Organizing Function Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Organizing Function - Essay Example In this the firm has to handle five areas namely, division of labour, departmentalization, establishing span of control and delegation, (Boone 2005). Within division of labour else called work specialization, the manager tries to match the work demands with the skills, knowledge and experience of the employee. Division of labour is more effective when the most qualified employer by means of skill level and experience is assigned a given task. The more compatible a worker is to the work process requirements, the greater the extent of possible specialization. In departmentalization, the manager seeks to group employees or jobs into manageable entities. This can be done in five ways, (Plunkett et al (2005). Functional departmentalization is done according to the nature of activities in the department. Product departmentalization brings together all the functions necessary for successful production and distribution of a particular product. Process departmentalization is based on the cycles that a product goes through. The cycles determine the department. Geographical departmentalization uses zones to create a department e.g. ... Customer departmentalization is defined by possession of a shared set of characteristics like the mental hospitals as a source of clients for an establishment working with mentally retarded persons. Span or control means the manager defines the extent to which the chains of command run and the limit in number of employees within one line of production or level of command. One employee ought to be accountable to only one supervisor, in what is called the unity of command. In the scalar principle, the line of authority should be clearly outlined for each worker. The manager is also concerned about delegation, which is the transferring of tasks and responsibilities and the issuing of authority commensurate to the tasks assigned to subordinates. This improves the flexibility of operations meaning the organization is better able to address the needs of its clients, (Boone 2005) In organizing, the manager is also concerned with knowledge management, which is the ability to organize and control gathered information within an organization. A manager gathers information from various sources. He empowers his team to be able to use the available information to better the organization that way the team can be said to have for knowledge (the capacity of people or groups or organizations to act on information). Opportunities, threats strengths and weaknesses of an organization can best be addressed only in the event that the organization is able to use information available. The process involves a conscious effort to use the information. For the information to be useful to the organization however, it has to be accurate, reliable and up to date. This can be said to an organization's intellectual