Organizational Structure: Types, Culture Elements, and Strategic Goals

Fundamental Concepts of Organizational Structure

Types of Organizations

Organizations can be classified based on the explicit definition and distribution of roles, responsibilities, and authority among their members.

Formal Organizations

These organizations fulfill characteristics where activities, responsibilities, and authority are distributed among members in a precise, explicit, and relatively permanent manner. Examples include schools, colleges, and businesses in general.

Informal Organizations

These organizations do not have an explicitly defined distribution of activities, responsibilities, and authority, even though they comply with the basic characteristics of an organization. They are characterized by highly dynamic relations between members. The number of members and the leadership structure are constantly changing, involving a continuous process of group formation and dissolution. For example, a group of workers gathering to discuss a specific issue.

Organizational Space and Area

The organizational area refers to the physical and social environment in which the organization operates and exerts influence.

Internal Organizational Space

This is the physical space where the organization develops part of its activities, internal to itself. Examples include the manufacturing plant, administrative offices, retail locations, or branch offices. This kind of space is referred to as Internal Organizational Space.

External Organizational Space

This is the field outside the organization where it plans and exercises influence. For example, for a social club, this is the neighborhood where it is based; for a hospital organization, it is its zone of influence.

The Organizational Space is the social map that mixes, coordinates, and interrelates all the activities of the organization, both internally and externally.

Organizational Culture

An organization possesses a set of values, beliefs, norms, languages, knowledge, codes of behavior, and ways of acting that are known and shared by its members. This collective understanding forms its own distinctive feature and cultural identity. Consequently, there are as many organizational cultures as there are organizations able to generate them.

Elements of Organizational Culture

• Values: These are the beliefs or convictions that constitute the core principles of the group of individuals forming the organization. Example: Responsibility, honesty.
• Visions: These are the ideas that the organization's leaders hold regarding its future—which businesses will continue, which will be eliminated, how they will grow, etc.
• Drivers (Slogans/Mottos): These are the phrases that conceptualize the vision of the leaders and are adopted by the members of the organization. Example: A well-known fast-food chain's motto: "Quality, Service, and Cleanliness."

Organizational Goals and Objectives

Objectives and goals define the desired ends toward which the organization's activity is directed.

• Objectives are the general ends toward which the organization moves.
• Goals are special purposes, typically expressed quantitatively.

Goal setting serves as a crucial guide for the decisions, activities, and actions undertaken by the organization. Targets relating to objectives are moving toward them; goals are essentially subgoals used to measure progress toward the broader objectives.