What are the various steps involved in organizing function?

 Steps/PROCESS/ELEMENTS OF ORGANIZING

Organizing is the process of deciding how best group the organizational elements i.e. functions, responsibilities and authorities. Organization structure gives the framework for creating specific pattern of job relationship in the organization. It consists of activities in which organizational works are divided, organized and coordinated. Organizing is a continuous process involving series of activities as basic elements. Generally, there are following six fundamental steps, as described below, in designing organizational structure:

1. Designing jobs: Job design is the process of dividing complex job into simple task or activities and grouping similar task into a job package. It is a process of defining individual's work-related responsibilities. For it, first of all, objectives of organization must be identified and clearly defined; and activities required to accomplish the objectives should be clearly identified.

Job design is the act of creating desired level of job specialization. Job specialization is defined as the degree to which overall work of the organization is broken down and divided into smaller parts i.e. tasks and related tasks are grouped to make a job which can be accomplished with specific skills and knowledge. Job specialization provides four specific benefits to the organizations as i) simple jobs will be more proficient ii) transfer time between tasks decreases iii) developing specialized equipment to assist with the specialized job becomes easier iv) relatively low cost of training to the new employees. Specialization has one of the strong negative consequences as the workers who perform highly specialized work may become bored and dissatisfied. Jobs can be redesigned by one or more methods among job rotation, job enlargement, job enrichment, job empowerment, making semi-autonomous groups and providing alternative work arrangements. Main point to be considered is that work activities must be made simpler so that jobs can be accomplished more effectively and efficiently.

2. Grouping jobs: This is the second building block of organization structure. In this step, similar job activities are grouped into units or departments with some logical arrangement. This step is also known as departmentalization. It the organizations are small, the owners manage everything in the organization. Owner oversees everyone who works there in the organization. But it is almost impossible to manage everything if the organization grows up. In such situation, different managerial jobs need to be created and managers need to be hired. Departmentation can be done on the basis of function, on the basis of product, on the basis of customers, on the basis of location, on the basis of time to serve, etc. From departmentalization, different positions are created.

3. Establishing reporting relations: After creating required number of departments for functional specialization, relationship among the positions need to be created. It is essential to clarify who need to report to whom. Normally, lower positions are required to report to subsequently higher position (immediate superior). For example, assistant marketing managers require reporting to marketing manager rather than to assistant production managers or to production manager. At the same time, marketing manager needs to cooperate and coordinate with production manager but should report to general manager. Such relationships are established in vertically linear form. This is called the chain of command. Thus, chain of command is a clear and distinct line of authority among the positions in an organization. In chain of command, there are mainly two components as unity of command and scalar principle. Unity of command suggests that each person within an organization must have a clear reporting relationship to one and only one boss. Scalar principle suggests that there must be a clear and unbroken line of authority that extends from the lowest to the highest position in the organization. The top level manager (probably the only one leader) must be ultimate responsible for every decision.

4. Distributing authority: Authority is the decision making power. Each job position should have certain degree of authority which allows employee to make self decision during the job done. This is source of inspiration to the employees. There must be balance between responsibility and authority to maintain good coordination, prompt decision, and discipline in the organization. Thus, in organizing process, authority should be properly distributed among the job positions. Only required and sufficient authority should be fixed with responsibility.

There must be appropriate provision of delegation of authority in organizing system. Delegation of authority is the process by which managers assign a portion of their authority to subordinates. This enables subordinates for quick decision at work so that more work can be done. This helps reduce the workload of managers and also provides opportunity of personal growth of employees. Delegation process involves in three steps. First, manager first assigns responsibility to the employee. Second, manager provides certain level of authority to make decision to accomplish the responsibility. Manger provides confidential information, files and certain level of decision making power. Finally, the manager establishes the subordinate's accountability i.e. the obligation to carry out the task assigned and report to manager. Managers should also properly balance centralization and decentralization of authority.

5. Coordinating activities: Coordination is the process of linking activities of various departments of the organization. As you know, departments are designed to create specialization at the job. Efforts and output of each department should be integrated through coordination in order to increase the organizational efficiency to ensure the attainment of organizational goal. Limited resources can be best used to reduce the interdependency of departments. Greater the interdependency, more coordination is required in the organization. For effective coordination, effective communication channels must be established.

6. Differentiating between positions: Finally, as the last building block of organizational structure, line position and staff position need to be differentiated. A line position is a position in the direct chain of command while staff position is a position created for providing expertise suggestions, advice and support to line position. Staff positions are temporary in nature and hold very little authority. But, there can be contradiction between staff position and line position. Thus, line and staff position should be differentiated clearly.