A Quick Review of Organizational Structure Managment By Tina S Smith

An organization is composed of people, resources other than people, and commitments that are acquired and arranged to achieve organizational strategies and goals. The organization evolves from its mission, strategies, goals, and managerial personalities. Organizational structure reflects the way in which authority and responsibility for making decisions are distributed in an organization. Authority refers to the right executive to use resources to accomplish a task or achieve an objective. Responsibility is the obligation to accomplish a task or achieve an objective.

Every organization contains line and staff personnel, some of whom are in management. Line personnel work directly toward attaining organizational goals. Persons having those responsibilities will be held responsible for achieving targeted goals for balance-sheets or operating income for their divisions or geographic regions. Staff personnel give assistance and advice to line personnel. Relative to top accounting jobs, the treasurer and controller are staff positions. Fund controllers are generally responsible for achieving short- and long-term financing, investing, and cash management goals, while senior accountants are responsible for delivering financial reports in conformity with G.A.A.P to management.

Sometimes, given the need for global personnel access, the distinction between line and staff positions becomes blurred. For example, a company launches a worldwide "innovation portal" in which any employee of the same company can post a business idea, can organize a logical team for some projects, obtain resources, can gain access to market research, and collaborate on prototypes and testing. A global team can be formed in a few moments and the time to start a business can be cut from at least 6 months to around 30 days. Many companies has garnered a huge success by implementing this idea. A variety of organizational constraints may affect a firm's strategy options. Most constraints exist only in the short term because they can be overcome by existing business opportunities.

Three common organizational constraints involve monetary capital, intellectual capital, and technology. Although extra monetary capital may be gained through loans or equity sales, management should decide whether

• the capital can be obtained at a reasonable cost and/or
• whether a reallocation of current capital would be more effective and efficient.

Intellectual capital encompasses all of an organization's intangible assets: knowledge, skills, and information. Many companies depend on their intellectual capital to generate ideas for products or services, to train and develop their executives, and to attract and retain customers. As for technology, companies must adopt emerging technologies to stay at the top of their industry and achieve a competitive advantage over competitors.

Going global, expanding core business concepts, and investing in new technology require drastic organizational change, and an organization's ability to change depends heavily on its management style and organizational culture. Different managers exhibit different preferences for interacting with the entity's stakeholders, especially employees. Management style is well exposed in decision making processes, risk taking, willingness to encourage change, and employee development, among other issues.

Typically, management style is reflected also in an organization's culture: the basic manner in which the organization interacts with its business environment, the manner in which employees interact with each other and with management, and the underlying beliefs and attitudes held by employees about the organization. Culture has an important role in assessing whether the communication system tends to be formal or informal, whether authority is going to concentrate in management or distributed throughout the organization, and whether there are feelings of well-being or stress in organizational members.

Author: Tina Smith
Tina Smith is an accountant with SageNext Infotech. She is having expertise in project management, accounting operations. With SageNext, she consults the client accountants about the benefit of QuickBooks Hosting. SageNext is a leading QuickBooks Hosting provider, dealing in all kinds of tax and accounting application hosting.


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