Designing Effective Organizations

Designing Effective Organizations  

What determines the success of one organization and the failure of another? This question has served as the root of theory and debate among experts and is still explored today. To understand the design of effective organizations, there are some important theories that may help improve the quality of organization structure and promote effective performance. One concept that may assist involves the four generic organizational effectiveness criteria, which includes major components of effectiveness that apply equally to various organization sizes and types.

The four generics of effectiveness include goal accomplishment, or achievements in comparison to outlined objectives; resource acquisition, involving having necessary materials or resources; internal process which involves cohesive, fluid information transfer; and strategic constituencies satisfaction, or the satisfaction of key interested parties (Kinicki, and Kreitner, 2009). To determine effectiveness achievements managers may utilize the four criteria in combination using guidelines approaches such as goal accomplishment approach, relating to goal clarity and measurability; resource acquisition approach, most valuable when inputs have traceable effect on results; internal process approach, appropriate when performance is strongly influenced by specific process; and the strategic constituencies approach, applicable when powerful stakeholders can benefit or harm the organization significantly. Another concept of design effectiveness is the contingency approach to organization design, relating to the situational concerns and an organizations ability to be flexible per scenario. In essence, this approach involves creating an effective organization-environment fit to respond to specific situational demands.

The two next concepts of design effectiveness we should discuss include mechanistic organizations and organic organizations. These organization types were...