Structural Dimensions

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Do curso por Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU)

Strategic Organization Design

97 classificações

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU)

Strategic Organization Design

97 classificações

Curso 3 de 4 em Specialization Competitive Strategy and Organization Design

Strategic Organization Design will introduce new topics and modules with even more real world examples and opportunities for student interaction than its predecessors Competitive Strategy (https://www.coursera.org/learn/competitive-strategy) and Advanced Competitive Strategy (https://www.coursera.org/learn/advanced-competitive-strategy). The final course in the Competitive Strategy and Organization Design specialization covers the internal workings of an organization and its interactions with the outside world. Where the first two courses mainly covered the way firms interact with the outside world, in particular competitors and complementors, the third course looks at the way a firm’s organization should be designed to compete effectively.

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Structure Organizations

This module will introduce the fundamental dimensions of organization design. We will take a designer’s point of view and first introduce the “objective” elements of organization design, the organizational structure. This is reflected in the organization chart, the size and importance of the functional units, the organization by product lines, functions or geographical units. The second part of the module will cover other elements that govern the interaction between units and individuals, such as the degree of formalization and centralization, the reward system and the degree of task division.

Strategic Organization Design9:09

Structural Dimensions9:19

Contextual Dimensions5:54

Promoting Cooperation and Coordination14:27

Conheça os instrutores

Tobias Kretschmer
Professor
Institute for Strategy, Technology and Organization

Hi there, and welcome back!

When designing your organization, considering its structural dimensions,

is the first step.

So, the structural dimensions of organizational design basically gives some

labels to the internal characteristics of organizations.

Structural dimensions give the basis for measuring and

for analyzing the characteristics that are often somewhat difficult to see, but

they are important.

And they also form the basis for

governing the interactions between individuals and units.

Rights to individuals will be assigned to particular units,

units will report to other units and so on.

These are all aspects that are captured

in a structural dimensions of an organisation.

Structural dimensions, are also distinct and individual to the organization and

specific to the organization in that they remain even when individual members leave.

Right? So, if the head of a department of a unit

leaves the unit still stays intact, right?

That position is just vacant it will be filled again.

But the organizational structure,

the structural dimension stays actually the same.

So, structural dimensions are a couple or money folds, so for

example the formalization, those are written documents in an organization,

this would be for example, procedures.

Right? So, how do you file a complaint?

How do you propose a change in some product?

Drop descriptions.

What is it that i'm actually supposed to do?

How am I supposed to divide my time between different tasks.

Policy manuals.

So, what are the sorts of things that an organisation and

an individual should be doing?

These are all the things that are formalized and written down.

Hierarchy, is a structural dimension that basically defines who reports to whom.

So, who is whose boss.

And how many people report to single person.

That's what's called the managerial span of control.

So, if one manager for example, decides over 20 people.

Then his span of control will be 20.

And that means that he will of course have a large number of things to manage,

a large number of tasks to integrate and to manage.

Hierarchy, is basically the fundamental feature of organizational structure, but

more on that later.

Now, let's think about formalization in hierarchy using an organization

that I happen to know very well, it's the Institute for Strategy,

Technology and Organization, the unit that I work in.

Okay, so what I've done here is I've drawn up an organization

chart of how the organization, how ISTO actually looks.

So, there is the head of the institute, there is a professor, there is

a level of assistant professors and post docs, there are doctoral students.

Now that's the formalize,

that's the hierarchical description of how the organization ISTO looks like.

Now, really though that's not all there is to life at this still, right?

So, people filling these individual roles will have links to each other.

For example, I have a passion for music and

Yohana's our PhD student who's recently join, also has a passion for music.

So, he also has a band.

I run long distances and Dainis runs long distances.

Jorg, who is also a professor and

Nadia have a common interest in media industries.

Jorg and Michail, are both tech brains as typical as they come.

Hakan and Pooyan, are both graduates of Bocconi in Milan, and

so they spent time together going through the PhD program together.

Anke and Esther, love decorating.

So, whenever there's something to be decorated within the institute then

those two are the perfect people for the job.

So, as you can see this is actually, and including, of course, Yohana and Anke,

who go bouldering together.

So, all of these real interactions, all of these connections

between people contribute to the fact that an organization chart

is not just the hierarchical definition of who reports to whom,

but also who gets along with whom.

Who has a tie and who has a common link to the other people.

And that of course, is going to determine the interaction between

the people at the institute quite strongly.

Another structural dimension, is the degree of centralization.

And you will have an idea of what this means but, let's jut be precise here,

it refers to the hierarchical level that has the authority to make a decision.

Now, what this means is that for example,

once in a while we need to hire student helpers.

These would be people that help us in our daily jobs by

preparing we're doing background research, helping us do slides and so on.

So, a centralized structure would mean that I make all these decision.

Right? So, I'm at the top of the hierarchy, and

if I centralize everything then I would have to make all of these

decisions on my own.

A decentralized decision making structure, would mean that Anke and

Yohana would make the decision to hire student helpers.

So, this means that at a lower level of hierarchy,

decisions can be made autonomously.

Which in this case makes a lot of sense, because student helpers will tend to work

very closely, with doctoral students and postdocs ie, so therefore, Anke and

Yohana are the best people to look at that and to make decisions.

Specialization, subdividing tasks into separate

jobs is important, so in this case here [COUGH] a guitar

player in this case also seems to be the singer of the band.

But that also means that the drummer Is specialized he has a separate,

separate very specialized job and so on.

So, in the other case we have, we have workers at the factory

line looking at baked goods and they basically sort this goods.

So, they do one particular job and they do it very intensively and

they do it all day long.

Other structural dimensions, would be professionalism.

So, professionalism refers to the formal education that a staff

has to have and receives training that the staff receives.

And professionalism for

example is high when the number of staff assigned to non workflow activities,

so for example R&D, or further training activities and so on is also high.

Personnel ratios,

Is the deployment of people to various functions and departments.

So, let's take as an example the professional staff ratio.

That is the number of employees in a particular classification.

So, the number of marketing professionals, the number of accountants,

the number of research workers, divided by the number of total employees.

Right? And that gives you a pretty good sense of

what the organisation is all about, right so if you have an organisation

with a large number or large ratio of marketing employees,

that tells me that this firm places a high value on marketing of their products.

Now, when it comes to professionalism and personnel ratio,

if you look at my profile, for example on our website, this tells you something

about my previous placements, my previous jobs, and about my education.

So I have a Master of Science, I have a a PhD in economics and

I've held a certain number of positions before I joined LMU in Munich.

So, let's just see if you got your definitions right now.

Thank for staying with me.

So, in this video we have discussed, the structural

dimensions that organizations can build upon to meet their challenges.

In the next video we will dive into the organizational setting

that influences them.

See you then.

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