While listing the merits and demerits of traditional organisational form, we can observe that critical activity for productivity in organisation is the Interfacing between different functional units". Because of the complications in this interfacing, new methodologies are being developed to coordinate the flow of work and information between different functional units without basic changes in existing organisational structures.
This smooth and effective interfacing is sought to be achieved through various integrating mechanisms. Galbraith has listed five such mechanisms, i.e.
- Rules and procedures - Bureaucratic procedure
- Planning processes - Managerial procedure
- Hierarchical referral - Administrative approach
- Direct contact - Behavioural science approach
- Liaison-development - Business approach
The conflict between different functional unit was tried to be resolved by specifying and documenting new rules, regulations and procedures. This is a typical bureaucratic approach of problem solving, normally preferred in government and semi-government organisations. It is based on the assumption that the actions of functional personnel are predictable and repetitive irrespective of variety in projects. The behaviour of individuals can thus be easily integrated into the flow of work with little, if any, lateral communication requirements. In most of the organisations, this approach proved ineffective. The work manuals become,more voluminous and bulky, still leaving the interpretation of rules subjectively by personnels in shifting the responsibility rather than problem solving.
The other approach of conflict resolution was to minimise the requirement of lateral information flow by planning the job in much more detail. It attempted to involve functional representation'at all stages of planning, scheduling and budgeting. The functional unit executives, did not delegate these powers to lower level managers. Hence, any problem solving exercise involved a joint meeting of different functional executives, which again made decision making a time consuming, slow and tedious process. This is another form of bureaucratic abproach of "taking decisions through committees". The crisis response period was obviously large here also.
The third approach is a typical administrative approach. Since the continuous conflicts and struggle for power between functional units required involvement of upper level management at every stage, the conflict resolution through this hierarchical referral, though time consuming is found to be effective for routine problems. However, problems resulting from situations of non-routine or unpredictable nature or problems for which no policy or procedure existed, posed a further problem. Such conflicts become chaotic in
environment of "going by the books".
In the forth approach, to alleviate problems of hierarchical referral, upper level managers try to resolve all conflicts at the lowest possible level by direct contact and interaction by functional managers at all levels. But the quantity of conflicts forced key personnels to spend a great part of their effective time in acting as arbitrators rather than as managers.
In the fifth approach, an additional department was sought to be created for conflict resolution only. All the conflict situations were now referred to this department which sought to resolve them by liaising between different functional units.
However, inspite of the above referred corrective measures, it was felt that traditional organisation remains ineffective in most of the cases, primarily because still there was no focal personnel to ensure integration of all functional activities.
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