Organization structure is concerned with how to divide the overall work into sub

Question

Organization structure is concerned with how to divide the overall work into subunits and how to coordinate these subunits for task completion. The basic structure is shown in Figure 12.1. Organization structures should be designed to fit with at least four factors: (1) the environment, (2) organization size, (3) technology, and (4) organization strategy. Organizations traditional structure themselves into one of three forms: (1) functional, task-specialized departments, (2) self-contained divisional units, or (3) matrix structures which combine both functional specialization and self-containment. Accelerating environmental changes have encouraged some organizations to utilize more flexible forms including process structures, customer-centric structures, or network-based structures.

Work design means creating jobs and work groups that generate high levels of employee fulfillment and productivity. The engineering approach focuses on efficiency and simplification, and results in traditional job and work-group designs. Traditional jobs involve relatively routine and repetitive forms of work. Job enrichment involves designing jobs with high levels of meaning, discretion, and knowledge of results. Self-managed teams rely on social and technical aspects of work systems.

Research and discuss an organization of your choice and identify the structure and work design. Identify both pros and cons to their type of structure.

Explanation / Answer

Organisation: Bechtel

Bechtel is an Engineering, Procurement and Construction Management organisation that builds and delivers power plant, mining and metals, infrastructure, oil and gas projects across globe.

Structure and work design of Bechtel: Bechtel has functional and task specialized department structure and has different departments within Engineering such as Mechanical, Electrical, Plant Design, Control Systems etc who work in their specialized fields and provide engineering design solutions.

Also Bechtel has a traditional job and work design group since most of the job is repetitive and standard work structures and processes are documented and team has to follow those work processes and specifications.

Advantages of this structure:

In order to provide best designs and deliver the project efficiently, such kind of task specialized department structure is required so that the design is looked from all the different perspectives and engineers across various streams come together to provide the best design. This kind of structure creates zero rework and results in huge saving in cost and delivery of project on time.

Disadvantages of such structure:

Inter department coordination is limited in this kind of structure which creates a barrier for employees across teams to interact with each other and get to know other department's best practices and learnings. Also knowledge sharing across teams gets limited with this structure.

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