ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE

Organizational Structure

Organizational Structure

Organizational structure of Dimitri is more Mechanistic. Mechanistic structure is characterized with tallness, narrow spans, specialization, high centralization, and high formalization. It works well when an organization's environment is very stable and its technology is highly routine. Organizational structure of Action should be more Organic. Organic structure is characterized by flatness, wider span, fewer authority levels, less specialization, less formalization and decentralization. It tends to work better when the environment is less stable and the technology is less routine. I want to compare the two in the following aspects:

Division of labor: They have different division of labor. Dimitri is a Windsor-based small bakery business firm. The job is relatively routine and highly repetitive. So Dimitri needs high standardization to increase job efficiency and ensure its quality standards. It implies that it needs less autonomy and more control. Leakos's management matches it well. Rotation among jobs not only matches the firm itself but also enriches jobs. Action is a medium-sized brokerage firm specializing in residential and commercial real estate. (Zenger 2009) Its job design is more specialized than that of Dimitri, such as accountant, agent and broker. The job is not routine so high standardization is not necessary. It implies that it needs more autonomy and less control. Paul and Harvey's management doesn't match it, for "they do not like delegating authority to members of the sales staff regarding non-routine matters". (Zanzi 1987)

Departmentation: Both the firms are functional departmentation. It works best in small to medium-sized firms that offer relatively few product lines or services. It matches well for Dimitri because its environment is more stable. There is a production department, a sales department, two office workers, plus the retail outlet. Leakos handles all the staff functions of personnel, planning, and budgeting. He needs to assign several managers to report to him.

In Action, there are administrative department, property management division, residential department and commercial real estate division. The disadvantages are: this can lead to poor coordination and slow response to organizational problem and at worst, it can lead to open conflict between functional departments, in which the needs of clients and customers are ignored. We can see these two disadvantages reflected in Action between the secretaries and agents and the commercial only agents and the other agents. To solve these problems, Action needs to reorganize its functional departmentation to product departmentation by combine some accountants and secretaries with agents because its organizational environment is unstable and its business is more customer-oriented. Product departmentation can provide better coordination and fewer barriers to communication among the functional specialists who work on a particular product line. It also has more potential for responding to customers in a timely way. (Sy & Cote 2004)

Action also can outsource the property management division to save expenditures.

Span of control: Both of them have a large span of control. The larger the span, the less potential there is for coordination by direct supervision. Dimitri needs to narrow the span of control because of its mechanic organizational ...