Organizing:

Organizing is related to designing and assigning jobs for individuals to work more effectively and efficiently. Organizing refers to grouping of jobs, allocating jobs in divisions and units, assigning people to work, delegation of authority and responsibility to achieve a common goal.

According to Allen, Organizing refers to,” The process of identifying and grouping the work to be performed, defining and delegating responsibility and authority and establishing a pattern of relationship for the purpose of enable people to work most effectively together in accomplishing objectives.”

Organizing is more related to structuring relations between people, jobs and organization through designing jobs, grouping them into manageable units and determines job related responsibility of individuals.

Importance of organizing as management function:

The following are the importance of organizing:

1. Specialization: Organizational structure is a network of relationships in which the work is divided into units and departments. This division of work is helping in bringing specialization in various activities of concern.
2. Well defined job: Organizational structure helps in putting right man on right job which can be done by selecting people for various department according to their qualification, skill and experience This is helping in defining the jobs properly which clarified the role of every person.
3. Clarifies authority: Organizational structure helps in clarifying the role positions to every manager. This can be done by clarifying the power to every managers and the way he has to exercise those power should be clarified so that misuse of power do not take place.
4. Coordination: Organization is the means of creating coordination among different departments of the enterprise. It creates clear cut relationships among positions and ensures mutual cooperation between individuals and groups.
5. Effective administration: The organization structure is helpful in defining the job positions. The roles to be performed by different managers are classified. Specialization is achieved through division of work. This all leads to effective and efficient administration.
6. Growth and diversification: Organizing helps in determining the effective and efficient framework, which facilitates coordination between authority and responsibility and concentrating on specialization. This enables the organization in capacity building and increases their level of activities.
7. Scope of new changes: As the role of each individuals and groups are clear, along with their authority and responsibility, they can take decisions independently to adopt in changing environment. This may bring new changes into the running of an organization.

Principles of Organizing:

Organizing is one of the major functions of management. It is performed by all managers and it is a continuous process. The principle of organizing has to do with the grouping of organizational activities into various units and dividing responsibility and authority accordingly. Some of the widely practiced principles are as follows:

1. Objective: An objective is an end or goal to be achieved. The goals and objectives must be clearly defined for the entire organization for each department and even for each position in the organization structure. Once the objectives have been clearly defined, organizing function become easier.
2. Specialization or division of Labor: The concept of division of work is based on the principle of specialization and efficiency. Specialization helps to break down overall task of organization ad divide it into the smaller component parts. Greater output can be obtained when each person concentrates on doing the thing for which he/she is best qualified.
3. Span of control: Span of control represents a numerical limit of subordinates to be supervised or controlled by a manger. It is believed that organizational efficiency is increased by limiting the span of control at any point in the hierarchy to a small number.
4. Scalar Chain: The chain of supervisors ranging from the top management to the lowest rank managers should be clearly defined. The chain of command should be short and clear which makes decision making and communication more effective.
5. Unity of Command: In organizing activities, it is better when an employee receives orders from only one supervisor. Direction from several superiors may result in confusion, chaos, conflict and indiscipline.
6. Delegation of authority: Proper authority should be delegated at all level of management. The authority delegated should be equal to responsibility so as to enable each manager to accomplish the task assign to him/her.
7. Responsibility: Once authority is given, managers have to be responsible for their actions. They are also responsible for the action of their subordinates.
8. Efficiency: The organization structure should enable to function efficiently and accomplish organizational goals/ objectives with the lowest possible cost. Hence it should ensure optimum utilization of all resources.
9. Simplicity: The organization should be kept as simple as possible. A complex organization means difficulty of communication and coordination.
10. Flexibility: Since, external environment always changes, it is necessary to cope up with the changing environment. Organizational structure should be flexible enough to cope up with the changes in the external environment.
11. Balance: There should be a reasonable balance in the size of various departments and between centralization and decentralization. Imbalances creates problem to achieve its goals for an organization in an effective and efficient way.
12. Unity of Direction: There should be one objective and one plan for a group of activities having the same objective. A boss with many objectives will create chaos. Thus unity of direction facilitates verification and coordination of activities.
13. Staffing: Staffing principle focuses on employing, rewarding and developing people in the organization to motivate them in order to work in the direction to achieve organizational goals.

Approaches to Organizing:

The Approaches to organizing have considerable influence on organizing thought and practice. Some of these approaches are as follows:

1. Classical Approach:

Taylor, Henry Fayol, and Max Weber, were major contributors to the classic approach to organizational design. Though, their prescriptions and approaches to organizing are different, they all advocate ”universal principles” of organizing. They attempt to specify the “one best way” to organizing. F.W. Taylor believed that the key to organizing is to scientifically design the job. Taylor’s ideas on organizing are as follows:

1. Scientific approach to work by determining optimal workload laid by breaking down the job into smaller components.
2. Incentive for reward by designing incentive system in which the workers receive more pay for more output.
3. Separation of planning from performance by dividing work between management and workers. Management should undertake planning, standard setting, and supervising activities. Workers, on the other-hand, should concentrate on physical and operational aspects of the jobs. Max Weber is remembered for his work on bureaucracy. The bureaucratic organization has to the following components.

1. Hierarchy: Jobs are highly specialized and arranged in a hierarchy.
2. Rules and regulations: All tasks are performed according to predetermined rules and procedures.
3. Authority levels: Each job has some jurisdiction. Employees exercise authority in performing their jobs.
4. Impersonality: Impersonality in performing the task is extremely important. The supervisors must maintain social distance from subordinates.
5. Technical qualification and career orientation: Employment and promotion are based on technical qualification and achievement. Therefore, seniority is the main factor in promotion.

Similarly, Henry Fayol main principles of organizing are:

1. Unity of command
2. Scalar chain
3. Authority and responsibility
4. Unity of Direction

His assumptions were that, good management is able to motivate workers to perform according to management guidelines and expectation. If worker fail to produce the fault lies with management. Thus, he developed fourteen principles to make manger aware of their responsibilities and better at executing them.

2. Behavioral Approach:

Behavioral approach to organizing focuses on employee behavior. It points out the people deserve to be the central focus of any organized activity. This approach believes that successful management depends largely on manager’s ability to understand and work with people, who have a variety of backgrounds, needs, perceptions, and aspirations. Thus, while scientific management concentrated on physical aspects of the job, behavioral approach concentrated on the social aspects of the job.

The following persons are the major contributors in the development of behavioral approach:

1. Elton Mayo’s human relations approach highlighted the” people side” of an organization .His studies found that the social context of work, including group norms and interpersonal relation is very important for organizing work activities.
2. Douglas McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y reflect two extreme beliefs sets that, different managers have about their workers.
3. The researchers at the Tavistock Institute of Technology in England developed the socio- technical systems approach. Similarly, John Woodward developed the task-technology approach. These approaches explain the consequences of different types of technical and organizational forms for job satisfaction and workgroup behavior. These approaches integrate the two important sub-systems the technical (task) subsystem and the social subsystem.
4. Chris Argyris propose the Personality and Organization Theory. He argued that each individual has some potential, which can be realized give the right environment. He suggested that to achieve a balance between structures and people’s needs, there should be flexible roles, open communication, and reliance on self-direction.
5. David McClelland, Fred Fiedler, and Frederic Herzberg provided manger with still greater insights into employee behavior through their motivation and leadership theories.
6. The behavioral approach has thus, contribute a wealth of important ideas on people-management aspect of an organization. This approach makes it clear that people are the key to organizing and productivity.

3. Systems and Contingency Approaches:

Systems and contingency approaches have some common viewpoints on organizing. Both the approaches are concerned with the interrelationships among organizational elements and between organization and the environmental element. The systems approach is valuable to managers as it helps them to conceptualize the flow and interaction of various elements of the organization.

The contingency approach to organizing is logical. Organizations obviously differ in size, objective, and environmental uncertainty. Similarly, employees of these organizations differ in values, attitudes, needs, and experiences. So it is not wise to talk about universally applicable approaches that work in all situations. The Following variables are mainly considered by the contingency approach.

1. Technology: Technology is important to all types of organizations. It is a means by which raw material are transferred into outputs. Selection of technology and its best use are the deciding factors for effectiveness.
2. Environment: Environment has influence on organization’s structure and performance. In fact, environmental factors determine the structure.
3. Size: Size affects organizational designs in very complex ways. Large organizations have complex structures. The smaller ones have more flexible structures.
4. Strategic Choice: Strategy is the determinant of structure. Structures are needed to implement the strategy. Management should decide what the organization is to do before deciding on the structure.

Process of Structuring and Organizations:

Organization structure is defined as a framework of task and authority relationships. In other words, it is a system of tasks, reporting, and authority relationships within which the organization does its work. The processes of structuring an organization are as follows:

1. Study of Jobs: The first step in the process of organizing structure involves study of jobs and elements to perform activities.
2. Grouping of Jobs (Departmentalization): Once a number of jobs are identified, it is necessary to group them according to the functional requirement. Some jobs may belong to production department, while the others may belong to marketing department. Thus, grouping of jobs can be made on functional, process or product basis.
3. Division of Labor: Once jobs are grouped, they are performed with the help of labor. The division of labor helps to maximize outputs and machines. In the process of division of labor, large tasks are divided into smaller packages and assigned to labor according to their skill and training.
4. Deciding on organization design: Organizations follow different structures. Some organizations follow a mechanic design whereas others follow a organic design. A mechanically designed organization will be more rigid, hierarchic and rely on rules and regulation..On the contrary, an organic organizational structure is highly adaptive, flexible, and participative in nature. What type of design is selected also depends on contingency factors such as size, technology and degree of environmental uncertainty.
5. Coordination of activities: Although activities are grouped and work is divided accordingly, it is essential to establish coordination of these activities. The role of a leader or supervisor is vital to coordinate activities. Both inter and intra departmental coordination is essential for the completion of given tasks and finally to achieve organizational activities.