Organizational Models and Design Essay

Organizational Models and Design

Organizations come in varying shapes and sizes and this can also be said about organizational structures. Organizational structures can be 'flat' which means there are few levels between the owner and the common employee. They can also be 'tall' which means that there are many tiers that exist between the common employee and the owner of the company. This paper will look at the three major organizational structures and highlight their main advantages and disadvantages.

Functional structure

The functional organizational structure is also refereed to as bureaucratic organizational structure whereby the company is divided on the basis of specialty. For instance, under this type of organizational structure separate divisions would be assigned for accounting, marketing, sales and so on.

The advantage of this organizational structure is that individuals are totally dedicated to one particular function. Another advantage is that this structure goes along way in saving costs as well as bringing about efficiency that comes about through the combination of functions in such a manner.This organizational structure is disadvantageous in that it is prone to conflicts. It is also difficult for strong communication lines to be facilitated between the various functional departments; if the departments are in different separate locations then it means that there can be a difficulty in the actual communication between them as well as the understanding of the needs of other departments (O'Farrell, 2009).

Divisional structure

This is a type of structure that is based on the organizations products or projects. Each of the divisions is normally equipped with its own specific resources sop that they can each function independently. This organizational structure is quite common in an environment where products, projects or lines of products are under independent governance .there are several examples of retailers such as Old Navy, Gap and Banana Republic these divisions carry out their operations separately but they are all part of the major Gap Inc. And….....