Organisational structures, Work and Job Design

Organisation is built around the structure, technological inputs, the processes and the people. In a sense the structure of the organisation has influence on the designs of both work and jobs. Organisational structures essentially depicts the structure of interactions, communications as well as mode of operation and the processes put in place to achieve the purpose for which business is set up.

MEANING OF ORGANISATION

Structure is about the patterns of relationship among positions and in the organisation and members of the organisation. Structure is clearly important in the sense that it makes possible the application of the process of management and creates a framework for orderly interaction and command through which the activities of the organisation can be planned, organised, directed, and coordinated for easy managerial decisions and controls. Whether small or large, every organisation needs a structure which, not cast in iron, can be constantly reviewed to keep with growth and development pace. Organisational structure according to Mullins (2007) can help achieve the following objectives:

• The economic and efficient performance of the organisation and the level of resource utilisation;
• Monitoring the activities of the organisation;
• Accountability for area of work undertaken by groups and individual members of the organisation;
• Co-ordination of different part of the organisation and different area of work;
• Flexibility in order to respond to future demands and developments, and to adapt to changing environmental influences; and
• The social satisfaction of members working in the organisation.

ORGANISATIONAL DESIGN

The architecture of work is built around structure, organisational processes, available technology and the cadres of people meant to engage in various activities. Organisational designs starts with the business idea for which the entrepreneur seeks to actualize in reality by bringing together man, materials, machines and money to achieve his/her objectives. Designs of organisations vary essentially along these dimensions considering the size, activities, context and the managerial experiences that gave birth to the design. In designing organisations, what work for A may not work for B. There are two generic models of organisation designs; the mechanistic and organic designs.

Mechanistic designs are built on Weberian bureaucratic prescriptions of rigidity and tightly controlled structure. This type of structure is characterized by high degree of specialization, rigid departmentalization, narrow spans of control, formalization of rules, authority and communication processes. The organisation is viewed as an objective entity in which precision of rules, decision, reward and sanction is highly valued.

Little is left to discretion of managers and low-level employees are not involved in any form of decision making. This type of designs placed premium on efficiency, rules, regulations, standardized tasks and performance yardsticks. Human traits and characteristics like personality, diversity, judgments and ambiguities are hardly considered. The main advantage of mechanistic structures are predictability and stability while it has been criticised as slow, insensitive to human needs and less adaptive to change.

Organic designs on the other hand are a direct contrast to mechanistic designs. This type of organisation is highly adaptive and flexible and built of high consideration for human strengths and weaknesses. The core idea is meaningful jobs that promise satisfaction and quality of work life through minimal control and strict rules. The employee is empowered through training and developmental programmes to make decisions, solve problems and be creative. Since adaptive, organic organisations respond to changes, are flexible and tend to be more effective in the long run. Individual discretion may lead to unpredictability, increased costs of errors.

WORK DESIGN

The initial activities of the entrepreneur is to design the work space to accommodate equipment, technology and people giving ample room for all tasks, duties, repairs, processes to flow smoothly. Designing work primarily takes note of the following:

1. Environment. This is concern for space for juxtaposition and installation of machine and equipment, offices, corridors, stair ways that are friendly, safe and clean to use
2. Machines and equipment. Installing machines and equipment that ergonomically fit into human attributes is the concern of Engineering Psychologist, Engineers, Architects and many other experts who have an idea worked into a design, plan and supervised execution and future maintenance.

iii.                Structure. The structure narrates how people will relate, communicate, and coordinated to achieve organisational goals, the type of work to be done dictate the structural options; tall, flat, team based and decisions about which operations are important; production, marketing, personnel etc to incorporate as departments or units.

JOB DESIGN

The people. Once the structure is put in place, the next important activities are how to fit people into the jobs. This is what is called job design.

After the structural layout of work demarcating departments, units, teams etc, the jobs are next to be designed. Jobs consist of titles, tasks, duties, responsibilities, conditions, hazards/risks and the social context (which later comes out as organisational culture and climate). Job designs entails putting these elements together for the job incumbent to be able to meet the goals and objectives entailed on the job position.

ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURE

Organisational structure is about what kind of work architecture/design to be put in place. It is basically about formal arranging and structuring work to accomplish organizational goals. There are several design options that will produce different structures of division of work, assignment of responsibilities, and coordination of clusters of jobs, establishment of lines of authority and bringing equipment/technology and people together to form departments, team or groups for the allocation and use of resources to produce goods and services.

Organisational structure can be tall or flat in the way departments are grouped; whether functionally, in consideration of geography, product, processes or customers. Tall structures have long span of control, many layers/job cadres and communication and authority flows from top downward. Organisational structure can be formal, informal or non formal.

Why formal organisation embodies the explicit and formally stated set of rules and regulations that define the activities of the members. The mechanisms of a formal structure includes the charts, rules, chains of commands, spans of control that are essentially in written form. The structure is often arranged hierarchical order of order of authority on top of which is the Board of Directors, management, middle management, lower-level management and the rank and file.

CONSIDERATIONS IN WORK DESIGN

Some of the factors to put into consideration in designing the work are:

1. Philosophy, policies and objectives of organisation.
2. Interface among structure, machines and equipment, technology and people.
3. Flow of authority, chain of command and communication
4. The need for efficiency of costs, safety and health of workers
5. Degree of centralization or decentralization (or employee empowerment) required for efficient work processes.
6. Degree of formalization and or flexibility to ensure flexibility and adaptability to change.
7. Ensuring job satisfaction, commitment and citizenship behaviour through responsive work designs.

Organisational structure is important architect for arranging and structuring work to allow for smooth control, hierarchy and order. If attention is paid to how structure and processes determines behaviour, culture and job satisfaction, crafting the organisational structure and designing work and jobs have to be done with care and concern for the fulfilment of organizational goals.