists. Therefore, organizations adopt structures that they perceive they will increase efficiencies in task execution and decision-making. Therefore, the fact that newly developed Firm X adopted the use of centralized structures does not mean that its structure is inferior to the functional structure used by Apple Company. Based on this, I firmly believe that no organizational structure is superior to the other. The organizational factors determine the suitable structure that should be used.

References

Baligh, H. H. (2006). Organization Structures: Theory and Design, Analysis and Prescription. Springer Science & Business Media.

Buhler, P. M. (2011). Changing organizational structures and their impact on managers. Organizational Change, 72(2), 24-26.

Kanten, P., Kanten, S., & Gurlek, M. (2015). The Effects of Organizational Structures and Learning Organization on Job Embeddedness and Individual Adaptive Performance. Procedia Economics and Finance, 23, 1358 -- 1366. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2212-5671(15)00523-7

King, G. (1999). The Implications of an Organization's Structure on Whistleblowing. Journal of Business Ethics, 20(4), 315 -- 326. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1006028417000

Maguire, E. R. (2012). Organizational Structure in American Police Agencies: Context, Complexity, and Control. SUNY Press.

Puffer, S. M. (2004). Changing organizational structures: An interview with Rosabeth Moss Kanter. The Academy of Management Executive, 18(2), 96 -- 105. https://doi.org/10.5465/AME.2004.13836355

Schminke, M., Cropanzano, R., & Rupp, D. E. (2002). Organization structure and fairness perceptions: The moderating effects of organizational level. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 89(1), 881 -- 905. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0749-5978(02)00034-1

Sollund, R. (2006). Mechanistic Versus Organic Organizations' Impact on Immigrant Women's Work Satisfaction and Occupational Mobility. Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism, 6(4), 287 -- 307. https://doi.org/10.1080/15022250601003240

Srivastava, D. K. (2005). Strategies for Performance Management. Excel Books India.

Thomas, O. O. (2015). Effects of Organizational Structure on Job Satisfaction in the Nigerian Financial Sector: Empirical Insight from Selected Banks in Lagos State. NG-Journal of Social Development, 5(1), 96 -- 108. https://doi.org/10.12816/0032083

Vance, C. M., & Paik, Y. (2015). Managing a Global Workforce. Routledge.