Managing An Organization : Forms of Management Structure
In this installment of our guide to organizational management we look at management structure…
To achieve an organization’s affirmed goals, management is key, and is defined as the process of leading and controlling the efforts of staff, as well as planning, arranging and using resources in a way that allows the achievement of company goals.
Depending on an organization’s size, there will be different levels of management: regional managers have responsibility over a geographic region in which the company operates; divisional managers have accountability for a specific division in the company such as human resources, sales, or finance; and department managers who are tasked with leadership over a particular department within the organization.
Management structure (also known as organizational structure) is the method by which staff, departments, divisions and regions work and interact with one another. There are two main types of such structures, known as flat and hierarchal.
Organizations that have few or no levels of management that intervene between the workers and the leaders are employing what’s known as a flat management structure. A flat management structure promotes the involvement of staff in the decision-making process by decentralizing said process.
A flat management structure is dependent on a more frequent and personal relationship between the entity’s staff and managers, affording the workers a higher level of responsibility by encouraging feedback and comments to those leaders who will ultimately make decisions. Having such feedback and commentary available on an on-going basis also speeds up the decision-making process.
The military is a good example of a hierarchal management structure – each person is charged with reporting to, or dealing with, a specific manager, who then takes information up (or down) the chain. In this structure, each body within the organization, except one, is subordinate to an immediate supervisor.
The benefit of a hierarchal structure is also its primary limitation in that it will reduce the level of communication that goes directly to the top. The hierarchal configuration, however, is the most prevalent for large corporations, governments, and even organized religions.
In practice, the complexity of an organization’s structure is often proportional to its size and its geographic dispersal. A flat management structure is generally possible only in smaller organizations or individual units within larger organizations. When they reach a critical size, they can retain a streamlined structure but cannot keep a completely flat manager-to-staff relationship without impacting productivity.
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