MGT 3200 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Organizational Architecture, Industrial Revolution, Project Manager
Document Summary
There is a tradeoff between specialization and coordination. The more you specialize, the more difficult coordination becomes. What are its advantages/disadvantages? (diagrams on the last page of the notes) The employees are agents of the boss, because they do whatever the boss tells them to. As company size increases, the boss"s job becomes impossible. A functionally designed organization group its activities according to specialty or function: ex: a marketing group, an accounting group, a production group, etc. This type of organization design was predominant during the 1920s-1940s when the mass production firms were only producing one item. The focus is on efficiency and increasing technical expertise in a certain area. Coordination is slow because it is achieved at higher levels. No common concern for the overall mission of the organization. Specialists are grouped together to perform all the activities required to produce an individual good/service. Each major product line is a separate and semi-autonomous division of the company.
