Functional, divisional, and matrix organizational structures

Organizational Models and Design

Organizations come in varying shapes and sizes and this can also be said about organizational structures. Organizational structures can be 'flat' which means there are few levels between the owner and the common employee. They can also be 'tall' which means that there are many tiers that exist between the common employee and the owner of the company. This paper will look at the three major organizational structures and highlight their main advantages and disadvantages.

Functional structure

The functional organizational structure is also refereed to as bureaucratic organizational structure whereby the company is divided on the basis of specialty. For instance, under this type of organizational structure separate divisions would be assigned for accounting, marketing, sales and so on.

The advantage of this organizational structure is that individuals are totally dedicated to one particular function. Another advantage is that this structure goes along way in saving costs as well as bringing about efficiency that comes about through the combination of functions in such a manner. This organizational structure is disadvantageous in that it is prone to conflicts. It is also difficult for strong communication lines to be facilitated between the various functional departments; if the departments are in different separate locations then it means that there can be a difficulty in the actual communication between them as well as the understanding of the needs of other departments (O'Farrell, 2009).

Matrix structure

This organizational structure is a combination of the functional and additional organizational structure types. The employees are usually placed on the basis of the product and the function. There are different project teams, that bring skilled people together from all over the organization but there still exists divisions.in this type of structure an individual normally works under tow bosses; the division manager and the manager of the particular project.

This organizational structure is advantageous since the projects benefit from the existing cooperation across the organization in that the brightest and best individuals in the organization can give their contributions to projects which they would otherwise not have had any access to. At the same time all the departments have the opportunity to voice out their ideas on the process of production from the initial product fabrication all the way to its marketing and sales.

However a disadvantage of this organizational structure is that it is often confusing .this is because the responsibilities and jurisdictions are not normally defined in a clear way. Matrix organizational structures also have the tendency of developing of cliques within the organization since all decisions are left to a selected group.

While an organization can take in any of these three major organizational structures, they often do not fully adhere strictly to one specific organizational structure particularly smaller organizations.