To better understand the importance of organization structure in your life, do the following assignment. Select one of the following situations to organize: output goes to clients, a group that must be nurtured. The complexities of the environment and the technology determine the complexity of the organization.
• A copy and print shop
• A travel agency
• A sports rental (such as Jet Skis or snowmobiles) in a resort area
• A bakery
Background
Organization is a way of gaining some power against an unreliable environment. The environment provides the organization with inputs, which include raw materials, human resources, and financial resources. There is a service or product to produce that involves technology. The Planning Your Organization
1. Write down the mission or purpose of the organization in a few sentences.
2. What are the specific tasks to be completed to accomplish the mission?
3. Based on the specifics in question 2, develop an organization chart. Each position in the chart will perform a specific task or is responsible for a certain outcome.
4. You are into your third year of operation, and your business has been very successful. You want to add a second location a few miles away. What issues will you face running the business at two locations? Draw an organization chart that includes the two business locations.
5. Five more years go by and the business has grown to five locations in two cities. How do you keep in touch with it all? What issues of control and coordination have arisen? Draw an up-to-date organization chart and explain your rationale for it.
6. Twenty years later you have seventy-five business locations in five states. What are the issues and problems that have to be dealt with through organizational structure? Draw an organization chart for this organization, indicating such factors as who is responsible for customer satisfaction, how you will know if customer needs are met, and how information will flow within the organization.
*Adapted by Dorothy Marcic from "Organizing," in Donald D. White and H. William Vroman, Action in Organizations, 2nd ed. (Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1982), 154, and Cheryl Harvey and Kim Morouney, "Organization Structure and Design: The Club Ed Exercise," Journal of Management Education (June 1985), 425-429.