The organizing function of management

Organization Management

Organizational Management in the U.S. Army

One of the most essential functions that management performs in a given business or corporate entity is the organization of that business or entity. This includes such elements as determining and implementing the most efficient division of labor, a system that allows for the delegation of authority, decisions regarding the departmentation and/or integration of the various activities and offices within the entity, developing a span of control over the entities operations, and the coordination of all aspects of the business or entity towards a common goal, and with common values and practices (Erven 2009). Each of these areas of managerial organization is essential to the efficient and productive operation of the business or entity, though some outfits might require a focus on specific elements of the general organizational needs. The United States Army is one such organization.

The delegation of authority and coordination of the various departments and resources at the U.S. Army's disposal is of paramount importance to the conducting of successful operations; though departmentation, division of labor, and a span of control are also highly important elements in the Army's organization, they are not focal points in the manner that delegation and coordination are. These concepts constitute the Army leadership's primary perspectives when making organizational choices, such as the allocation of resources. Specifically, the organization and allocation of human resources and available technological resources by the United States Army is marked by a conscious and purposeful obeisance to a strict chain of command, and to the coordination of efforts as dictated from an overall vantage point, with varying degrees of success in this organizational scheme.

The organization of human resources is carried out by Army management in a highly detailed manner. Schedules of deployment, evaluations and results, promotions, and an abundance of other information is made readily available to all Army personnel at any time, and is highly organized and tightly controlled (HRC 2010). Troop deployment timetables are analyzed and developed from a perspective of overall Army needs and individual soldiers' necessary leave times, both of which are under constant review. This makes for a highly structured deployment and organizational system that dictates precisely where human resources will be allocated, to what purposes, and the duration of that deployment (HRC 2010). Skill sets and abilities as well as job titles and rank are all taken into account in the human resource organization, as well, ensuring that the necessary human resources are maintained in every region and base in which the Army operates.

The high level of organization in the United States Army's deployment of its human resources is at once necessary and cumbersome. With an organization as large and as diversely engaged as the Army, a rigid system of organization is necessary in order for a big-picture view of the organizational scheme to be possible and manageable. At the same time, the number of variables that exist in the highly-organized schema lead to almost constant change, such that while the organization of human resources is always being optimized, it is never static and therefore never actually optimal in real time. The effective use of human resources will always be a major problem in organizations as large as the United States Army, however, and the rigid control of the system is the best strategic organization.

Technology is at once an easier and a more complex organizational problem for the management of the United States Army. This is because many of the technological resources of the Army are at once more expendable and more expensive than the human resources. There are a variety of new technologies available that could change the way battles are fought, particularly in cities and other situations with many obstructions and secured hiding places, for example (RDECOM 2010). But although these technologies are available, they are not infinitely available nor cheaply produced, and the Army must make a determination of where the greatest need for these technologies exists (RDECOM 2010). The limitation of human resources leads to a direct limitation of the operations the Army can carry out, and while this is partially true of technology it is more true that technology can improve the efficiency of operations, rather than rendering them possible in the first place.

Given this fact, the Army necessarily views and organizes its technological resources much differently than it does its human resources. The goal of efficiency, especially in dollar terms, is high in the Army management's mind when organizing and allocating technological resources, to ensure that the financial resources of the organization as a whole will provide for all necessary operations. Technology is actually allocated at a much more strategically and practically efficient and effective level than are human resources because of this fact. Technology can be treated in ways that human beings cannot, however, and that is truly what enables the freer and more dollar-oriented allocation of technological resources; the Army could not operate organizing its human resources the same.