Public Management
Organizational Structure
Monday, March 14, 2016
Hun Myoung Park, Ph.D.
Public Management & Policy Analysis Program
Graduate School of International Relations
Dimensions of Structure
• Centralization: the degree to which power
and authority concentrate
• Formalization: the extent to which rules
and procedures are formally established
• Red tape refers to burdensome
administrative rules
• Complexity: measured in terms of
numbers of subunits, levels, specialization
2
Influences of Structure
•
•
•
•
•
Size
Environment
Technology and tasks
Information technology
Strategic choice
3
Galbraith’s Design Strategies
•
•
•
•
Hierarchy of authority
Rules and procedures
Narrowing the span of control
Planning and goal setting
4
Functional Structures
• Organized according to major functions
• E.g., marketing, R&D
5
Organization Chart
6
Product Structures
• Product and hybrid structures
• Separate divisions for each product line
• Major product divisions with some
functional units (accounting) are hybrid.
7
Product Structures
Tech, Inc
CEO
Medical
Instruments
Personal
Computers
Small
Electronic
parts
8
Matrix Designs
• People with similar skills are pooled for work
assignments.
• All engineers may be in one engineering
department and report to an engineering
manager, but these same engineers may be
assigned to different projects and report to a
project manager while working on that project.
• Each engineer may have to work under several
managers to get their job done.
9
Matrix Designs
10
Other Structures
• Market and customer
– Focused designs, orientation toward groups
of customers
• Geographical designs
– Bases of operation by region, part of world
• Process structures
– Organized around process such as new
development
11
Mintzberg’s Structures 1



Simple Structure: Entrepreneurial setting;
relies on direct supervision from the strategic
apex; new small government agencies
(Public) Machine Bureaucracy: Large
organizations; relies on standardization of work
processes by the techno-structure; agencies
with political oversight.
Professional Bureaucracy: The professional
services firm; relies on the standardization of
skills and knowledge in the operating core.
12
Mintzberg’s Structures 2


Divisionalized Form- Multi-divisional
organization (e.g., manufacturing & marketing);
relies on standardization of outputs; middleline managers run independent divisions.
Adhocracy- Project organizations; highly
organic structure with little formalization; relies
on mutual adjustment as the key coordinating
mechanism within and between these project
teams (e.g. NASA)
13
Structure & Environment
complex
simple
stable
dynamic
PROFESSIONAL BUREAUCRACY
ADHOCRACY
decentralized; bureaucratic;
standardized skills (law firm R&D
firm)
decentralized; organic; mutual
adjustment
MACHINE BUREAUCRACY
SIMPLE STRUCTURE
centralized; bureaucratic;
standardized work processes; direct
supervision from strong strategic
apex
(new agencies, start up
entrepreneurial companies
centralized; organic; direct supervision
14
Images of Organization
•
•
•
•
•
•
Gareth Morgan (1996)
Organizations as machines
Organizations as organisms
Organizations as brains
Organizations as political systems
Organizations as cultures, psychic prisons,
flux and transformation, and instruments of
domination
15
Images of Organization
• Organizations as organisms are assumed to be
able to adapt themselves to environmental
conditions that change over time.
• Terminator, a highly intelligent machine, may fall
in this category in a sense he can find ways to
kill the target, which is determined by his boss,
by transforming himself (in case of a more
advanced terminator) or changing strategies in
response to environmental changes.
• What kind of terminator do you need?
16
17
18
19
Images of Organization
• Organizations as brains are learning systems
that have single-loop and double-loop processes.
• Organizations, unlike those as machines, can
evaluate if the target determined by their boss is
really what they have to kill (double-loop).
• Such organizations are considered a broken one
from the machinery perspective because a
machine have to do only what is ordered.
• A machine may not determine its target, but just
follow order without any question about the
target (single-loop process only).
20
Images of Organization
• Bureaucracy as a machine (organism) is
well designed (programmed) to achieved
efficiently its goal given by outsiders.
• Weber's ideal type bureaucracy is close to
the image of machines or organisms.
• Remember the terminator became popular
at that time because the machine was an
ideal type that did not exist in reality.
21