You have started up a small durable medical equipment company. Fortunately, it is doing well and growing. At what point do you need to consider putting in a formal organizational structure? What would be your initial start up design for an organizational structure? Explain your response.
When starting a business venture it is essential to think over major details. It goes without saying that organizational structure should be worked beforehand. However, when starting a small company it is possible to work out the structure when some definite results will be available. Thus, when my new-started company is stable, I will think of development and implementing formal organizational structure. By stable company I mean that the profits of my firm enable to expand the staff and develop business. According to Senior and Swailes (2010) any changes in organizational structure can impede the process of development (117).
So, the changes in organization structure should be thoughtful and rapid. McLaughlin and Kaluzny (2006) suggest that the changes in the organizational structure should enable employees to “take responsibility for change and continuous improvement” (489). Thus, to my mind, there is no need to expand the staff too much; every employee should feel responsible for the improvements in the company. In fact, it can be beneficial to hire minimum employees so that everyone could know distinctly what his/her responsibility is and what he/she can do for company development. At this point it is possible to exploit the vertical communication pattern with some features of transactional pattern.
Thus, the company will have quite strong hierarchy and communication will be implemented vertically. However, it is important to give the opportunity to make suggestions or criticize some decisions (of course, reasonable criticism will be taken into account). Thus, strict hierarchy will ensure order and transparency. Moreover, such hierarchy will become one more motivation factor since employees will explicitly see the opportunities for their promotion and rewarding. On the other hand, transactional organizational pattern will encourage employees to take the responsibility and be active.
Reference List
McLaughlin, C.P., Kaluzny, A.D. (2006). Continuous Quality Improvement in Health Care. Sudbury, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Senior, B., Swailes, S. (2010). Organizational Change. Essex, UK: Pearson Education.