IGNOU,MCS-052,Question Paper Solution,June 2010:-what do you means by organisation structure? and what are the element of it.

an organisational structure defines how job tasks are formally divided, grouped and coordinated. It defines what are the organisational components, their relationships and hierarchy. It portrays where formal authority and power are located and provides a home and identity for employee.

For designing an organisational structure, six key elements are required. These are:-

(i)                  Work Specialisation: - historically the underlying principal was that wok could be performed more efficiently if employees are allowed to specialize. Today we use the term work specialisation or division of labour, to describe the degree to which tasks in the organisation re subdivided into separate jobs.

(ii)                Departmentalisation: - once the jobs have been divided through work specialisation, these needs to group together so that common tasks can be coordinated. The basis by which jobs are grouped together is called departmentalisation. One of the most popular ways of forming such groups is by functions like marketing and finance etc.

(iii)               Chain of command:- the chain of command is an unbroken line of authority that extends from the top to lowest level and clarifies who reports to whom.

(iv)              Span of control:- span of control is important because to a large degree, it determine the number of level and managers an organisation has. All things being equal the wider the more efficient is the organisation.

(v)                Centralisation and decentralisation:- the term centralisation refers to the degree to which decision making is concentrated to a single point in the organisation. In contrastive bulk of the decision is allowed to be take at the lower level, the organisation is termed as decentralised.

(vi)              Formalisation:- formalisation refers to the degree to which jobs within the organisation are standardised.