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Design Parameters And Contingency Factors Essay

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Introduction

In the context of management, organisation structure is a backbone of an organisation. Mintzberg (1980) suggested five general types of organisation configuration, constituted by coordinating different elements of organisation (basic parts of organisation, coordinating mechanisms, design parameters and contingency factors), which will be illustrated indirectly as preferring to present in different version to describe Mintzberg’s configurations in this essay. In effect, his suggested structures are related to scientific management in some senses. This essay will reveal the abstract of Mintzberg’s five configurations with arguments, and personal perspectives of how his work help us gain more understanding beyond scientific management in terms of contingency factors and standardization.

1.Mintzberg’s five organisational configurations

a. Simple structure

Mintzberg (1980,pp.331-332) suggested this comparatively flat and informal architecture has minimal hierarchy, which only consists of top managers and operation, coordinating through direct command. Task allocation, work instructions and training are unnecessary due to the simple mechanism. The importance of this structure is organism, because of little hierarchy and decision centralization on chief executives that provides flexibility and adaptability, enable quick reaction and response to emergent environment as an advantage. Success heavily depends on executives’ capacity to operate. However, Dewar

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