Understanding Organizations: Types, Objectives, and Processes

Posted on Dec 17, 2024 in Other subjects

Organizations and Their Structures

Organizations are a form of institution, prevalent in our society, highly specialized and interdependent. Examples include corporations, armies, schools, hospitals, and churches.

The Organization Man

The organization man is one who plays different roles in various organizations. Key features include:

  • Flexibility: due to the diversity of roles and the constant changes taking place in modern life.
  • Tolerance to frustration: to avoid the emotional conflict between personal and organizational needs.
  • Ability to delay reward: to compensate for routine work within the organization at the expense of personal preferences or vocations.
  • Permanent wish fulfillment: meeting the standards that enable access to a career position within the organization.

Formal vs. Informal Organizations

Formal organizations involve the division of labor, power to control, rules, regulations, wages, and quality control. Example: Companies with reward and punishment systems. Informal organizations are interpersonal, i.e., social relations that develop spontaneously between staff or workers.

Organizational Typologies

Etzioni’s Typology

  • Coercive Organizations: Power is imposed by physical force or controls based on rewards or punishments. Examples: prisons and penal institutions.
  • Utility Organizations: Power is based on control of economic incentives.
  • Normative Organizations: Based on a consensus of goals and methods of organization. Use moral control as the major force of influence on the participants. Examples: churches, universities, and hospitals.

Blau and Scott’s Typology

Based on the beneficiary, who benefits from a formal organization: the organization’s own members, owners or managers of the organization, the organization’s customers, or the general public.

Basic Types of Organizations

  • Mutual Benefit Associations: The main beneficiary is the organization’s own members, such as professional associations, cooperatives, and trade unions.
  • Commercial Interest Organizations: The owners or shareholders are the main beneficiaries.
  • Service Organizations: A group of customers is the principal beneficiary. Examples: hospitals, universities, and schools.
  • State Organizations: The beneficiary is the general public. Examples: military organizations, postal services, legal and penal institutions, and public safety.

Organizational Objectives

An organizational objective is a desired state that is sought. Functions of organizational goals:

  • Goals are a source of legitimacy that justifies the activities of an organization.
  • Goals serve as standards for evaluating the success of the organization.
  • Goals serve as a unit of measurement for organizations that try to verify and compare their productivity.

Models of Organization

  • Survival Models: Organizations develop objectives that allow them to simply exist and maintain their productivity.
  • Efficiency Models: Organizations develop goals that allow them to not only exist but also work within the standards of increasing efficiency.

Categories of Organizational Objectives

  • Objectives of Society: Serving society at large, filling the needs of society. Example: maintaining public order.
  • Objectives of Production: Serving the public who comes into contact with the organization. Example: business services.
  • Objectives of Systems: The state or manner of functioning of the organization. Example: emphasis on the profits of the organization.
  • Objectives of Products: The characteristics of goods and services produced. Example: emphasis on product variety.
  • Derivative Objectives: The uses of power make the organization originate in achieving other goals. Example: community services.

Alliances and Market Segmentation

Contractual Alliances and Joint Ventures

A contractual alliance is a cooperative relationship between two or more companies, managed through contracts, which does not create a new company. Cooperative joint ventures of two or more companies may be final or not, involving the creation of a new company to manage that relationship.

Levels of Market Segmentation

Market segmentation is an effort to increase the accuracy of a target company. Companies can adopt five levels of marketing:

  • Mass Marketing: Focus on production, distribution, and mass promotion of a product for every buyer.
  • Segment Marketing: Consists of a large identifiable group of buyers in a market.
  • Niche Marketing: Targets a relatively small market segment with a compound of marketing expertise.
  • Local Marketing: Focused on regional characteristics and local consumers.
  • Individual Marketing: Targets individual consumers and customizes efforts for each of them.

Entrepreneurship

Corporate vs. Social Entrepreneurship

Corporate entrepreneurship is when an individual produces goods and services, focuses on the market, measures performance by profit, and aims to meet customer needs and expand the capabilities of the business. Social entrepreneurship is when a group collectively produces goods and services for the community, seeking solutions to social problems, measuring performance by social impact, and aiming to respect people at social risk and promote them.

Strategic Planning

Strategic planning is the process of drafting the strategy, designing the objectives, and expected results in the long term. Important features of the strategy are:

  • Time horizon: long-term.
  • Pattern-making: over time, the decisions are consistent with each other.
  • Impact: the changes are significant, rather than small-scale.
  • Concentration of efforts: focus should be on selected and well-defined skills.
  • Scope: all processes in the supply chain are coordinated.

Production Processes

Classification of Production Processes

Industry:

  • Changes the format of raw materials.
  • Changes the composition.
  • Changes the shape of the transfer of resources.

Services: There is knowledge transfer and/or technology.

Traditional vs. Cross Schroeder Classification

Traditional Rating: This system is always related to the production flow. Classification Cross Schroeder: It has two dimensions: Guidelines: product flow with three types – line, flashes, and steps of the process, by type of consumer. Dimensions: for stocks, or orders for the customer.

Types of Production

Focus on the production system, the organization of production flows, and the relationship with the client. Focus on the repetitive production system:

  • Small series
  • Medium series
  • Large series

In the traditional model, there are three different types of processes: continuous flow production line, mass production, and intermittent production systems. Batch, on order, and production on large projects without repetition.

Characteristics of Continuous Production

  • Large amounts of one or more products, poorly differentiated.
  • Uses inflexible production lines.
  • Machines have specific purposes.
  • Undemanding in qualification and supervision of manpower.
  • Reduced in-process inventories and products in the process of manufacturing.
  • Preventive maintenance of machines.
  • Products move quickly within the factory.
  • Easy production planning and control.

Characteristics of Discontinuous Production

  • Small amounts.
  • Greater flexibility.
  • The machines are grouped by function.
  • Demanding qualification and supervision of manpower.
  • High-process inventories and products in the manufacturing process.
  • Requires maintenance and mechanical spaces.
  • Loads of jobs are not balanced.
  • Difficult production planning and control.

Characteristics of Manufacturing Design/Demand

  • Product only.
  • Unique production process.
  • Unable to stabilize the production.
  • The production process is a series of operations that only happen once.

Quality Management

Notions of Quality

Quality is a transcendental notion of excellence. Quality is synonymous with conformity.

Dimensions of Quality

  • Performance: basic operational characteristics.
  • Reliability: probability of the product meeting its performance goals in operating condition and in a defined time interval.
  • Compliance: degree of compliance with specifications.
  • Durability: life without diminishing the performance goals of the product and its components.
  • Aesthetics: subjective perception and initial.
  • Observed quality: subjective perception of value.
  • Availability: ease of acquisition, replacement, and/or maintenance.

ISO Standards

ISO 9000 Series Standards

ISO 9001 is among a series of standards of quality management systems to understand their processes and allow delivery of products/services to customers. The ISO 9001 series of standards consists of:

  • ISO 9000 – Fundamentals and Vocabulary: This standard introduces the concepts of user management systems and specifies the terminology used.
  • ISO 9001 – Requirements: This standard defines the criteria that you will have to meet if you want to operate according to the standard and certification.
  • ISO 9004 – Guidelines for performance improvement: based on eight quality management principles, these guidelines are designed to be used by senior management as a framework for performance improvement.

ISO 14000 Series Standards

Provide guidance on the area of environmental management within companies. ISO 14000 series, recently launched, is a set of 28 standards related to environmental management systems, they cover six well-defined areas: Environmental Management System; – Environmental Auditing – Environmental performance evaluation; – Environmental Labeling; – Environmental Aspects in Standards Product and Analysis of Product Lifecycle. Initially approved forms five standards: ISO 14001, 14004, 14010, 14011 (part 1 and 2) and 14012.

  • ISO 14000 – Guidance set standards in the series.
  • ISO 14001 (17 requirements) – Environmental Management System, lists the specifications.
  • ISO 14004 – Environmental Management System, provides guidelines for principles, systems, and technical support.
  • ISO 14010 – Guidelines for environmental auditing, general principles.
  • ISO 14011 (parts 1 and 2) – Guidelines for environmental auditing, auditing procedure.
  • ISO 14012 – Guidelines for environmental auditing, qualification criteria for auditors.

Productivity and Competitiveness

Competitiveness X = X Productivity X Quality Services / Technology = Productivity Organization X X Motivation