DIMENSIONS OF ORGANIZATION DESIGN

 DIMENSIONS OF ORGANIZATION DESIGN
    Organizations are moldable, more or less, as their size and structure allows. The initial step into understanding them is to study their features that describe their design characteristics. In this way you can understand organizations much like you would understand an individual’s personality and physical abilities.Organizations have two interdependent features: structural dimensions and contingency factors.
Structural dimensions describe those internal organizational characteristics than help define and measure that which exist by comparison with other organizations. For instance, a structural dimension would be “size” of, employees, sales, volume, etc.On the other hand, Contingency factors embrace larger elements that inspire structural dimensions. They are products of the organizational landscape that effects and shapes structural dimensions.

For instance, the extent in which an organization is centralized could directly affect an organizations size by limiting or encouraging their manufacturing global presence.In order to understand organizations and assess their abilities, it is important to study structural dimensions and contingency factors in detail. Both represent the organization as well as their business landscape. Further, they overlap because their interdependencies create internal processes and their associated structures connect them in order to operate those processes as indicated in Figure 1.

    Structural Dimensions in Organizations
Formalization is about the documentation in the organization that serves to provide written guidance on important matters related to job descriptions, policy manuals, procedures, and the regulations intended to guide behavior, internal activities, and expectations. Formalization is easily measured by counting the number of policies and number of pages in them. Obviously the more written material, the more formalization exists in the organization.
Specialization is simply the ratio of the number of people involved to complete one task. If one person completes a task there is less specialization, if ten people are needed to complete a task, there is more narrow specialization. Consider an insurance company that has one person for assessment, one for submitting reports, one for data entry of the reports into the computer, one person to validate a claim, one person to decide on action for the claim, one person to pay the claim. We have six areas of specialization involved in order to complete one task, process a claim. The competitor might use three people creating less specialization in the name of speedier customer service.
Hierarchy of Authority is directly related to how flat and fast the organization is designed. A flatter organization will have a shorter hierarchy and a wider span of control whereas a taller more layered organization with more management levels will have a narrow span of control as a result of higher levels of authority.
Centralization is about where decisions are made. When decision are made only at the top of the organization the organization in centralized. When decisions are made by empowering lower levels to make those decisions, the organization is decentralized.The organization needs to be organized efficiently in order to provide the products and services that they were intended to provide. For this reason, organizations are important to society at large and to each of us as individuals depending upon our needs to the services they provide.
For instance, perhaps you might think of your favorite tablet you use every day, and find the tablet maker exists for to deliver the best product for you by: bringing together the best resources, producing efficiently, being innovative, and using modern manufacturing
technology. However, if you owned their stock, you might add the remaining topics as well because you might believe that these in summation, might bring the stock price higher and increase value in your portfolio.
Now consider how your customer thinks about your organization. What is important to them? How does your organization deliver to meet their expectations? Is your organization owning enough of these seven reasons to attempt to exceed customer expectations? Is that even important?
I hope that your organization is one that settles for nothing less than dedicated service to exceed those expectations for your customers. Whatever your line of business may be. Proverbs 22:1 states, “A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches, and favor is better than silver or gold” (ESV). But really, if your business is working to exceed expectations making the organization name better by building reputation, creating better services, developing better products and fulfilling each of the seven reasons in Figure 1 to the fullest, your business is doing everything to set itself up for success. I recall a business owner I talked to once who left me with this simple thought and so I leave it to you. He said, “If you are doing the right things for the right reasons God will bless your business and it will succeed”.