Public Management

Organizational Structure Wednesday, April 19, 2023

Hun Myoung Park, Ph.D.

Public Management & Policy Analysis ProgramGraduate School of International Relations

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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

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Influences of Structure

• Size

• Environment

• Technology and tasks

• Information technology

• Strategic choice

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Galbraith’s Design Strategies

• Hierarchy of authority

• Rules and procedures

• Narrowing the span of control

• Planning and goal setting

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Functional Structures

• Organized according to major functions

• E.g., marketing, R&D

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Organization Chart

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Product Structures

• Product and hybrid structures

• Separate divisions for each product line

• Major product divisions with some functional units (accounting) are hybrid.

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Product Structures

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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.

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Matrix Designs

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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

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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.

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Mintzberg’s Structures 2

Divisionalized Form- Multi-divisional organization (e.g., manufacturing & marketing); relies on standardization of outputs; middle-line 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)

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Structure & Environment

stable dynamic

complex

PROFESSIONAL BUREAUCRACYdecentralized; bureaucratic;

standardized skills (law firm R&D firm)

ADHOCRACY

decentralized; organic; mutual adjustment

simple MACHINE BUREAUCRACY

centralized; bureaucratic;standardized work processes; direct

supervision from strong strategic apex

(new agencies, start up entrepreneurial companies

SIMPLE STRUCTURE

centralized; organic; direct supervision

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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

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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?

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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).

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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.