This essay will deeply look at the organisational structure and culture and It will compare and contrast different organisational structures and culture analysing the relationship between an organisations’ structure and the consequences on business performances. Finally it will analyse the factors which influence individual behaviour at work.
Organisational Structure
First of all, an organisational structure refers to how an organisation has Hierarchical subordinates of persons concerned to achieve the same goal. The culture of an organisation can be described as the value, attitudes and beliefs of people within an organisation. The structure and the culture of the organisation reflects the aims and strategies to be accomplished.
Formal and Informal organisation
In order to have control of an organisation’s performance, an organisation would have some type of deliberate organisational structure. This is called a formal organisation; Structures are clearly organised by dividing departments, level of authority, responsibility and communication line.
On the other hand, there are informal organisations. An Informal organisation does not have a specific structure or a planned division of responsibility and this type of organisations can be seen within formal organisations.
Geographic Structure
A structure with one head office who has the power to control all departments, and several regional or territorial departments where they run the production or service. For example, An airline company would have an head office in a country and departments spread all over the world. These departments whether in country A or country B, will have the same structure such as the finance, human resource and marketing and sales, therefore their operations would be the same, in the case of an airline firm, to sell flight tickets.
Advantages
• Each department has the power to makes decisions in order to meet the local demand. For example, a Fast food company may produce a spicy burger in Thailand since their main dishes are spicy, where this burger if launched in Italy, would not have that much of success.
• Some countries can produce or provide services for a cheaper price. For example the cost of labour in Africa, is far economical than a country in Europe.
Disadvantages
• The original standard of a product may not output identically between regional departments. For example, a soft drink produced in one country may taste different from another,even by using the same ingredients. The explanations might be the diversity of country’s climate and different raw materials.
• Costs could be higher at some Hierarchical level. For Instance, some management decisions may be taken by the head office for all departments, consequently, each board would have less Managers leading to cutting the organisation’s costs.
Functional Structure
A functional Structure is characterised by a system where people who owns the same skills are grouped together forming a department or division. Each departments are featured with clear lines of command, precise objectives and responsibilities.
For example a Company would be organised with an accounting department, a marketing department, the human resource department, a logistics department etc.
Advantages
• departments are focussed in operations on specific tasks.
• opportunity to specialise on that particular area becoming more effective and provide better services.
• Decision makings can be quicker since units are focussed on one particular field.
• Faster and clear communication and high quality of customer service within the department.
Disadvantages
• each department would have a lack of knowledge and not concerned about what is going on, to other departments.
• separates areas leads to barriers of communication.
