Principles of Management
Principles of ManagementAssignment 04
Examples of organizations following mechanistic and organic
structures:
Mechanistic structures:McDonalds:McDonalds Corporation has a
famously bureaucratic structure in which employee jobs are highly
formalized, with clear lines of communication and very specific job
descriptions. This structure is an advantage for them, because it
allows McDonalds to produce a uniform product around the world at
minimum cost. Moreover, mechanistic structures tend to be
advantageous for new ventures. New businesses often suffer from a
lack of structure, role ambiguity, and uncertainty. The presence of
a mechanistic structure has been shown to be related to firm
performance in new ventures.Government ministries:All the
government ministries follow bureaucratic structure and the top
management (which is ministers and directors) has all the power of
authority. The lower employees are given clear instructions to
perform duties.
Organic structures:
UNILEVER:Unilever has organic structure. It has a cross
functional team is a team composed of at least three members from
diverse functional entities working together towards a common goal.
This team will have members with different functional experiences
and abilities, and who will likely come from different departments
within the organization. Design of UNILEVER Cross functional teams
UNILEVER FINANCE, BUYING & MARKETING departments work together
to achieve the overall mission.
3M:An example of a company that has an organic structure is 3M.
The company is strongly committed to decentralization. At 3M, there
are close to 100 profit centers, with each division feeling like a
small company. Each division manager acts autonomously and is
accountable for his or her actions. As operations within each
division get too big and a product created by a division becomes
profitable, the operation is spun off to create a separate business
unit. This is done to protect the agility of the company and the
small-company atmosphere.
