DEVELOPING ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE
After reading this chapter, you should be able to: * Define organizational structure and relate how organizational structures develop. * Describe how specialization and departmentalization help an organization achieve its goals. * Distinguish between groups and teams and identify the types of groups that exist in organizations. * Determine how organizations assign responsibility for tasks and delegate authority. * Compare and contrast some common forms of organizational structure. * Describe how communication occurs in organizations. * Analyze a business's use of teams.

Rarely is an organization, or any group of individuals working together, able to achieve common objectives without some form of structure, whether that structure is explicitly defined or only implied. Structure is the arrangement or relationship of positions within an organization. An organization's structure develops when managers assign work tasks and activities to specific individuals and work groups and coordinate the diverse activities required to reach the firm's objectives. Organizational charts are visual displays of organizational structure, chain of command, and other relationships. Growth requires organizing--the structuring of human, physical, and financial resources to achieve objectives efficiently and effectively.

SPECIALIZATION

An organization must first determine what activities are required to achieve its objectives and then break these activities down into specific tasks that can be handled by individual employees. This division of labor into small, specific tasks and the assignment of employees to do a single task is called specialization. The rationale for specialization is efficiency: It minimizes the time lost when workers shift from one task to another, and it facilitates training. It may be necessary