The organisational restructuring is a very sensitive issue. Even the most elementary and simple change can produce major behavioral changes. For example, lengthening or shortening of the span of control, additional input of knowledge and/or technology, creation of a new position, centralization or decentralization of decisions etc. can result in major socio-technical changes.
For ensuring an effective change in organisational form, Argyris has suggested that the basic requirements are
- continuous and transparent interaction between individuals and groups,
- free, reliable and realistic communication,
- freedom to work for individual and group cohesiveness,
- cooperation, trust and risk tolerance, and
- identification of conflict, and its management at the earliest.
As against these requirements, the adaptive behaviour indicates a tendency of individual survival, and lack of risk taking. People tends to identify themselves with success and shift the responsibility of failure on others, making the organisation rigid and uninnovative and hence less effective and committed.
Thus, any organisational restructuring has to be a compromise between the behavioural science and tradition. The need of the company as well as that of individuals in it must be considered simultaneously. A poorly restructured organisation is even worse.
There are a variety of methods of restructuring, depending upon the human resource, product/service lines and management's philosophy in the organisation. Three important tasks must be considered to start with, i.e. (a) Control, (b) Integration, and (c) external relations.
Control is of prime importance if the organisation is highly sensitive to environment. Integration is prime if it have multiple products, each requiring high degree of engineering. For situations where the tasks are repetitive and labour unions are Strong, external relations predominate.
Sadler has prepared a check-list of questions to be answered while deciding the form of the organisation. They are as follows :
- To what extent does the task of organisation calls for close control ?
- What are the needs and attitudes of the people performing the tasks ? What will be the effect of control machination on their performance and motivation ?
- What are the natural social grouping ? And to what extent these are important for motivation performance ?
- What aspects of activities needs to be closely integrated ?
- What organisational measures can be developed to provide an adequate control and integration of work activities, while meeting the needs of the people ?
- What environmental changes are likely to affect the future trend of market behaviour and organisations operations ? What measures can be taken to insure the effective response ?
The response to this check-list is a matter of the judgement by organisational managers.
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