The Stages Of The Organizational Life Cycle

The human life cycle is the various points along an individual’s life when their growth and development on both physical and emotional levels change as they mature in age. There are five stages of the life cycle these are,

Organizational architecture and corporate culture should be intertwined within any successful company or organization. In the text, Brickley (2009), refers to organizational architecture as being three legs of a company: assignments of decision rights, 2) methods of rewarding individuals, and 3) the structure of systems to evaluate the performance of both individuals and business units. Organizational architecture is the framework of company departments such as managerial chain of command, the duty description and

This paper will examine organizational structures, organizational systems and how organizational culture influences both structure and systems. Throughout this paper, there will an analogy to the human body to help further the understanding of the concepts of structure and systems in an organization. This analogy is based on the academic work of Goold and Campbell (Goold & Campbell, 2002). The first part of this paper will review different organizational structures. The second part will look at various organizational systems and how they may be

A life cycle diagram helps businesses analysis their attempt to identify a set of commercial stages in the life of commercial products, for example, introduction, promotion, growth maturity and decline.

The organisational life cycle is the life cycle of an organisation from its creation to its termination.

All products have a lifecycle. They begin as an idea that needs Research and Development (R&D) or time to develop. This is a direct cost to the company. Once the product and/or service is ready to be marketed, it goes through five stages: development, introduction, growth, maturity, and decline.

At some point it becomes necessary for an organization to undergo changes. If embracing change is truly one of the organizations core beliefs than efforts should be taken to make the necessary transition. A strategic planning structure allows the organization to stay focused on plans, yet be flexible and adaptive and, therefore, able to deal with change effectively (Galbraith, et al., 2001, pg. 38).”

The life-cycle theory is based on the maturity levels of the employees in the organization. Employees with less tenure or experience may require a leadership style that focuses more on the tasks or assignments that they need to accomplish. A leader may need to provide more direction to the employees in order to ensure the tasks are successfully completed. Since more experienced or seasoned employees need less directive action from the supervisor in order to accomplish their assignments, the leader should provide more focus towards the best way to support the employees. Hersey and Blanchard appear to suggest that more seasoned employees should become involved in the decision making process with less direct supervision. Employees are expected to not only identity the problem, but also to provide a solution to the problem. “When they gain experience, employees become more able to contribute and participate in those decisions affecting them and the work….experienced oldtimers and professionals need a free rein to function most effectively.” (Plunkett, Allen & Attner, 2013, p466)

The project life cycle consists of the conceptualization phase, the planning phase, the execution phase, and the termination phase.

The product life cycle concept derives from the phases through which a product undergoes, from its introduction, to its growth in the market, to the maturity it attains in that market, to the very last stage of declination. The

In 1977 Tuckman and Jensen revised their initial four stage cycle, adding a fifth adjourning stage to complete the full life cycle from formation to disbandment (Tuckman & Jensen, 2010). However, this paper does not address this fifth stage.

Explain how the relationship between an organisation’s structure and culture can impact on the performance of a business

Organisational culture is defined as “the set of beliefs, values and assumptions that members of an organization share in common.” (Rao, Rao and Sivaramakrishna, 2008, p. 448). Handy (1985) characterised organisational culture into four types of structure- the Greek Temple, the Spider’s Web, the Cluster and the Matrix. These are often referred to as Role Culture, Power Culture, Person Culture and Task Culture. It could be argued that the description of Role Culture, as relying on committees, structures, schedules and analysis (Rao, Rao and Sivaramakrishna, 2008) is the most applicable to a retail organisation. Although these are the four main types of organisational culture, a criticism of Handy’s work is that more than one type of culture usually exists within the same organisation, moreover, organisations usually change over time- suggesting their organisational culture may also change. As culture appears to be an ever-expanding research area and retail appears to be an ever-changing culture, it may be more applicable to analyse the culture of Next Plc via the 7-S Framework, developed by The McKinsey Organisation (Waterman, Peters and Phillips, 1980). This model asks seven questions, focusing on the style, structure, skills, systems, strategy, staff and shared values of the organisation. As a retail store, the strategy of Next Plc is based largely on their products and meeting customer-needs; to achieve this, customers can order products online and in-store, reserve products and receive text message notifications when their order is ready for collection. Next Plc has a divisional organisational structure- although most of their stores are in the United Kingdom and Ireland, they have 200 stores in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. They can therefore be considered as a tall structure with multiple levels of staff. The systems used include employee recruitment and development, managing customer relationships and

Thus, strategy changes are inevitable in all organizations leading to structure and designing changes. Along with the changing policies the theories of organizational behaviour keep evolving. Hence we have traditional classical theories on one hand while modern contingency approaches on other hand. In this essay, I will explore and discuss classical and contingency theories along with their contributions and limitations with the help of contemporary organizational practices of businesses like McDonalds and Walgreen. The conclusion will be the result of evaluation of various theories and thus answering the question which is the best structure and designing approach for an organization?

Koontz and Weihrich (1990) Organizational development as well as management coincide with one another. Organizational development seeks to offer a systematic process of identifying and solving problems as they occur over time. However, the greatest tasks of organizational developments are determining what techniques to use to make sure the organization continues to improve while fueling the growth of the organization (Koontz & Weihrich, 1990).