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Organic Organizational Coordination |
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Mintzberg has identified a continuum of coordinating mechanisms that organizations seem to progress through, as the work they do becomes more and more complicated. To understand this continuum, imagine an organization during its early days. Its size is small, its product mix is limited, and its target market is well defined. Here, coordination is achieved through mutual adjustment, largely as a matter of informal, face-to-face communication. As the organization grows, or diversifies its production mix, or enters new markets, it increasingly relies on direct supervision to coordinate.
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Inevitably though, direct supervision becomes too cumbersome, and actually begins contributing to complexity. This is the point on the continuum where organizations begin to rely on standardization to achieve coordination - standardization of work, then standardization of outputs, and ultimately standardization of skills. This is the highest aspiration of the "machine bureaucracy". But Mintzberg's continuum does not end there. Organizations which must tackle extremely complex endeavours, or manage hostile or volatile environments, out of necessity revert back to the simplest, least regulated coordinating mechanism - mutual adjustment - that is, face-to-face communication.
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To the extent that traceability of decision making and results tracking is required, people working in complex endeavours can document their work on a local level, without going elsewhere for signatures or clearance. This formalizes coordination and enables rapid, face-to-face interaction, while controlling decisions informally, and implementing accountability right down to the "front line". This would represent the standardization of professionalism.
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Mintzberg, Henry. The Structuring of Organizations. Prentice-Hall Inc. Englewood Cliffs, NJ.1979.
This is the classic text on organizational behaviour and design, and it provides us with a very handy introduction to organizational development. Written by Canada's foremost management thinker -- Henry Mintzberg -- The Structuring of Organizations gives readers a framework and a vocabulary for understanding and describing the many systemic sociological and psychological phenomena which occur in organizations. As such, it empowers readers with a means to redesign their organizations with informed choice.
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