ELEMENTS OF ORGANISATION STRUCTURE

Work specialization

Work specialization is best described as the degree to which tasks in an organization are
divided into separate jobs. Another term for this would be division of labor, were division
of labor equals part of an activity. For example, Nike’s production of one pair of
shoes equals 34 operations, with approximate 170 workers involved. Later in the
twentieth century Henry Ford reinforced this idea by using this concept in an assembly
line, where Ford workers were assigned a specific, repetitive task. Ford was able to
produce cars at the rate of one per every 10 seconds.

Today work specialization is still seen as a way to make the most efficient use of
workers’ skills, since workers are placed in jobs according to their skills, and they are
paid accordingly. Other advantages are for example: the improvement of employee’s
skills at performing tasks, less costly, easier, and more efficient employee training, and
invention for innovative equipment for mass production. Disadvantages include:
boredom. Fatigue, stress, lowered productivity, poor quality of work, increased
absenteeism, and higher job turnover.

Chain of command

Chain of command is an unbroken line of authority that extends from the top of the
organisation to the lowest levels and clarifies who reports to whom. It answers such as
“to whom do I go I have a problem and to whom I am responsible.”

The two important concepts of chain of command are authority and unity of command.

Authority:

Authority is the rights given to a person in the chain of command to give orders and
expect the orders to be obeyed. Authority helps the manager to meet his responsibilities.
Line authority:

It is the power to give orders to subordinates. Line managers are responsible for attaining
the organization's goals as efficiently as possible. Production and sales managers
typically exercise line authority.

Staff authority:

It is the power to give advice, support, and service to line departments. Examples of staff
authority are found in personnel, purchasing, engineering, and finance.

Unity of command:

A subordinate should receive orders from only one superior. There should not be multiple
bosses. If one subordinate receives orders from more than one superior, then everything
will be in disorder Lack of unity of command is like “Too many cooks spoil the
soups.”

Departmentation:

Departmentation is a process of dividing an organisation into convenient smaller units

called departments. Such departments are created for the division of work and also for the
smooth and efficient working of the whole business unit.

Defn: According to Pearce and Robinson, “Departmentation is the grouping of jobs,

processes and resources into logical units to perform some organizational tasks.

Bases of Departmentation:

Over a period of time, certain well-recognized and accepted bases for Departmentation
started developing. The most common bases of Departmentation are:
1) Departmentation by functions:

2) Departmentation by product:

3) Departmentation by area:

4) Departmentation by process:

5) Departmentation by customers: