Diagnostic dimension of organizational structure
When we systematically investigate the organizational structure of enterprises, we often start with the following four dimensions: business structure, functional structure, hierarchical structure and authority structure. I. Business Structure When an organization has multiple businesses, we examine the division of labor structure of each business and the proportion of organizational resources. Specific to a single business, we start with the business process and examine whether the setting of the organization department is enough to cover the business process without overlapping. According to Robbins' research on organizations, there are several ways to divide business departments, and each way has different advantages and disadvantages, which we can grasp flexibly in actual operation. 1. Dividing departments by products Advantages: It is conducive to product improvement and internal coordination of departments Disadvantages: Departmental tendency (departmentalism), high management cost (institutional overlap) Applicable: large scale, many products, and great differences between products. 2. Divide by region: concentrate the business in a certain region in a certain department. Reasons: inconvenient transportation and difficult information communication brought by geographical dispersion Advantages: strong pertinence and quick response to regional environmental changes Disadvantages: difficult coordination with headquarters (difficult to control) 3. Classification by customer: provided that the specific customer needs served by each department are the same and the quantity is sufficient. Such as: an office supplies company sales: retail department, wholesale department, government departments. 4. Comprehensive standard: In practice, several classification methods are often combined. 2. In this dimension, we examine two issues. First, whether there are overlapping or missing functions, especially whether the key functions required by the organization are available. Second, whether the functional departments have a clear positioning and a clear mission. Third, the hierarchical structure includes the management level and scope of the organization. Management level is produced with the expansion of organization scale and the complexity of relationship, which is closely related to scale and management scope. Management scope refers to the number of subordinates that a supervisor can directly and effectively manage. The scope of management is inversely proportional to the level. Generally speaking, we think it is more appropriate to manage 3-20 direct subordinates. Among them, the senior manager manages 3- 10 subordinates; Middle managers manage 6- 15 subordinates; Grass-roots managers manage 15-20 subordinates reasonably, but not absolutely. The following factors will also affect the scope of management: such as the quality and ability of managers, the quality and ability of subordinates, the similarity of work, the stability of salary environment, the perfection of plan, authorization, the spatial distribution of personnel, the allocation of assistants and so on. Four, the power structure refers to the division of labor and relations between various departments and levels in terms of rights and responsibilities. According to Robbins' understanding, there are three kinds of authority: 1, and linear authority: the relationship between command and command between superiors and subordinates. This is what we usually call "chain of command". 2. Employee rights: the right of organization members to provide opinions and suggestions to managers. This kind of authority stems from the demand of front-line personnel for professional knowledge, such as finance, quality, personnel, public relations and so on. 3. Authority: Part of the power of the staff department or staff officer originally belonging to the line personnel. This kind of authority refers to the fact that due to the lack of professional knowledge, the line personnel delegate part of the command power to the staff officers, so that they can exercise the command power within a certain functional scope. Functional authority is only valid within the scope of its functions. This is a limited order. When investigating the authority structure, we need to grasp two main points: First, is the authorization reasonable? Second, is the information communication smooth? Through the above four dimensions, we can usually make a systematic analysis of the organizational structure of enterprises. Of course, every enterprise has its own characteristics and background, and the problems it faces are different, which requires us to master flexibly in practical work.