organizational design
As you consider the organizational design of your organization or an organization you are familiar with, how does it contribute to or detract from the ability of the employees to successfully complete their jobs? Does the structure enhance or detract from employee satisfaction?
MY DISCUSSION
POST 1
We have a design with a fair amount of decentralization and an element of geographical departmentalization. As with any company with a corporate office and numerous branches where most of the business-driving activity takes place, in this case sales, the headquarters is organized differently, with both functional and product departmentalization.
The geographic departmentalization helps the employees complete their jobs because there are too many branches, and too much diversity at the store level, for a purely top-down, hierarchical organizational design with strictly structured process flow to be effective. This way, individuals in each store have a manager who is responsive to their concerns, and that manager has a regional manager who is sensitive to the issues facing the 8-10 stores s/he oversees.
I think this model, which is in my opinion the only one that will function viably in retail, boosts employee satisfaction. If a chain with hundreds of stores was somehow run from one location, with very limited authority granted to managers further down the chain of command, I’m not sure that any employees would feel that their concerns were being met, or their needs addressed. I have worked for other retailers who attempt this level of rigid, top-down control, and it’s been a resounding failure.
MY RESPONSE
POST 2
The company that I most recently worked for was a small corporation whose owner / president was involved with each aspect of the company. After the owner the company structure included a vice president / senior project manager, project managers, administrative staff, job foreman and laborers. The senior project managers was in charge of the day to day operation of the company and directly supervised and evaluated all of the company staff and was involved in coordinating multiple projects with the project managers. Project managers were responsible for one or two projects at a time and the resources necessary to complete the projects. The administrative staff ran the normal daily business operations and supported the president, vice president and project managers in accomplishing their goals.
I believe that the concept of this structure was successful when allowed to work as designed. However, the owner who had the most invested and the most to lose financially wanted to be involved in almost every decision that was made regarding the business. This unfortunately created an obstacle in meeting timelines and created a great deal of frustration with the other managers due to the amount of time that was needed to spend in getting the owner up to speed and ready to make a decision. He simply didn’t have enough time to be involved in as many decisions and even though he had the best of intensions, this caused a breakdown in the system that hindered the business’ ability to operate per plan.
MY RESPONSE
B)
Analyze the impact of technological advances on today’s organizational structures. How has it enhanced or detracted from the ability of organizations to develop employee loyalty, commitment, and dedication? Respond to two of your fellow learners with a positive yet critical analysis of their discussion.
MY DISCUSSION
Post 1
Technology is actively being used within organizations to bring life to virtual companies. The use of teleconferences, Live Meeting with shared work spaces, and video conferences goes a long way to allowing geographically dispersed to be functional. It does make it a little more difficult to create loyalty, commitment, and dedication. Still in the end, loyalty, commitment, and dedication are driven by engagement typically a person or commitment to the mission.
MY RESPONSE
Post 2
When technology is involved in an organization and if the technology used is the proper one, it will be great for the organization and its members. At the same time it the technology is not the best to suit the company’s needs, it can be a real challenge to be productive in the workplace.
Another important part of technology is training the right people. Sometimes organizations invest on new technology, but fail to invest in a good training program and the technology acquired is not use to its potential. In situations like these, the organization’s loose along with employees. Organizations loose since they are not getting the most out of the new technology/equipment. Employees lose since they do not fully know the new equipment, but they are pressured to become productive.
My response
…………………………Answer preview…………………….
The top-down control system is an effective organizational design when the roles played by different people are adhered to strictly. However, this design has exceptional limitations if the parties involved in the running fail to play their role effectively. My fellow learner has presented a case of success of the top-down control design. My fellow learner has gone ahead to present the merits like each employee in the organization feels his or her issues are attended to in the organization………………………..
APA
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