Overview

The preceding chapters have concentrated largely on the various management techniques that are concerned with obtaining, training, motivating and administering staff. In addition to these various processes, however, managers also have to organize staff, i.e. to create groups of people who will meet the organization's objectives. This is normally one of the major responsibilities of line management who organize their work people into groups in the manner they think best, basing their organization usually on what they have observed or experienced elsewhere. Nowadays, however, there is a growing recognition that organizing people into the most appropriate work groups is a highly skilled and complex task, often referred to as 'organization development', which is concerned with 'improving an organization's ability to achieve its goals by using people more effectively' (French and Saward, 1977). A great deal has been written about organizing people at work. Major ideas on the subject range from the Scientific School of Management through the Human Relations School to current ideas on systems and contingency. Some of the relevant key writers' ideas are summarized in Figure 2.5.

The object of this chapter is not to give a history of the evolution of thinking on organization structures but to highlight some key issues and the factors that influence choice about the nature of an organization. Organizations exist principally to achieve certain goals. In the modern commercial world, put very simply, this is usually to achieve some form of competitive advantage. This usually means market share and sometimes even...