Business Essay

Submitted By synonymous012856
Words: 364
Pages: 2

‘…..organisations need to adapt to their environment to survive. An important feature of that adaptation is structural.’ D Needle, ‘Business in Context’, Cengage, 2010.

Identify and briefly describe the features of any four organisational structures you are familiar with and discuss the environmental factors that might influence structural changes in organisations. Give examples where appropriate.

Introduction

Within this assignment, I intend to…

One of the most common organisational structures is known as the functional structure, also known as role culture. The reason for this, it is usually organised by function or role e.g. accounting, marketing, production etc. The structure is very hierarchical; therefore the employee’s path is fairly predictable. The disadvantages to this structure are that it is slow to perceive and to respond to change. Also, different departments don’t work together efficiently and have little communication between them. Below is an example of a functional structure. You can see that it is based on hierarchy and divided into different departments at the bottom.

The second most popular organisational structure is the matrix structure, also known as task culture. It is the task that determines which departments will work together to get the ‘job’ done, meaning the ‘job in hand’ is more important than rules and regulations. This causes the lines of authority to of ten be blurred or wide ranging and employees within this organisation are usually given