Organization & its Complexity

The working relationships — vertical and horizontal associations between individuals and groups — that exist within an organization affect how its activities are accomplished and coordinated. Effective organizing depends on the mastery of several important concepts: work specialization, chain of command, authority, delegation, span of control, and centralization versus decentralization.

Work SpecializationWork specialization, sometimes called division of labor, is the degree to which organizational tasks are divided into separate jobs. Employees within each department perform only the tasks related to their specialized function.One popular organizational concept is based on the fundamental principle that employees can work more efficiently if they're allowed to specialize. specialization has its own advantages and disadvantages. With too much specialization, employees are isolated and perform only small, narrow, boring tasks. In addition, if that person leaves the company, his specialized knowledge may disappear as well. Many companies are enlarging jobs to provide greater challenges and creating teams so that employees can rotate among several jobs.

Chain of command

The chain of command is an unbroken line of authority that links all persons in an organization and defines who reports to whom. This chain has two underlying principles: unity of command and scalar principle.
Unity of command:- this priniciple states that the worker should have only one authority at the top and should report to that person only rather than reporting to the multiple heads. Otherwise, the employee may receive conflicting demands or priorities from several supervisors at once, placing this employee in a no-win situation.
Scalar principle:- The scalar principle refers to a clearly defined line of authority that includes all employees in the organization. The classical school of management suggests that there should be a clear and unbroken chain of command linking every person in the organization with successively higher levels of authority up to and including the top manager. When organizations grow in size, they tend to get taller, as more and more levels of management are added. This increases overhead costs, adds more communication layers, and impacts understanding and access between top and bottom levels. It can greatly slow decision making and can lead to a loss of contact with the client or customer.
Authority
Authority is the formal and legitimate right of a manager to make decisions, issue orders, and allocate resources to achieve organizationally desired outcomes. A manager's authority is defined in his or her job description.Authority flows down the vertical hierarchy. Positions at the top of the hierarchy are vested with more formal authority than are positions at the bottom.

Delegation
A concept related to authority is delegation. Delegation is the downward transfer of authority from a manager to a subordinate. Most organizations today encourage managers to delegate authority in order to provide maximum flexibility in meeting customer needs. In addition, delegation leads to empowerment, in that people have the freedom to contribute ideas and do their jobs in the best possible ways. This involvement can increase job satisfaction for the individual and frequently results in better job performance. Without delegation, managers do all the work themselves and under utilize their workers. The ability to delegate is crucial to managerial success.
what manager can do for proper control of the organization:
Specifically assign tasks to individual team members.
Give team members the correct amount of authority to accomplish assignments.
Make sure that team members accept responsibility.

Span of control

span of control the area of control of manger or the number of workers werking under him.there is no specific number of people which we can decide as the span of control as a standard it depends upon the task assigned the manager.
A wide span of management exists when a manager has a large number of subordinates. while A narrow span of management exists when the manager has only a few subordinates

Centralization versus decentralization

recently Arvind Kejriwal was taking about his objectives as he was entering the indian politics, that some of the powers should be decentralized and vested upon the people of the area while the politicians were against it. on this we can have a long debate also.A centralized organization systematically works to concentrate authority at the upper levels. In a decentralized organization, management consciously attempts to spread authority to the lower organization levels.In principle, neither philosophy is right or wrong. What works for one organization may or may not work for another. Kmart Corporation and McDonald's have both been very successful — both practice centralization. By the same token, decentralization has worked very well for General Electric and Sears. Every organization must assess its own situation and then choose the level of centralization or decentralization that works best.