Organisational Theory Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Organisational Theory - Essay ExampleNeedless to say, the resultant surmise is that public sector organisations should undergo a process of organisational restructuring as would leave behind for the adoption of more efficient and effective management paradigms.There are, however, two problems in the above stated. The first is that the notion of decentralised organisational bodily structures as being more inherently suited for the adoption of total quality and other management paradigms which whollyow for efficient and effective proactive responses to shifting external environmental conditions, than are centralised organisational structures, is fallacious and based on assumptions and not fact (Cane and Thurston, 2000 Flynn, 2002 Dent, Chandler and Barry, 2004). The second is that, ultimately, organisational structure must be consciously selected on the basis of that which is most suitable for the organisation in question, the culture which it aspires to and the demands of the ind ustry in which it is located and the market which it serves.As a strategy for determining the relationship between organisational structure and organisational performance, the research will critically analyse both of centralised and decentralised organisational structures, together with a review of ... ave determined that public sector organisations are largely modelled after the traditional bureaucratic organisational structure, as influenced by Weber (Gibson, 1966 Cane and Thurston, 2000 Dent, Chandler and Barry, 2004). The implication is that all of the four components of organisational structure-labour division, departmentalisation, span of control and scope of decision-making-are shaped by bureaucratic-traditionalist managerial theory. This, according to numerous management scholars, has only served to offset an organisations inherent capacity for malleable response to changing external conditions and has, in the long run, resulted in the formulation of mechanistic and atrophy ing organisations (Gibson, 1966 Ford and Slocum, 1977 Cane and Thurston, 2000 Flynn, 2002 Dent, Chandler and Barry, 2004).As explained by Flynn (2002) among others, labour division at bottom the public sector organisation is invariably highly specialised. Task specialisations are all the way articulated and each employee has a specific set of job functions, clearly set out in his/her job description, which he/she must operate by (Bourgeois, 1984 Bourn and Bourn, 1995 Flynn, 2002). While the advantages of specialisation and clearly articulated job descriptions are practically too numerous to articulate, the disadvantages are enormous. Certainly specialisation implies that employees are often matched to jobs according to their skill-sets and explicit job descriptions mean that employees always have a clear understanding of the tasks they are required to perform and know the boundaries of their professional responsibilities (Bourgeois, 1984 Bourn and Bourn, 1995 Flynn, 2002 Mctavish, 2004). Excessive specialisation, however, as is often the case with private sector organisations