1. The organizational structure of Abraham’s store was a functional organizational structure. Management decisions are distributed among the functional superiors who are responsible for decision-making in an area that belongs to their competence (Carpenter, 2012). The structure aims to perform repetitive routine tasks which do not require rapid decision-making.
2.
The line and staff organizational structure provides such a division of labor, in which the linear managers are intended to command and functional - to advise, assist in the development of specific issues and preparing appropriate decisions, programs and plans.
3. The advantages of the functional organizational structure include the following:
- It stimulates business and professional specialization;
- Reduces the duplication of effort and the consumption of material resources in the functional areas;
- Improves coordination of activities.
-It is very difficult to harmonize the decisions taken by the functional units. There may be a situation where the decisions taken by the various functional services will contradict each other;
- A significant complication of the relations within the enterprise;
- The emergence of a large number of new information channels;
- The appearance of the possibility of transfer the responsibility for the failure of the staff of other departments;
- Difficulties in coordinating the activities of the organization;
- Decision procedure is longer, including due to the need to coordinate with other functional services.
Advantages of line and staff organizational structure include the following:
Linear director has the role of coordinator, eliminating the contradictions;
Line leader is the only leader for each of the workers. As a result - a strong motivation and a lack of opportunity to avoid responsibilities.
Disadvantages of the line and staff organizational structure:
Cross-functional coordination problems;
The reluctance of leaders to take responsibility for their decisions. Reason for this is lack of delineation of authority and responsibility between line and functional managers;
The increase decision time because of necessity of coordination;
The response to changes in the market is still slow.
I think that the line and staff organizational structure will work better for Abraham’s. The line and staff organizational structure is currently the main base type of structures. It provides maximum stability of the organization, creates the most favorable basis for the formal regulation of authority and responsibility. However, it does not always have the necessary flexibility and adaptability when facing new tasks, does not provide the coordination for the implementation of new programs. The need for coordination of actions of various functional services sharply increases the workload of the top managers.
I would recommend them to consider the divisional organizational structure. Divisional structure emerged as a reaction to the disadvantages of the line and functional organizational structure. The necessity of the reorganization was caused by a sharp increase in company size, complexity of processes, diversification and internalization of activities. Divisional approach provides a stronger connection of the production with consumers, significantly speeding its reaction to changes in the external environment. Divisional structures are characterized by the full responsibility of branch managers for performance of headed units.
Unconditional advantages of divisional structure are: empowerment of divisions that increases the speed of response to changing conditions of the environment, and as the result the flexibility and adaptability of the organization as a whole; the allocation of units as "profit centers", which allows not only to determine the responsibility of line managers for revenue generation, but also pay more attention to individual markets, products or customers; wide decentralization and delegation of authority allow top management to focus on strategic tasks.
References
Carpenter, M. (2012). Organizational Structure and Change. 2012books.lardbucket.org. Retrieved 9 March 2016, from http://2012books.lardbucket.org/books/management-principles-v1.0/s11-organizational
