The paper analyzes the effect of organizational structure on organizational effectiveness through Face-to-Face (FtF) communication. Data were collected from 324 employees from various organizations in India. It was found that organizational structure was a predictor of organizational effectiveness. Centralization and formalizationdimensions of organizational structurewere found to be positively correlated with organizational effectiveness.
Structure
refers to the manner in which an organization utilizes its
human resources for its goal-oriented activities. It is the
way human resources of an organization are fitted into relatively
fixed relationships that largely define patterns of interaction,
coordination, and task-oriented behavior (Steers, 1977). The
important aspects of organizational structure include work
specialization, departmentalization, chain of command, span
of control, centralization, decentralization, and formalization.
The primary focus of the present study is to analyze the extent
to which the structure influences the effectiveness of an
organization. Thus, two aspects of organizational structure
- centralization and formalization are taken up for the present
study.
The
concept of organizational structure is central to the investigation
of organizational effectiveness. An appropriate structure
is the crux of every successful organization. Centralization
and formalization are considered as the important dimensions
of organizational structure. Numerous studies have been conducted
to find the association of centralization and formalization
with organizational effectiveness and previous researchers
have explored that these dimensions are the most direct determinants
of organizational effectiveness (Glisson and Martin, 1980;
and Mark, 1985.) Centralization is the extent to which the
locus of authority to make decisions affecting the organization
is confined to the higher levels of the hierarchy (Child,
1972) or the proportion of levels that participate in the
decision-making (Haga, 1965). Formalization refers to the
extent to which procedures, rules and instructions are written
down (Haga, 1965). |
