Organisations and Behaviour Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words - 2

Organisations and Behaviour - Essay Example In an organization where such culture exists emphasis is given on trust rather than orders (Grint 2005). This type of organizational culture has the following advantage: it can help to keep communication and cooperation with organization at high levels. Still, there is always the chance that certain employees take advantage of this culture for ignoring their obligations, according to their position; b) Role: the specific type of culture is based on bureaucracy; emphasis is given on rules and orders of superiors while hierarchy is highly respected. In organizations with such type of culture it is quite difficult for severe failures to exist at the level that employees’ activities are fully aligned with the rules set by the top management team (Grint 2005). On the other hand, this type of culture can harm team-work and communication within the organization at the level that employees would not feel as members of a team but as followers who have not the right to state their view in daily business operations; they have just the obligation to follow the orders given to them. In such environment employee performance cannot be easily kept at high levels; c) Task; it is the organizational culture that promotes the use of project-type tasks within each organization (Grint 2005); this type of culture promotes decentralization, leaving room for employee initiatives, a practice that can significantly enhance employee performance; however, this type of culture can set the integration of a business in risk if roles are highly decentralized; and d) Person: it is an organizational culture that highlights the value of person, as member of an organization (Grint 2005); such culture is applicable in family-owned firms or small firms but it cannot be used in large businesses (Grint 2005). 1.2 In the context of a business, the term structure is used in order to show ‘the form of an organization meaning especially the hierarchy of positions and relationships’ (Kn ights and Willmott 2007, p.197). Organizational structure, as described above, can be divided into three categories: a) Tall structure; it is met in organizations where the levels of hierarchy are many (Christensen et al. 2007); such structure can be useful for ensuring the control by the top management team of all business activities but it can threaten trust and communication; b) Flat structure; it refers to organizations with just one or two levels of hierarchy (Christensen et al. 2007); such structure enhances communication and team-work but it is difficult to be applied in large organizations; c) Matrix; the term denotes the dependency of each employee by many superiors, simultaneously; such structure is more appropriate for organizations in the public sector while in the private sector it could not be applied at the level that in the private sector independent departments usually exist for covering business needs (Christensen et al. 2007). On the other hand, in small businesse s such structure could be possibly applied. 1.3 The ‘chain of command’ principle is based on the idea that within organizations the full independency of individuals is not acceptable, meaning that ‘each employee should necessary have a superior to whom he had to report’ (O’Fallon and Rutherford 2010, p.76). This principle is applicable in organizations since it does not set as a prerequisite the excessive power of the superior over the employee but just the like the dependency of the employee