Organisation

When certain goals have to be achieved, and individuals have to come together to share work and act with an understanding over a period of time - we say an organisation is formed. Family is also a type of simple organisation.

In our families certain roles are defined e.g mothers make food (or go to offices), fathers go to offices, children are expected to study and achieve good grades etc. A lot of planning goes into this simple organisation like how much money needs to saved, in which school children will study and in future what are they going to be doctor, engineer etc. However roles and relationships become more complex in bigger organisations, corporations.



ORGANISATION: DEFINITIONS

The term organisation can be defined in different ways emphasizing different aspects:

1) Organisation is the form of human association for the attainment of common purpose e.g family, youth welfare association etc. where stress is on cooperative endeavor of human beings.

2) Organisation is the arrangement of personnel for facilitating the accomplishment of some concrete purpose through the allocation of functions and responsibilities. For e.g Public transport system, running of vehicle overseen by crew, maintenance staff upkeep vehicles, then auxiliary staff for support services.

3) Organisation is the pattern of relationship between persons in an enterprise so arranged as to fulfill the enterprise's function. Relationships here mean superior-subordinate relations which ensure hierarchy.

4) For most practicing managers 'organisation is formalized intentional structure of roles', although it sometimes denotes enterprise (the company) too. "Intentional structure of roles" means people coming together must fulfill certain roles.



ROLES
The people who come together to work should know the roles they should play. Designing & maintaining these systems of roles is basically the managerial function of organizing.

For eg. in banks cashier has a role to accept or give cash & loan officer has a role to give credit/Loan. This is not their internal setting for the day (what we call 'jugaad' in hindi), it's formally designed that way, a lot of planning goes into it. Individuals are given a role for a period of time and if they do well (or they've an aptitude for the job) they are continued otherwise they are relocated.

The roles people fulfill should be so intentionally designed that required activities are done & that activities fit together so that people can work smoothly, effectively & efficiently in groups.

To have meaningful roles it should have:
a) Verifiable objectives i.e. at the end of period it should be possible to determine whether or not the objective has been achieved.

b) a clear idea of major duties/activities involved

c) understood area of discretion or authority. For more effective roles necessary information & tools should be supplied.




NATURE OF ORGANISATION
Organisation can be viewed in 2 ways: a) as a process and b) as a structure or framework of relationships.

a) Organisation as a process is a function of every manager. As planning premises changes, so does organisation. Whenever there is a change in circumstances - organisations, people, activities, duties have to evolve. Staffing i.e. recruitment of right kind of people also have to be updated with the changing circumstances. This concept is dynamic view of organisation and it's main focus is on people. A good e.g. I can think of is earlier I never heard of computer proficiency in general recruitments but nowadays nearly all organisations want new people to be computer literate.


Organisation as Structure or Framework of relationships
b) Organisation can also be viewed as internal network of authority & responsibility relationships. It is the working arrangement between people to fulfill enterprise's function.

In any organisation the top management is responsible for policy formulation, middle management for programming, planning and 'rank & file' for implementation. The superior-subordinate relationship ensures the tasks are assigned, responsibilities are fixed, people are held accountable and thus smooth achievement of goals. If it wouldn't for this hierarchy structure enterprises would not have existed. For e.g Army, there is defined hierarchy, roles, responsibility, powers attached to each rank. Our Army is one of the best functioning organisation.

The compilation of organisation structure has to be properly planned & structured. It has to be designed to channel flow of authority & responsibility. The structure once prepared is not liable to change soon. It's a static concept of organisation as against dynamic view of process.