ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOUR
BACHELOR OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES [LEVEL 200]
Organisational
Design
Dr. N. Yaw Oppong
School of Business
University of Cape Coast
introduction
 Organising: process by which managers
establish the structure of working relationships
among employees to allow them to achieve
organisational goals efficiently and effectively
 Organisational Design: the process by which
managers make specific organising choices that
result in a particular kind of organisational
structure.
 Organisational Structure: a formal system of
task and job reporting relationship that determine
how employees use resources to achieve
organisational goals.
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Organisational Design
 Organisation design comes in two types –
mechanistic and organic
Mechanistic
 Where rigidity and uniformity work best, authority
is centralised, task and rules are clearly
specified, and employees are closely supervised
 Mechanistic organisations are bureaucratic; rigid
rules and top-down communication
 It works best when organisation operates in a
stable environment
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Organisational Design
Organic
 When looseness and flexibility work best
 Authority is centralized
 There are fewer rules and procedures, and
 Network of employees encouraged
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Comparison
Mechanistic Organisation
Organic Organisation
 Centralised hierarchy of
 Decentralised hierarchy of
authority
authority
 Many rules and procedures
 Few rules and procedures
 Specialised tasks
 Shared tasks
 Formalised communication
 Informal communication
 Few teams or task forces
 Many teams or tasks forces
 Narrow span of control, taller
 Wider span of control, flatter
structure
structure
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Factors affecting organization
Design
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Stragegy
 Different strategies call for different
organisational structure
 E.g. differentiation strategy usually succeeds best
with flexible structure (organic)
 On the other hand, low-cost strategy calls for
mechanistic design with conservative norms,
which gives managers greater control over
activities of an organisation’s various
departments
 .
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Technology
 Technology is the set of processes that an
organisation uses to transform various resources
such as materials and labour into products or
services.
 The more complicated the technology, the more
difficult it is to control and regulate – a flexible
structure required (organic)
 the more routine the technology, more
appropriate for rigid (mechanistic) structure due
to laid-down process to be followed
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Human Resource
• This refers to the number and calibre of an organisation’s
full-time employees.
• Characteristics of the human resource organisation
employs determines a structure to use
• More highly skilled the workforce is, the more likely an
organisation is to be flexible and decentralised structure
• The more unskilled the workforce, the more they need to
be supervised and controlled (mechanistic)
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Organisational Environment
 The environment also influences the type of
design an organisation is likely to adopt.
 The more quickly the external environment is
changing, the greater the uncertainty with it and
greater the problems managers face trying to be
flexible managing scarce resources (mechanistic)
 Contrary, if external environment is stable,
resources are readily available and uncertainty is
low (organic)
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Organisational Structure
 This normally comes in four forms including the following.
 Line relationship
 Functional relationship
 Staff relationship
 Lateral relationship
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Organisational Structure
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Organisational Structure
Line relationship
 Authority flows vertically down the structure e.g. relationship
between chief executive and production manager.
• Direct relationships between superior and subordinates
Functional relationship
• Relationship between people in specialist and advisory roles
• The specialist offers common service throughout the whole
organisation eg. Legal advisor and production, marketing
managers
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Organisational Structure
Staff relationship
 Staff positions have little or no authority in it own rights. It
rather act as extension of their superior and exercise only
representative authority e.g. Personal assistants.
Lateral relationship
 Exist between individuals in different departments or
sections, especially those on the same level. Eg.
Relationship between finance manager and production
manager
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Job Design
 Job arrangement (or rearrangement) aimed at reducing or
overcoming job dissatisfaction arising from repetitive and
mechanistic tasks
 The following technics are used for job design
 Job rotation
 Job enlargement
 Job enrichment
 Job simplification
 Will first consider Hackman and Oldham job
characteristics model
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Hackman and Oldham Job
Characteristics Model
 Job design that aims at providing the necessary
enthusiasm and enjoyment for employees
 The key elements of the model includes
 Skills variety
 Task variety
 Task significance
 Autonomy
 Feedback
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The Model
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The Job Characteristics
 Skill variety: It refers to the extent to which job requires a
range of competencies and abilities. Such jobs usually
involve a range of activities that requires different skills.
 Task identity: It is the extent to which employees
complete a whole, identifiable piece of work from
beginning to end.
 Task significance: The extent to which the performance of
the task impact others and the company.
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The Job Characteristics
 Autonomy: It refers to the extent of freedom and
discretion available to determine how to perform the job.
A job with high autonomy gives the employee much
freedom and discretion to plan, schedule and perform
their assigned duties in a way they desire.
 Feedback: It is the extent to which completing a task
provides clear & timely performance feedback.
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The Job Design Techniques
 Job rotation
 It involves the movement of employees through a range
of jobs in order to increase and boost their interest and
motivation.
 The range of jobs should be at the same level (lateral)
 Job enlargement refers to the process of increasing the
scope of a job through extending the range of one’s job
duties and responsibilities.
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The Job Design Techniques
• Job enrichment
• It is the process of making the job more challenging,
therefore giving employees the opportunity to use the
range of their abilities.
• Distinguishing the two, job enlargement has to do with
increasing the number of tasks, while job enrichment
involves increasing the mental capabilities required to do
the job
• job enrichment has been described as 'vertical loading' of
a job, while job enlargement is 'horizontal loading'.
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Organisational Structure: Some
Recent Forms
 Aside the traditional one discussed, there could be other
forms or organisational structure depending on the
environment, resources and preference of the
organisation
 We identify four (4) of such structures including
 U-form
 H-form
 M-form
 Matrix
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The U-Form Organisation
 The structure is arranged such that members of the
organisation who perform the same functions are grouped
together into departments.
 as it relies exclusively on the functional approach to
departmentalisation, It is also called as functional design
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The H-Form Organisation
• The structure relies on product departmentalisation with
the various products constituting different businesses.
• This design usually results from the corporate strategy of
unrelated diversification of the products.
• It is also referred to as conglomerate.
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The M-Form Organisation
 This is similar to the H-form design but has one notable
distinction – most of its businesses are in the same or
related industries.
 For example, an organisation with an M-form design
might own one business that manufactures automobile
batteries, other that manufactures lyre and still another
that manufactures car polish.
 “M” stands for multi-divisional as the design is based on
the various divisions or organisation’s products.
 Also referred to as divisional design.
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The Matrix Organisation
• This is created by overlaying product-based
departmentalisation on a functional structure. It is seldom
used for an entire organisation a portion of it.
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