Differences Between Organisation as Structure and Organisation as Process Organization is an identity in which the activities of employees are coordinated, motivated and supporting each other in order to reach the common business targets and aims. There are differences between organizations, either as structure or process. The design of the organization is duly dependable on the requirements of an organization; its business environment, location or business field or the model of business in which they are active. We can not design and apply similar type of organization to an army or to a shopping centre or to a factory who have completely different facts and dynamics of business. (Harte, 1997, p.177) Organization as Structure This type of organization is mainly concentrated on who does the job. The design is mainly interested in job descriptions, functions, territories. The processes are not fully clear. Even though people have different jobs, they perform their job with limited responsibility and performance. These organizations are mainly vertical organizations divided in to departments which have their own responsibilities and tasks. In an organization as structure, the details of the job and how it is done can be missed across the units in organizations such as departments, regions, etc. Besides, even processes will not end up with a complete design. These type of organizations can be shaped according to the structural factors as functional, technology, process, geographic based, product line, customer or market oriented according to the needs and the targets of the company and to meet customer requirements and to give value to the stakeholders. (Rupietta, Walter, 2005, p.570). Of course, there is a disadvantage of how these teams are managed well and we can not address all structural factors which can cause weakness in organization management. Organization as Process This type of organization is mainly concentrated on how the job is done. The design is mainly interested as tasks, projects, group, work, input & output, methods, cross- functional connections & communication. We can say that it is dealing with the design of processes in the terms of time, space, funds, materials and human resources, focusing the outcome of the work. Identified processes can be complicated and challenging to control & manage because they break organizational boundaries. In the organization as process, workflows are defined and people are well minded to their roles in the activity chain. These organizations are not centralized organizations, mainly horizontal who can manage themselves. For this reason, you can not see great status differences in the organization and great collaboration in terms of sharing information & teamwork and in terms of communicative processes. (Miller, K., 2008, p.53) As a conclusion, organization as process are mainly productive for flexible and highly-market and customer concentrated business fields who do not make repetitive actions as routines. Creativity, productivity, communication, performance & efficiency are the parameters of these organizations. Organizations as structure are organizations that are more concentrated on repetitive actions who needs control of procedures, directives and rules. Non-profit organizations or army can be a good sample. References Harte, John (1997) “Management crisis and business revolution”, Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, New Jersey, p.177. Miller, K (2008). “Organizational Communication-Approaches and Processes”, Wadsworth Cengage Learning, Fifth Edition, 2008, p.53. Rupietta, Walter (2005 ) “Workparty- Business Processes and Workflow Management”, Handbook of Architectures on Information Systems, Second Edition, Springer, 2005, p.570
Dr. Alp KARABAS
2020
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