Organizational Design

Course details

One of the most basic building blocks of organizational success is appropriate organizational design. What do we mean by that? It is the design of authority and responsibility. One should always know who is his/her manager and who are the subordinates. But is it that easy?

In the first part of the course, we will talk about basic challenges in organizational design, which are mostly about finding the right balance. Hence, we will try to belance centralization vs decentralization, mechanistic vs organic structure, and standardization vs mutual adjustment. This approach states that all of the previously mentioned balance choices should be tailored to the sources of uncertainty that our organization is facing.

In the second part of the course we will lay focus on the design of authority in organizations. We will talk especially about tall hierarchies - which are the ones with many organizational levels. These can have serious problems as will be displayed in Parkinson´s Law Problem.

Finally, we will get to concrete organizational structures that our organization can understake. We will begin with the most basic functional structure which later on evolves to one of divisional structures. We will cover the main ones here as each posseses specific characteristics. After all, we will bring some interesting ones such as network, hybrid or network structure. Looking forward to see you inside!