Organizational context

Abstract

As the business environment becomes more fluid and complex, many kinds of challenges arise for an organization to compete and survive in the market. Some organizations overcome these challenges by continuously optimizing and improving their standard operations whereas some other organization, executing projects to projects in order to serve the demands which are more tailored in details and contexts. Thus, to assess the performance and effectiveness of the organization, it is important to look into its organizational structure which gives the foundation of the organization's operational style.

This is because the shape of an organization determines how effectively the organization’s decision-making and communication systems work [1]. The organizational structure influences how people in the organization works together, for instance in a tall organization with many levels of managers, a manager may try to take credits from the hard work that his team puts in, and thus, resulting in lower-level employees being less motivated to work. The structure can also effects the quality of work that different department produces. This may due to miscommunicated goals between the managers and the employees as commonly, the more levels that the information is delivered, the more distorted the information becomes. Overall, by looking from different perspectives to the organizational structure, namely the organization's height and width, mechanistic and organic properties, integration level, one can potential recognize the success level of the organization.

In the light of project management aspect, the organizational structure plays a role in facilitating the projects and determining the success level. As all projects are in its nature unique, each project should be handled by appropriate group of people by which is under the influence of the organizational structure.

Big Idea

Organizational Theory

Organizational theory is the study of how organizations function and how they affect and are affected by the environment in which they operate [1]. Essentially, an organization groups resources in the environment to create values for the society. This value could be in the form of products or services. The process of value creation has three stages: input, conversion, and output (see Figure XXX). By going through the stages, the organizational values are created consecutively and how much value is created at each stage is determined by the chosen method of work. For example, the quality of raw materials will determine the base quality of the final product given the same amount of work done to in the conversion process. Moreover, the conversion stage also contributes to the amount of value created too as it determines how the final product will be made and delivered to the customers. The quality of the product will be subjected to the how skilled the organization is in process of value creation and also abilities to respond to the environmental changes. As the value proposition is delivered to the customers, the environment is affected by the value realized by the customers which induce the dynamics of forces in the environment. The organization receive capital resources, knowledge, and experience from their delivery by which these resources are circled back to the organizational input stage again to repeat the value creation process.

Organizational Effectiveness

Stakeholders, Managers, and Ethics

Organizational Design

Authority and Control

Specialization and Coordination

Organizational Change

Types and Forms of Organizational Change

Organizational Transformations

Annotated Bibliography

1. Jones, Gareth R. (2013): Organizational Theory, Design, and Change, 7nd edition, Pearson Prentice Hall