Organizational structure is generally divided into four aspects: functional structure, hierarchical structure, departmental structure and authority structure.
1. Functional structure: refers to various business tasks, proportions and relationships needed to achieve organizational goals. Its dimensions include overlap, redundancy, absence, fragmentation (or lack of cohesion), decentralization, fine division of functions, dislocation and weakening of functions.
2. Hierarchy: refers to the composition of management hierarchy and the number of managers (vertical structure). Its consideration dimensions include the similarity of managers' functions, the scope of management, the scope of authorization, the complexity of decision-making, the workload of guidance and control, and the similarity of subordinate professional division of labor.
3. Department structure: refers to the composition of each management department (horizontal structure). Its consideration dimension is mainly whether some key departments are missing or optimized.
This paper analyzes the overall types of organizations and the primary and secondary structures of various departments.
4. Power structure: refers to the division of powers and responsibilities at all levels and departments and their relations. Mainly consider whether the power and responsibility relationship between departments and posts is equivalent.
Institutional form
1, linear system
Linear system is the earliest and simplest organizational form. Its characteristic is that the administrative units at all levels of the enterprise implement vertical leadership from top to bottom, and the subordinate departments only accept instructions from a superior, and the responsible persons at all levels are responsible for all problems of the subordinate units. The factory department does not set up another functional organization (functional personnel can be set up to assist the supervisor), and all management functions are basically performed by the administrative supervisor himself. The advantages of linear organizational structure are: simple structure, clear responsibilities and unified orders. The disadvantage is that the administrative person in charge needs to be familiar with a variety of knowledge and skills and handle various businesses in person. It is obviously incompetent to concentrate all management functions on the top supervisor in the case of complex business and large enterprise scale. Therefore, linear system is only suitable for small-scale enterprises with simple production technology, but not for enterprises with complex production technology and management.
2. Functional system
Functional organizational structure is that administrative units at all levels set up some functional institutions in addition to the person in charge. Such as the establishment of functional institutions and personnel under the factory director to assist the factory director in functional management. This structure requires the executive director to hand over the corresponding management responsibilities and powers to relevant functional organizations, and each functional organization has the right to give orders to subordinate administrative units within its own business scope. Therefore, in addition to the command of the superior administrative director, the subordinate administrative director must also accept the leadership of the superior functional organization.
The advantage of functional system is that it can adapt to the characteristics of complex production technology and fine management of modern industrial enterprises; It can give full play to the professional management role of functional organizations and reduce the workload of line leaders, but the shortcomings are also obvious: it hinders the necessary centralized leadership and unified command, forming multi-head leadership; It is not conducive to the establishment and improvement of the responsibility system of administrative heads and functional departments at all levels. In middle management, there is often a phenomenon that everyone is rushing to push; In addition, when the guidance and orders of the superior administrative leaders conflict with the functional organizations, the subordinates will be at a loss, which will affect their normal work and easily lead to lax discipline and chaotic production management order. Due to the obvious defects of this organizational structure, modern enterprises generally do not adopt functional system.
3. Linear function system
Linear functional system, also known as production area system, or linear employee system. It is based on linear system and functional system, learning from each other's strong points and absorbing the advantages of these two forms. At present, most enterprises in our country adopt this organizational structure. This organizational structure divides enterprise management institutions and personnel into two categories. One is linear leading bodies and personnel, who exercise command over organizations at all levels according to the principle of unified command; The other is functional organizations and personnel, who are engaged in the management of various functions of the organization according to the principle of specialization. Linear leading bodies and personnel have certain decision-making power and command power to subordinates within their own responsibilities, and take full responsibility for the work of their own departments. Functional organizations and personnel are the staff of line commanders, and they cannot give orders to directly affiliated departments, but can only give business guidance.
The advantages of linear-functional system are: it not only ensures the centralization and unification of enterprise management system, but also gives full play to the role of various professional management institutions under the leadership of administrative leaders at all levels. Its shortcomings are: poor coordination between functional departments, and many tasks of functional departments can only be handled by reporting directly to superior leaders, which on the one hand increases the workload of superior leaders; On the other hand, it also causes inefficiency. In order to overcome these shortcomings, we can set up various comprehensive committees or establish various meeting systems to coordinate all aspects of work, play the role of communication and help senior leaders make suggestions.
4. Division system
The division system was first put forward by Si Long, president of American General Motors Company, in 1924, so it is called Sloan model, also known as "federal decentralization", and it is a decentralized management system under high (hierarchical) centralization. It is suitable for large enterprises with large scale, variety and complex technology, and is an organizational form adopted by large foreign joint companies. In recent years, some large domestic enterprise groups or companies have also introduced this organizational structure. ? Division system is a form of hierarchical management, hierarchical accounting and self-financing, that is, a company is divided into several divisions according to regions or product categories. From product design, raw material procurement, cost accounting, product manufacturing to product sales, all business divisions and their subordinate factories are responsible for accounting separately and operating independently. The headquarters of the company only reserves the power of personnel decision-making, budget control and supervision, and controls all business divisions through profit and other indicators. Some departments are only responsible for directing and organizing production, not purchasing and selling, and separating production from supply and marketing, but these departments are being replaced by product departments. Other divisions are divided by region.
5. Simulation of decentralized system
This is a structural form between the linear functional system and the business division system.
Many large enterprises, such as steel and chemical enterprises that produce continuously, are difficult to be divided into several independent business departments due to the limitation of product variety or production process. Due to the huge scale of the enterprise, senior managers feel that it is not easy to manage by adopting other organizational forms, so a simulated decentralized organizational structure has emerged. The so-called simulation is to simulate the independent operation and accounting of the business division system, not the real business division, but actually a "production unit". These production units have their own functional organizations, enjoy as much autonomy as possible, and assume the responsibility of "simulation" for profit and loss, with the aim of mobilizing their enthusiasm for production and operation and achieving the purpose of improving the production and operation management of enterprises. It should be pointed out that it is difficult to completely separate them due to the continuity of production. Taking continuous production in petrochemical industry as an example, the "products" produced by unit A directly become the raw materials of unit B, without stopping or transferring. Therefore, the economic accounting between them can only be based on the internal price of the enterprise, but not on the market price, which means that these production units do not have their own independent external market, which is also the difference from the business department.
The advantage of simulated decentralization system is that it not only mobilizes the enthusiasm of all production units, but also solves the problem that enterprises are too large to manage. Top managers will give some power to production units and reduce their own administrative affairs, thus focusing on strategic issues. Its disadvantage is that it is not easy to define tasks for simulated production units, which leads to difficulties in evaluation; It is difficult for the leaders of production units to understand the whole picture of the enterprise, and there are obvious defects in information communication and decision-making power.
6. Matrix system
In organizational structure, there are both vertical leadership system by function and horizontal leadership relationship by product (project), which is called matrix organizational structure.
Matrix organization is an organizational form to improve the shortcomings of linear functional system, such as poor horizontal connection and lack of flexibility. Its characteristic is to set up a special organization with cross-functional departments around a specific task, such as forming a special product (project) team to engage in new product development, and sending people from relevant departments to participate in different stages of research, design, testing and manufacturing, so as to achieve the combination of all aspects, so as to coordinate the activities of relevant departments and ensure the completion of the task. This organizational structure is fixed, but the personnel are changing. Who needs to come and go after the task is completed. The project team and the person in charge are also appointed by the temporary organization. After the task is completed, it is dissolved and the relevant personnel return to their original units. Therefore, this organizational structure is very suitable for horizontal cooperation and key projects.
The advantages of matrix structure are: flexible, which can be organized or dissolved with the development and end of the project; Because this structure is organized according to the project, the task is clear, the purpose is clear, and people with expertise in all aspects are fully prepared. Therefore, in the new working group, they can communicate and integrate, and they can link their work with the overall work to offer suggestions and suggestions for overcoming difficulties and solving problems. Because the personnel transferred from all sides have a sense of trust and honor, they have increased their sense of responsibility, stimulated their enthusiasm for work and promoted the realization of the project; It has also strengthened cooperation and information exchange between different departments, and overcome the phenomenon that departments are out of touch with each other in the linear functional structure.
The disadvantage of the matrix structure is that the responsibility of the project leader is greater than the power, because the people involved in the project are all from different departments, and the affiliation is still in the original unit, just for "fighting", so it is difficult for the project leader to manage them, and there are not enough rewards and punishments. This dual management of personnel is a congenital defect of matrix structure; Because the project members come from various functional departments, they still have to return to their original units after the task is completed, which is easy to produce temporary ideas and has a certain impact on their work.
Matrix structure is suitable for some major key projects. Enterprises can be used to complete major engineering projects or management reform tasks involving a wide range, temporary and complex. It is especially suitable for scientific research and other units focusing on development and experiment, especially applied research units.
7. The Committee
Committee is a special type of organizational structure, which performs certain management functions and is characterized by collective activities. In practice, the Committee is often combined with the above organizational structure, which can play the role of decision-making, consultation, cooperation and coordination.
Advantages: ① You can brainstorm; (2) Conducive to collective deliberation and judgment; (3) prevent excessive concentration of power; (4) communication and coordination; ⑤ Being able to represent the collective interests and easily gaining the trust of the masses; ⑥ Promote the growth of managers, etc.
Disadvantages: ① Decentralized responsibilities; (2) discuss without deciding; ③ The decision-making cost is high; (4) autocracy of a few people.
8. Multidimensional organizational structure
This organizational structure is an organic combination of business division system and matrix system. It is mostly used in organizations with multi-products and cross-regional operations.
Advantages: for many product production organizations, it is divided by specialty, product and region; The management structure is clear and easy to organize and manage.
Disadvantages: huge organization, increased management cost and difficult information communication.
For the above organizational structure, according to the company's business projects, business scope, scale and business development needs, one or more different organizational structure types are adopted.