Is dividing work activities into separate job tasks This is also called division of labor?

Early proponents of work specialization believed it could lead to great increases in productivity. At the beginning of the twentieth century, that generalization was reasonable. Because specialization was not widely practiced, its introduction almost always generated higher productivity.

But, as Exhibit 10-2 illustrates, a good thing can be carried too far. At some point, the human diseconomies from division of labor—boredom, fatigue, stress, low productivity, poor quality, increased absenteeism, and high turnover—exceed the economic advantages.

Another popular trend is the use of teams, especially as work tasks have become more complex and diverse skills are needed to accomplish those tasks.

One specific type of team that more organizations are using is a cross-functional team, a work team composed of individuals from various functional specialties.

Chester Barnard, proposed another perspective on authority. This view, the acceptance theory of authority, says that authority comes from the willingness of subordinates to accept it. If an employee didn’t accept a manager’s order, there was no authority.

As organizations get larger and more complex, line managers find that they do not have the time, expertise, or resources to get their jobs done effectively. In response, they create staff authority functions to support, assist, advise, and generally reduce some of their informational burdens. For instance, a hospital administrator who cannot effectively handle the purchasing of all the supplies the hospital needs creates a purchasing department, which is a staff function.

Finally, the unity of command principle (one of Fayol’s 14 management principles) states that a person should report to only one manager. Without unity of command, conflicting demands from multiple bosses may create problems.

Assume two organizations both have approximately 4,100 employees. As Exhibit 10-6 shows, if one organization has a span of four and the other a span of eight, the organization with the wider span will have two fewer levels and approximately 800 fewer managers.

As organizations have become more flexible and responsive to environmental trends, there’s been a distinct shift toward decentralized decision-making. This trend, also known as employee empowerment, gives employees more authority (power) to make decisions.

The organic organization is a highly adaptive form that is as loose and flexible as the mechanistic organization is rigid and stable. Rather than having standardized jobs and regulations, the organic organization’s loose structure allows it to change rapidly as required. It has division of labor, but the jobs people do are not standardized. Employees tend to be professionals who are technically proficient and trained to handle diverse problems. They need few formal rules and little direct supervision because their training has instilled in them standards of professional conduct.

Research has shown that certain structural designs work best with different organizational strategies. For instance, the flexibility and free-flowing information of the organic structure works well when an organization is pursuing meaningful and unique innovations. The mechanistic organization with its efficiency, stability, and tight controls works best for companies wanting to tightly control costs.

A functional structure is an organizational design that groups similar or related occupational specialties together. You can think of this structure as functional departmentalization applied to the entire organization.

The divisional structure is an organizational structure made up of separate business units or divisions. n this structure, each division has limited autonomy, with a division manager who has authority over his or her unit and is responsible for as an external overseer to coordinate and control the various divisions, and often provides support services such as financial and legal.

The various forms of departmentalization are as follows: Functional groups – jobs by functions performed; product groups – jobs by product lines; geographical groups – jobs by geographical region; process groups – jobs on product or customer flow; and customer groups – jobs on specific and unique customer groups.

Authority refers to the rights inherent in a managerial position to tell people what to do and to expect them to do it. The acceptance view of authority says that authority comes from the willingness of subordinates to accept it. Line authority entitles a manager to direct the work of an employee. Staff authority refers to functions that support, assist, advise, and generally reduce some of managers’ informational burdens. Responsibility is the obligation or expectation to perform assigned duties. Unity of command states that a person should report to only one manager. Centralization-decentralization is a structural decision about who makes decisions—upper-level managers or lower-level employees. Formalization concerns the organization’s use of standardization and strict rules to provide consistency and control.