Five elements create an organizational structure:
- job design,
- departmentation,
- delegation,
- span of control and
- chain of command.
These elements comprise an organizational chart and create the organizational structure itself. “Departmentation” refers to the way an organization structures its jobs to coordinate work.
Designing Jobs
Job design is the first building block of organization Structure; it means-defining an individual’s responsibilities at work. [Job design involves defining areas of decision-making responsibility] identifying goals and expectations, and establishing appropriate indicators of success.
Job specialization is the first and the most important tool of all.
Job specialization is similar to the concept of ‘division of labor’.Job specialization means; breaking down the entire job or task into smaller parts and divide them accordingly.
Job characteristics model (JCM) is also an effective tool for designing a job; where job-design is conducted considering both the employees’ preference and required work system.
The approach suggests that job design should be done by considering 5 core dimensions; skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback.
Work teams are very useful for doing comprehensive and difficult jobs that require expertise from various departments or faculty or the organization.
As the name suggests; job rotation is systematically moving employees from one task to another.
However, in practice; job rotation created more problems than solving them, like; employees’ satisfaction and motivation diminishes. It is now used as a training system.
Job enlargement involves increasing the total number of tasks workers assigned and performs. It also gives employees motivation as it gives them a bigger chance to participate in the organization’s operations.
It has some shortcomings too; more tasks mean more salary payments so more cost, overdoing it could lead to employees’ dissatisfaction.
It is similar to job enlargement but a more comprehensive approach. Job enrichment includes increasing the number of tasks and the portion of control over these tasks.
Here managers have to give authority along with the responsibility of the jobs.