Organization Theory - 7

In the last blog, we mentioned that we would begin defining the various dimensions of a business. In today's blog we begin this journey by defining some variable that are to be understood to really grasp the definition of detentions.

These variables are defined differently by different theorists, but what we define here is what is generally held meaning of these variables:

Administrative Component: The number of line supervisors, managers, and staff personnel relative to the total number of employees

Autonomy: The extent to which top management has to refer to certain typical decisions to a higher level of authority

Centralization: The proportion of jobs whose occupants participate in decision making and the number of areas in which they participate, or concentration of power arrangements, or an index reflecting the locus of decision making with respect do major and specific policies, the degree of information sharing between levels, and the degree of participation in long term planning

Complexity: The number of occupational specialties, the professional activity, and the professional training of employees.

Delegation of authority: The ratio of the number of specific management decisions the chief executive has delegated to the number he or she has the authority to make

Differentiation: The number of specialty functions represented in a firm or the difference in cognitive and emotional orientation amongst managers in different departments

Formalization: The extent to which am employee's role is defined by formal documentation

Integration: The quality of the state of collaboration that exists among departments that are required to achieve unity of efforts or plan or feedback used for coordination between organizational units

Professionalism: The degree to which the employees use a professional organization as a major reference, belief in service to the public, belief in self-regulation, dedication to one's field and autonomy.

Span of Control: The number of subordinates that an individual manager can and should supervise.

Specialization: The number of occupational specialties and the length of the training required by each or the degree to which highly specialized requirements are spelled out in formal job description for various functions

Standardization: The range of variables that is tolerated within the rules defining the jobs

Vertical Span: The number of levels in the authority hierarchy from the bottom to the top.

At this point it is pretty clear that most of the terms sound like a jargon, but it’s only through an experience of the industry and some explanation that these could be understood better. We shall make this attempt in the next few blogs before we jump to understanding the dimensions, but in many cases we would mix the 2 and highlight the point to be noted.

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