Read the summary and the most important questions on Organization and Management 2

• Chapter 1 - A - Foundations of organization design

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• Foundations of organization Design.Every organized human activity - from the making of pots to the placing of a man on the moon - gives rise to two fundamental and opposing requirements. Define those two requirements: 

  The two fundamental and opposing requirements for every organized human activity: 
  
  

  • The division of labour, into various tasks to be performed. 
    
    
  • The coordination of these tasks to accomplish the activity. 

• Introduce the five basic configurations: 

  • Simple structure. 
    
    
  • Machine bureaucracy. 
    
    
  • Professional Bureaucracy. 
    
    
  • Divisionalized form. 
    
    
  • Adhocracy. 

• Henry Mintzberg is a Canadian managementscientist. Mintzberg is the son of Jewish parents. His most important work is the Structuring of organizations.Mintzberg distinguishes five coordinating mechanisms. Five coordinating mechanisms seem to explain the fundamental ways in which organizations coordinate their work. What are coordinating mechanisms?

  • Coordinating mechanisms are the glue that holds organizations together. 
    

  
  
  The most basic elements of structure. 

• Mintzberg distinguishes the Organization into five parts. Define those five parts: 

  1. The operating core - the heart of every organization. 
     
     
  2. The strategic apex - Overall responsibility of the organization. 
     
     
  3. Middle-Line -  Middle-Line managers with formal authority. 
     
     
  4. Technostructure - Control analysts. Standardization. 
     
     
  5. Support staff - Specialized units. 

• How can the structure of an organization be best defined?

  As the sum total of the ways in which its labour is divided into distinct tasks and then its coordination is achieved among these tasks.

• Mutual adjustment.Mutual adjustment achieves the coordination of work by the simple process of informal communication. Under mutual adjustment, control of the work rests:

  • In the hands of doers. 
    

  
  
  Mutal adjustment is naturally used in the very simplest of organizations, for example, by two people in a canoe. 

• As an organization outgrows its simplest state - more than five or six people at work in a pottery studio, fifteen people paddling in a war canoe - it tends to turn to a second coordinating mechanism.Direct supervision. How does direct supervision achieve coordination?

  • By having one person take responsibility for the work of others, issuing instructions to them and monitoring their actions.
    

  
  
  One brain coordinates several hands.
  
  Consider the structure of an American football team. Here the division of labour is quite sharp: eleven players are distinguished by the work they do, its location on the field, and even its physical requirements.
  Mutual adjustments do not suffice to coordinate their work, so a field leader, called the quarterback, is named, and he coordinates their work by calling the players.

• Work can also be coordinated without mutual adjustment or direct supervision. It can be standardized. When are work processes standardized?

  • When the contents of the work are specified, or programmed.
    

• Sometimes neither the work nor its outputs can be standardized, yet coordination by standardization may still be required.Define this form of standardization:  

  • Skills and knowledge are standardized when the kind of training required to perform the work that is specified.
    

  
  
  Hospitals engage doctors.

• Chapter 1 - B - Intro The Organization in Five Parts

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• Organizations are structured to capture and direct systems of flows and to define interrelationships among different parts.At the base of each organization can found its operators.What do they do?

  • The operators perform the basic work of producing the products and rendering the services.
    
    
  • They form the operating core.