Organizational Structure Organizations Can Be of Many

Organizational Structure

Organizations can be of many types and it would be wrong to say that there are universal formulae for the success of all organizations. That is the reasons why there are managers to lead the organizations to success. They have to decide the type of organization it is and then adopt the required strategies that would lead it to success.

One of the recent developments in organizations have been organizations which have been set up with an alliance between two organizations or groups, or in partnership with each other. The requirement of these organizations are becoming very important as there is an increasing shift of work from the developed countries to less developed countries as the cost of labor in the less developed countries are much less. This is a very critical type of organization as it effectively has to keep two masters happy. The problems with this type of organizations are now becoming important headlines for newspapers and other publications as there are a large number of individuals in the developed countries who do not want these organizations to flourish, and thus the publication of such information also helps in increasing the circulation of the concerned publication.

The important point to remember while such organizations are being formed is that they match the needs of each other, are in co-ordination with each other, the organizations do not end up duplicating the services of each other and ensure that the tasks are done. The next set of problems come from the communications that are carried out by both organizations and for this purpose there has to be a central body of communicators; the links between the two organizations have to be clearly defined, though there may not be any structure that is legally enforceable; the roles of the two organizations in the new organizations have to be defined; there have to be advisors to both sides to sort out differences and develop new resources. The budget of the new organization has to be defined by the two organizations setting them up in consultation with each other. (Checking the temperature of Your Coalition)

The new organization can succeed only when the leaders are trying to sort out the problems and ready to go through complex decision making. In spite of that, there will be conflicts, but the process of communication has to go on. The level of such collaboration can even increase to the level of a partnership between the two organizations. (Checking the temperature of Your Coalition) This sort of a situation also comes up when there is merger of organizations and that is quite frequent now. What we are talking about is an internal understanding between management at all levels in running the organization. The understanding between the different parts of the management is formalized through certain procedures and these are being discussed next.

Changes for success:

The important factor in management today is the management in a changing environment. The changes which are taking place change organizational culture and values, value added processes, structure, customer interfaces, technology, organizational boundaries, metrics and human resources. The nature of the consumer has changed and the changed consumer is putting up new challenges for the management, and it is interesting to note how the organization is being changed by these challenges or demands from the consumer. This is making it essential that marketing develop new forms of executions and a part of entrepreneurship in designing the new forms. What we mean is that now the form of marketing that is required is modular and this makes marketing more similar to other parts of the organization and the customer is a part of the matters that cause these changes. When the entire structure of marketing is directly related to other functions of the organization, then the ideas that are brought out by marketing can spread in an easier manner throughout the organization. This is probably the new face of the direct link between the customers and producers of today. At the same time, the functions of marketing are divided into other jobs like product development, sales forecasting, advertising, distribution planning, etc. (Designing a More Successful Organization) All these elements have to be clearly understood and directly related to the areas of the organization with which they have to work in coordination.

At the same time, marketing also needs help from other areas of the organization like research and development and global operations. Ultimately it is the job of marketing to tackle the demands of the customers through both physical and indirect reactions of customers to the products or services. For this purpose, one of the new areas that have developed is the services from the Internet Web, and also the services of outsiders who are directly related to the organization's marketing efforts. Thus it is most important to think totally fresh about the relations between the function and the total organization. This is not true only of marketing, but of all other functions of the organization. At the same time, all these functions are also a part of the strategic decisions that the organization needs to take. For marketing managers it is most important to determine important metrics for taking anticipatory measures and lifetime values of customers.

These are the methods that will tell the organization as to how they can get an increased share of customer spending and not only bother about market shares for different products or services. The dynamic thinking will also tell marketing managers as to how to find out the buyers and bring them to the purchase of the products of the organization. While offering this service, at the same time, marketing has to tell the individuals within the organization as to how the employees within the organization are also affected by marketing. (Designing a More Successful Organization) Thus the clear changes in organizations that have to take place are the improvement of communications within the organization and increased usage of the information for organizational development. This requires not only proper flow of information, but also choosing people who would be able to understand the information that is coming in.

Planning for success:

There are many aspects of any organization that have to be noted when the structure and changes in it are to be considered. The first of these is fall in production quantity and quality which ultimately are reflected in loss of market share. The second is a direct problem of management and this affects the staff, making them loose their morale and this is worsened by making them go through change programs with which they do not agree in terms of producing better results. The third comes from the top management when they feel that their performance is excellent and they can become very successful managers. The fourth is just dumping staffs that have got low scores in the appraisals conducted by the company. These may be felt to have been the reasons for the great success that Welch had, and if the company is doing very well, it may not hurt another executive also. (Future planning)

Problems did not come to Welch as all his defects were covered up through one great idea that he had. He recognized that all banks and other financial institutions used the money that they received from customers for generating their own income. This gave him the idea to use the resources that GE itself had for many other financial purposes than just financing of sales of GE. This led him to establish GE Capital and this caused a great increase in the market value of GE. Today the development of GE Capital is leading to half the profits coming from GE Capital. This is certainly a change for GE and it resulted in success. (Future planning)

The important points to note in this planning for success was that Welch did not lay any bets on changes in customer behavior. The change in the organization was also in familiar territory as GE has been handling funds due to the installment purchases that it was permitting customers. The third point was that the development of GE Capital did not hurt the development of other businesses, and on the other hand it helped the other divisions in generating extra sales. Thus one of the most important points in any planning is to think rationally about the future. In simpler terms it can be said that one must know where he is going, otherwise the person will not reach the objective, except through accidents.

At the same time, it is not enough to only get ideas, but the ideas must have the potential to lead, as it is the job of the manager to make things happen. This is the most important part of change and may be called the effect of the managers' Intellectual Capital or IC. This is clear through the experience of Xerox, IBM and Polaroid which were all leaders at one time in their industries, but are no longer in their leading positions. This leads to a little more development of the thoughts regarding IC and that is the development of IC into IC2 meaning Intellectual Curiosity and IC3 meaning Institutional Change. These are all required for changes in the organization. Without IC2, the future of the organization is not known and without IC3, even if the future is known, there will be no action taken to prevent the inevitable. (Future planning)

The question now comes as to ensuring the required changes in the organization. The first requirement is to let all persons in the organization know about changes and feel the way management is feeling about changes. The second aspect is to make attempts at changes rewarding and that is through connecting rewards and promotions for trying new things and thus also risking failure. The corollary of this is that when individuals try changes, there will be failures, and these failures should not be punished. The changes can come only when individuals develop their own knowledge through training, development and getting into new assignments which are mentally stimulating. The final step is to reduce the importance of stability of the organization as important. These changes in the philosophy of an organization are not easy to accomplish and even a leader like Andy Grove took two years to change the direction of the company. The company stopped its insistence on memory chips for getting into micro-processors. (Future planning) Thus the importance of change in any organization cannot be underestimated.

Role of people:

The most important considering people for any organization depend on the design of the organization. The structure of the organization makes it require certain types of people. This is clear from the business plan and the person in-charge of the organization or the person in charge of human resources will have to take the responsibility of what types of people are needed in the organization at a time. The important consideration here is that not only skills and abilities have to be considered, but the person in charge will also have to determine the personality and character of the required person so that a viable organizational culture can be created or maintained. The culture of any organization is a blend of attitudes, behaviors, dress and communication styles and this is an element that distinguishes one business from another. But there are no rules that can say what type of an individual in a position will have what effect on the organizational culture. Thus one of the important factors for the culture of the organization is the desire of the entrepreneur who starts the organization. An example of this can be seen in Fran's Chocolates in Seattle. There the proprietor has succeeded in making her employees think that they are all artisans. This makes them focus on detail and perfection. At the same time, she feels that this line of thinking is all right for her product which is premium in pricing, but may cause a disaster for somebody selling a lower priced product. (Building the Management team and a Successful Organizational Culture)

The other part of it is that the leader of the organization has to play the role model for their employees. One individual who did this remarkably was Gary Kusin when he took charge of Kinko's in August 2001. He wanted to know what was happening and he traveled to all the 24 markets for the product in United States, and there visited 200 stores and also met more than 2,500 employees. His travels were with an aim to make the employees understand the direction that the company was going to take under his management. They met the real leader and directly heard from him. The other point, if possible is to try different types of individuals at certain positions as the result for the organization may be very different. This was one of the reasons for the success of Google. The last point in this regard is to spend enough time in the process of hiring, but this may cause different problems. There is the character of a person and that is more important than only the skills. (Building the Management team and a Successful Organizational Culture) Thus, while the roles of people are certainly very important, enough attention has to be paid to it by the top officials of the organization.

At the same time, there are often requirements for the assistance of employees as they have certain habits or behavior which hinders their working capacity. This goes to the extent of psychotherapy, but one of the common problems that have been seen is regarding alcoholism. This is a fairly common problem and often tried to be tackled through counselors. This is very important for organizations like the Navy. The wide usage of counselors caused research to be done on determining the effectiveness of counseling. The first finding of the research was that the behavior of patients was not materially different even after treatment. The second finding was that whatever differences happened to the patient was mainly due to the characteristics of the therapists, rather than anything else. The third point was that there was an attempt by the government to certify alcoholism counselors to show the level of competence that they had reached in the matter. Thus it is clear that for a business organization, it would be better not to get into such areas for improvement of their staff. (The Heart of Human Resource Development: Counseling Competencies)

Corporate communications:

This is a very difficult exercise, and the communication to the external persons is advertising and is normally left to outside, specialist agencies. The difficulties also exist in the internal communications and there was a survey of 1,000 general U.S. workers tell us of the status of internal communications today. They feel that companies are trying to "doctor" the internal communications too hard and this is leading to a situation where they are becoming not believable. Employees want that they are told the plain truth so that they are in a situation to evaluate their positions on some important issues. For many of the employees the only source of information is the company regarding career, retirement and health care. It is only half the employees who believe that the company tells them the truth while half do not believe so. (Schumann, 2004)

In general it can be said that all employees want the employers to be transparent, but many of the employees feel that they are not getting clear communications from the management. On the other hand, they are willing and ready to hear the truth regarding their company, pay and jobs. The difficulties are in that employers often do not know where to stop being honest and sincere with employees. This depends mainly on the organization's issues and culture, and whether other stakeholders will be affected. Some organizations do not want to look into the problems and some feel that these worries will even damage their credibility even further. Many employees believe that the companies are more honest outside the organization. Employees participating in the survey believed that the truth communicated to employees is even less than the truth communicated to the customers and shareholders. This belief is among 55% of the employees. There also seems to be factors of cynicism within the employees and this is controlled by demography. This makes a short service employee that means employees with less than five years of service more likely to believe the communications from the company than those who have been working in the company for long periods.

The other aspect is that younger employees under the age of 35 are more likely to believe in statements of the company as truth than employees who are aged 50 and above. It also depends on the compensation collected by employees and the higher salaried staff is more likely to believe in the company than low salaried staff. Most of the employees feel that the least amount of truth is communicated when the deal is made with them. The employees want to be told the plain truth on all occasions so that they are in a position to evaluate the personal issues of the communication and that is important to employees. The returns received by an employee for his duties are probably the most personal and the most important to all employees. The only things that are trusted in communications from the employers are the figures of salaries and benefits that the employees will receive. The most interesting aspect is that most employees believe their immediate manager or supervisor more than the official communications from the company. (Schumann, 2004)

Mission:

When are the missions of an organization decided? The decisions about this are taken along with the organization goals, along with the strategies and policies to achieve those goals. The next step is to work out the details of plans that will permit the organization to reach the pre-decided goals and this has to decide the strategies. In some cases, the directions of the organization are revamped when there is a change of management due to change of ownership. The change of ownership may come due to the inabilities of the previous owners to keep the organization in a profitable condition considering the assets invested in it. At other times, the change in ownership may come as the organization is found to be highly profitable and some other organization decides to acquire it after paying a suitable compensation to the previous owners. In any case of ownership change also there may be a change of mission. (Strategic Marketing Plan: Theoretical and Practical Concept)

Missions have high importance within an organization as it decides the directions of all plans to be made for the development of the organization. It also decides the parameters for the plans, which person among the members of the organization has the planning authority and the analysis of the results of performance of the organization. The mission provides a system to the entire exercise as it provides a reason for everything that is done within the organization. The ultimate results are the plans which keep coming continuously to the organization, at specific intervals and during the intervals, the other plans are formulated. The development of strategy and the connected mission of the organization is also a continuous process, as the situation of the organization keeps changing due to its own development as also changes in the surrounding environment. The concept is that mission of the organization remains constant, and their representation in the form of plans change to keep everybody informed of the mission at that time and space. (Strategic Marketing Plan: Theoretical and Practical Concept)