Session-28

 Session-28

Dec 31, 2021 

We studied the concept of departmentalisation. The owner can not look after the working of all the departments and hence he delegates authority to top-level management of various departments. This facilitates coordination and smooth functioning inside the organisation. Then we saw various ways in which departmentalisation can be done. These are:-

• Functional Departmentalisation- Activities can be grouped according to function to pursue economies of scale by placing employees with shared skills and knowledge together. In contrast, it faces a lack of communication across various functionally differentiated departments.
• Geographical Departmentalisation- Grouping activities on the basis of territory. They help in serving the unique geographic markets. However, they face the limitation of duplication of activities across various departments. eg-Indian Railways
• Product Division- Activities are grouped according to particular products and services. Thus placing all activities related to the product or the service under one manager. This type of departmentalisation also aces duplication of efforts which leads to wastage of resources..eg- In Intel, Paul Otellini divided the company according to 4 different products.
• Process Departmentalisation- Facilitates efficient flow of work activities. Specialization is required in manufacturing sectors and hence departmentalisation is done on the base of processes required in the production of the product. However, only certain types of organisations can be suited to use this.
• Customer Departmentalisation-Jobs may be grouped according to the type of customer served by the organization. It helps in solving customer problems and fulfilling customer needs across a department; for a particular set of customers, in an efficient way.

To overcome the problem of duplication of activities there is something called a matrix organisation in which some functions are grouped together and some functions are performed according to product departmentalisation. eg- Dell. Dell started with the desktop then introduced the laptop and then servers. The marketing department made strategies to sell all 3 products. But when they entered into the market of large servers, the existing marketing department didn't have the required knowledge to sell those and hence the marketing and sales department were separated.

Then we discussed reporting relationships. In order to establish clear reporting relationships, all flow of information in the organisation must follow the principles of Unity of Command and Scalar Chain.

Furthermore, we talked about the span of management which means the number of people that can be effectively managed by a single manager. 

There can be 2 types-

1. Tall organisations are easier to handle, facilitate better communication however expensive to manage and slower decision making. The span of control is also narrow.
2. Flat organisations are difficult to handle, however, there are less expensive and facilitate faster decision making.The span of control is wide.

We further saw the basis on which it can be decided whether an organization is tall or flat.

Session-27

 Session-27

30 Dec 2021

In continuance to the concept of Job Specialisation, we saw that there are certain demerits of Job Specialisation like boredom. To overcome this problem there are various alternatives

• Job Rotation-It is a technique in which there is a systematic movement of employees from one job to another within the organization.
• Job Enlargement-It means increasing the scope of a job by extending the range of its job duties and responsibilities usually on the same level.
• Jon Enrichment-Job enrichment is a method of motivating employees where a job is designed to have interesting and challenging tasks which can require more skill and can increase pay.
• Work Teams-Work teams are groups of employees that work together on a task. 
• Job Characteristics Approach- It represents how particular job characteristics affect job outcomes, including job satisfaction. It includes improvement in the 5 core dimensions.

Afterwards, we discussed a small case that gave insights relating to the problems that arise while merging 2 companies. These may be duplication of activities, the difference in the level of technology, cultural differences, the difference in salaries and change in positions of the employees, decision making would also be hampered. This revealed the importance of organising in this case and how the same can be used to overcome the above-mentioned problems.

Session-26

 Session-26

28 Dec,2021

The session started with the basic meaning of organizing and students gave their views on why organizing is a vital function for every manager. Organizing basically implies a process that coordinates human efforts with resources and transforms them into a unified whole in order to achieve specific goals. It also implies deciding how to best group organizational activities and resources. Moving forward we discussed the formal and informal organization and the need for both of these in an organization. Informal organisation arises because of the social need of employees to communicate with others and formal organisation is deliberately designed by top management to facilitate the smooth functioning of the organisation. After this, we saw a series of pictures of various chefs, who may specialise in particular areas. In a similar manner employees in an organization have specialised skills and they are assigned the tasks based on those skills. We also discussed the various limitations and benefits of job specialisation. We saw how specialisation increases productivity through Adam Smith's example of job specialisation where making a pin requires 18 tasks and if a worker performs all 18 tasks by himself the number of pins produced is less. However, if each worker performs a specialised set of tasks the productivity is increased as is evident from the increased production of pins.

INFORMAL ORGANIZATION

 

FORMAL ORGANIZATION

Planning

 Session-19-22,25

The aim of these sessions was to understand what is managerial planning, its importance and levels as well as the objectives of planning. Planning involves setting objectives and developing appropriate courses of action to achieve these objectives. We discussed the case of Paul Otellini, CEO (past) of Intel; who transformed the operations and minimised the cost for long term growth. He reorganised Intel into 4 divisions and allocated specific roles and responsibilities to each. This helped him to compare performance across various divisions and improve the same. Comparing the results also provided them with a future course of action to overcome the discrepancies. This brings out the essence of planning, how it can lead to the success or failure of an organization. Then we moved on to the importance of planning. Planning is essential as it provides direction to human efforts so the organization can achieve their specific set of goals. It also helps in reducing overlapping and wasteful activities which ensure optimum utilisation of resources. It is due to these reasons planning function is indispensable. Talking about the levels of planning, there is 3 levels - corporate/strategic, business/functional and operational level. Details about the 3 are given in the following chart.

We understood these 3 strategies by taking the example of 3M which is a huge company, producing around 5000 different consumer products. We saw how all the strategies will be planned at different levels and what aspects they will include.