Introduction
Critical organizational evaluation is paramount. Focus is on development, reviews and personnel performance. Notably, the organizational analysis includes examining the organization environment both external and internal environment. The external environment refers to the forces that are without the organization. Often they affect the organizational performance. On the other hand, internal environment concerns the forces within the organization, for example, the strengths and the weakness of the organization. This paper will focus on analyzing higher learning institution elements. Namely, organizational structure, organizational environment, culture, size, structure and management styles
Organizational Structure
The organizational structure of an institution has a significant impact on the overall success of an organization and affects the leadership effectiveness. Organizational structure is also essential in determining the mode of communication and flow of authority in an institution. The decision-making process in an organization is wholly dependent on the type of the organizational structure present in the institution. The University exercises the vertical organizational structure. Power flows from top to bottom in a vertically structured organization (Duyer & Normore, 2012). Ideally, the authority in this institution flows from the university council to the bottom level management. The senior executive and the vice-chancellor are responsible for administrative and academic management of the university. They report to the university council that is responsible for assisting the University in achieving its goals, vision, and mission. The university vice-chancellor has five executive members who assist them. One of the executive members is the deputy vice-chancellor who heads different areas namely academic, administration, finance, human resource, research, and development. Under academic management, there are four faculties headed by various executive deans. The faculties are faculty of arts; the college of business; the department of education and faculty of science. The faculties have different departmental heads that are responsible for running the operations of the particular department.
Organizational Size
The University is a large institution with six campuses located in different locations. The schools management is shared among the administrative and academic units of the university to ensure uniformity in the university. Large organizations have an ability to serve a large market including the global market. They also have the capacity to stabilize the market and capacity to resist the environmental challenges. Moreover, they are capable of absorbing other small organization. They are also able to produce quality and complex products and services because they have the resources. The level of technology absorption is also a determinant in determining the size of the organization (Knights and Willmott, 2007). The university has been able to go global and has students all over the world through the provision of online degrees by the use of the powerful technology available. However, the online learning is a new strategy the education institution has adopted to curb the increased competition. The university has a capacity of more than 25,000 students and more than 2000 employees.
Organizational Functions
Apart from education services, the university offers a variety of services to the community. The University provides clinical services to the surrounding community that is of quality and affordable. Commercial laundry is also a service offered by the university to the community. The university has a farm that they train the agriculture students in and the surplus harvest are used to for used consumption, and the rest is sold to the community members. Another service offered by the organization is the event planning services. These services are provided at a flexible and affordable price.
Similarly, the presence of different services at the institution helps the organization open up new avenues for revenue generation and not wholly depend on the primary service. However, it is important to ensure the extra services offered by the organization add value or market the primary organization functional service (Knights & Willmott, 2007). When one looks at the services offered by this University, it is easy to point out the services are aimed at enhancing the educational quality in the University. The nursing students take their practical classes in the school clinic that offers clinical services to the community.
Organizational Culture
Organizational culture is a significant component of efficient management in institutions of higher learning. In the last two decades, pressure for universities worldwide to embrace the vast changing technological, social, political and economic forces stemming from the internal environment and the external environment have been present. The University culture mainly emanates from three sources namely values, assumptions and beliefs of the founders of the institutions and the learning experience the university as learned it evolves (Bush, 2007). The university buildings are historical and have been furnished to meet the modern looks, but they remain as a remembrance of the university culture. Conversely, the university embraces diversity since it has students from different countries. Further, the university offers foreign languages courses to its students and the overseas students. The university has a culture of celebrating graduation ceremonies every year. In each year, they have a successful alumnus as the guest of the honor at the ceremony. Every year, the university holds a cultural week where people from different cultural backgrounds are invited to participate in showing casing their culture. It promotes cultural diversity in the University.
Organizational Environment
Understanding an organizational environment is essential to enhance its efficiency in service delivery. The environmental factors may be either internal or external. The external affecting the university include the government policies on the student admission. The government wants the university to increase the number of students they admit. However, the economy of the state is not doing well and hence the funding for higher education institutions is reduced. The students cannot enroll in university because they are not able to afford the school fees. It makes it hard for the university management to adhere to the policies of increasing student admissions and at the same time provide quality education. The other external factor affecting the university is competition. There is a rise in the number of growing colleges that offer affordable short courses. Students are considering these short courses over the degrees provided in the universities. Other universities are well advanced with the online courses and, therefore, this has been a major competition area for the university. The rapidly growing technology has affected the education quality offered in the university. With the increased access to the internet, students are using the platform to help them do all their assignments. The students put on little or no effort. Arguably, due to the overemphasis on the use of the internet, creativity have been low due to overdependence on the internet.
Notably, internal environment factors are the forces that are within the organization, and the organization has the control. The University exercises a communication approach that is not very efficient in ensuring improved quality service delivery. It practices a top-down communication method where the information flows from the executive management way through to the customers in this case students. The channels put forth to ensure the students air their complaints and concern on the service delivery are not effective. This way the university is not able to offer services that are tailored to the needs of the consumers (Tasić, 2011). The university does not take the responsibility to train and develop its employee. The lecturers of the university further their studies on their own without support from the university. It has made their work hard because of the emerging issues in education that need training, especially with the improved technology. It has been among the reasons for adoption of technology in the organization has been slow. The university is facing problems of limited resources such as lecture halls and science laboratories. It has been due to the decreased funding from the government hence the money the university receives is not able to raise new infrastructures.
Reflection on Organizational Theories and Management Styles
The management style an organization employs assist in the decision-making processes and the way activities are carried out in an organization. The commonly used management style in the university is bureaucratic style. This style relies on well-laid rules and policies where subordinates are supposed to follow to the letter. Hierarchy and flow of authority are well observed in this type of management and the employees only do what they are authorized. It ensures an unobstructed flow of authority and reduced conflict in the organization because everyone is aware of their responsibility and the person they report to (Tasic et al., 2011).
Organizational theories are important in understanding how institutions resolve their problems to improve their productivity and efficiency. When analyzing the university management, two organizational theories were evident. The theories were Max Weber bureaucratic theory and administrative theory by Fayol. The bureaucratic theory ensures an organization has a well-formulated structure; there is stability, rationality, and specialization (Bush, 2015). The university has a clear laid organizational structure that clearly shows how power and authority flow from the university council to the bottom level workers. There is also clear specialization especially with the way the management of the university is divided into four faculties. It leads to clear responsibility and confusion is avoided at work (Robbins et al., 2013). The administrative theory by Fayol has fourteen principles that enhance teamwork and administrative management. Similar to bureaucratic approach, administrative theory ensures a clear division of labor and control in the organization is efficient.
The university has a vision, mission statement, strategic planning document that contain the goals. The university council is responsible for ensuring the above are achieved in the course of running the organization. The University has a two-year strategic plan which some of its objectives is to ensure that there is clear leadership that will enable the employees to adapt effectively to the compound changes. The university also aims at developing an organizational culture that can cope and get a competitive edge because competition has increased in the higher learning industry (Duyer & Normore, 2012, p. 23). One of the university values is to be the agent of change, and this has influenced their practices. As one of the reasons, the university is involved in offering other essential services to the community such as health care services. The university also values inclusiveness of different people both students and workers and therefore this is one of the reasons it has engaged in online learning to reach a wider number of students from different backgrounds and culture.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the University is a learning organization according to the organizational analysis conducted. A learning organization is an institution that can change the way activities are carried out basing on their encounters. Learning organization promotes self-organization. It means that different individuals can team up to develop ideas on their own. The University has developed this through the faculty of research and development, which has ensured creativity and innovativeness of both the students and the workers, are nurtured. A learning organization ensures information is efficiently shared and is easily accessible. The top management does not withhold the information but instead shares it with the managers who pass it over to the employees and hence is readily accessible. This kind of communication and information sharing are present in the university and hence we can term the institution as a learning organization. Extensively, the primary service offered by the organization is education. The organization values quality education and ensure their students can attain the best education. Due to this, the institution has embraced technology to enhance the service delivery and in the teaching of the students. In other words, one can say the institution is a learning organization that is beneficial to both the students and the surrounding community.
Bibliography
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Robbins, S., Judge, T.A., Millett, B. & Boyle, M., 2013. Organisational behaviour. Pearson Higher Education AU.
Tasić, I., Tubić, D., Tasić, J. & Mitic, T., 2011. Management Theories In Education. Paper in International Symposium Engineering Management and Competitiveness.
