Business Introduction To Organisation Theory Notes

LECTURE 1 - INTRODUCTION TO ORGANISATION THEORY Focus here is on the way organisations are structured/managed in response to challenges of the modern economy. Organisations include not just large corporations but also government departments, NGOs and smaller companies. Challenges facing organisations. There are a number of these. 1) Globalisation: advances in technology and communications make it more feasible to locate parts of organisation around the world. 2) Ethics and social responsibility: increased pressure by media, government regulators etc. to reduce pollution, improve working conditions etc. 3) Speed of responsiveness: Pace of change is fast and organisations must be able to respond appropriately. Information is now far more important as an organisation's asset. Improve technology and internet... 4) Digital Workplace: Management of organisations must be increasingly aware of the importance of technology. 5) Diversity: varied gender, age ethnicity in employees retirement age increased, women in the workforce who need maternity leave, needs to be taken into account when structuring the workforce. What is an organisation? There are several main features; * GOAL DIRECTED - goals are the things employees work towards e.g. produce a good and sell it for a profit. * SOCIAL ENTITIES * STRUCTURED AND COORDINATED - manager, deputy managers etc. hierarchy of authority. * LINKED TO EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT - need to be apparent e.g. to the environment and external events. * GROUP OF PEOPLE - most important feature, all have various relationships with each other which mean human behaviour has to be taken into account. Organisations bring together resources to produce services that individuals could not do because they couldn't achieve the same level of efficiency. Organisations are also engines for innovation which is forced, enabled and encouraged due to competition, government subsidies etc. Organisations are also important because they influence the external environment. Organisational Configuration MINTZBERG'S 5 PARTS ONE WAY OF THINKING ABOUT AN ORGANISATION 1. Technical core - academics who teach/research. 2. Technical support - advertising, new machines for tech core. 3. Admin support - cleaning, IT support, secretaries etc. 4. Top management - they decide strategy. 5. Middle management - they implement strategy on departmental level. Price/value of a financial asset = present value of all expected cash flows. Expected rate of return and risk of expected cash flow. Other investment risks include; Dimensions of Organisational Design Dimensions describe organisational traits. Structural dimensions are the key internal characteristics of an organisation. Contextual dimensions characterise an organisation as a whole and broader setting. These dimensions provide the basis for measurement and analysis of organisational characteristics. Can then understand how to design an organisation so as to achieve high performance and effectiveness. The goal of management is to adjust these dimensions so as to achieve efficiency. STRUCTURAL DIMENSIONS 1. Formalisation - how formal the decision making in the organisation is, the bigger the organisation the more formal the decision making is. 2. Specialisation - different tasks are specialised e.g. production line... 3. Hierarchy - management systems who's responsible for what etc. 

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