GSM Lecture 7

Management > Global Strategic Management > Organising

Organising

People organise to achieve certain objectives; they choose what to do to get something done. It has been referred to as "the arrangement of all elements of an organisation to achieve its strategic objectives" (Naylor, 2004)

The fact that a firm is also known as an "organisation" points to its main function: to co-ordinate elements to achieve one or more goals.

There are four key variables that characterise the way elements are organised, or structured:

1. Hierarchy - how people are ordered within an organisation in terms of position, delegations and types of authority
2. Specialisation - employees professionally trained to focused on a limited number of activities. The objective of this is efficiency.
3. Centralisation and decentralisation - of decisions
4. Co-ordination - the unification of activities, from individual level to system level

The degree of the variables influences how elements are organised, affecting the structure of the organisation.

Determinants of structure

Key attributes of corporate structure

Types of international structure

International structures - detail

Global structures - detail

Matrix structure

Matrix structure - detail

Extra information