Team Building and Organisational Structure - Essay Example

1. Executive Summary Business and dynamism are synonymous. The strength of any business is in fact the strength of its organization which keeps it firm against any adverse effect. All organization in turn comprise of teams or groups which work together toward a common goal. This is the reason why team building is such a vital and delicate concept in field of business. Team building is a managerial progress approach where managers collaborate and allocate skills to solve organizational problems. Another concept which is very relevant in this concern is of delegation. A team cannot function properly until there is a proper delegation of duties, accountabilities and autonomy. A fair delegation in this regard brings job satisfaction among employees and it becomes more probable that the employees with exhibit corporate citizenship. These are few issues which this assignment will try to highlight. It will take a comparative stand on theory and practice, towards working of an organisation from the perspective of team building and delegation The assignment will highlight the discrepancies in theoretical and practical approach for the above iterated issues. Also it would analyse the possible reasons for these incongruity. This assignment will not only analyse the existing models of organisational structure but will also try to put forward recommendations for models. Just to make the point put forward more clearly, this assignment will take resort to consider banking organisational setup. 2. Organisational Structure in General Henry Mintzberg postulated organisational structure into five ideal though not real organisational configurations (Mintzberg, 1981). This organisational synthesis provides managers an outline to comprehend and devise structures of organisations. Figure 1: Minztberg model of organisational structure According to Mintzberg organisational structure is "The sum total of the ways in which it divides it’s labour into distinct tasks and then achieves coordination among them." He proposed six constituents which are as follows: Operating core: The work force of this part is directly related to the Operations. Strategic apex: People in this part serve the need of those people who control the organisation. Middle line: This part constitute of managers who act as bridge connecting strategic apex and operating core Technostructure: This part comprises of the analysts who design, plan, change or train the operating core. Support staff: This part is made up of external specialists who provide support to the organisation outside of the operating core's activities. Ideology: It is not a part per se but is made up of the traditions and beliefs that make the organisation unique. Each arrangement symbolizes a force that pulls an enterprise in altogether different horizons. For an example the operating core wants to professionalize in their job and hence they support professional bureaucracy supported on the standardisation of skills. Which pull will finally prevail will depend to a great extent, on the power of each components. 3. Structural Model for Banking Organization There are many setups to make organisational team interact. In case of banking organisation there are few prevalent models. These are discussed as below. 3.1. Functional Organisation In this case an individual is responsible for activities in a specialized department or function. The power or the communication flows vertically up or down. There is very less lateral communication. Banks frequently adopt this model as they are structurally divided as per functions. Like loan, insurance, retail, rural and corporate divisions function independently. This model by virtue of its structure minimizes cross communications and in turns avoid information overload on any particular employee. Figure 2: Functional Organization 3.1.1. Characteristics There are some theoretical characteristics of this model which are given below. Specialists grouped by function Difficult to cross functional lines Barriers exist on horizontal information flow Functional emphasis – loyalties may impede completion 3.1.2. Practical Deviations In case of banking firm, though the various departments work independently yet they do not remain in a watertight environment. Thus the theoretical barrier of horizontal informational flow is often broken. Also this model sometimes impedes the overall efficacy of bank. Each function strives for their individual local optimization and not the overall effectiveness. 3.1.3. Team Building and delegation Here team building is confined to a particular function only. The authorities which are delegated are also confined to the particular function only. The whole responsibility of team building is of functional managers. Delegation too is at their discrete. The cohesion between different functional team is obviously low. All members of a particular team owe their loyalty to functional manager. The functional head exercise various strategies and power source to influence the team members. The figure given below represents that (Eugen, 2000). Figure 3: Influence Strategy and respective power source to influence team building 3.1.4. Recommendations Selection on functional head is very critical here and it is recommended that top management of bank should give due consideration to this aspect. A good and competent functional head will then take care of the efficacy of the vertical. It is also recommended that the banks should take process approach on the organizational working. The banks are divided among functions in order to facilitate to banking operations. But there remains a clear cut lack of communication and feedback among these departments. Thus the functions concentrate on theirs own watertight department and its performance. The lacking foresight restricts the whole process to cut across the functions. Banks need to get rid of this shortsightedness and adopt process approach (O'Connor & McDermott (1997)). For this the bank needs higher level of coordination among the various departments. The process must be viewed from start to end and accordingly accountability should be established for the various departments. In this way the successive departments will become internal customer to their predecessors. Thus the final outcome will be shared by all departments. This will increase early error detection and its timely resolution. Moreover there will more likelihood of end customer delight. The incentives of the employees should also be based on overall performance of the bank. This will help to attain a synchronized approach of all the function towards common goal. Banks in this setup seems having no process performance evaluation tool in place. It is because of this reason, that the bank get too late in process recovery. The end customer satisfaction level keeps going down in such case. The concept of metric parameters emphasize on the philosophy that until something is measured, it cannot be achieved (Briscoe, 2005). Metrics for the process in terms of quantifiable parameters will help in evaluation of the end result. The prerequisite for a proper implementation of performance management system is the recognition of key performance indicators (KPIs). These indicators are then continuously monitored and efforts are made to improve them. The application of Key Performance Indicators aids the project managers with a high-level, real-time view of the progress of a company. Key Performance Indicators are expressed in terms of numbers and they in turn reflect the critical success factors of banks. 3.2. Matrix Organization There are many banks which are multifaceted and keep managing certain special financial projects from time to time. For an example, banks entertaining corporate clients on their special projects. Thus they always depend on a cross-functional to execute such projects. In such cases, functional setup is a failure. Here evolves a new setup to meet the requirement of a cross-functional team. This is called matrix setup. The figure below represents it. Figure 4: Matrix Organization 3.2.1. Characteristics There are some theoretical characteristics of this model which are given below. Emerges from functional setup when latter impedes progress Line of authority is the Project Manager Uncertainty where to go on completion of project Tendency to retain assigned personnel too long 3.2.2. Practical Deviations The team members working on project keep on moving from one to other project. Thus it’s very difficult to fetch their loyalty (Kahn, 1966). Moreover very often functional heads are reluctant to spare talented team mate. A team member is evaluated for the performance by the functional head while working on other project also. This makes performance evaluation very complex and often leaves the member unsatisfied. It is also very difficult to establish a free flow information channel (Roethlisberger, 1990). There is very likelihood that any member is burdened with commands from two directions. This may lower the job satisfaction. 3.2.3. Team Building and delegation The temporary nature of the project team makes it very difficult to make a sustainable team (Kahn, 1966). The onus of building teams for special projects lies on the project manager. The project manager needs to be very good leader and an excellent team player (Saxberg, 1971). Project leader should be sharp enough to recognize the talent of the team members and accordingly delegate the duties to them. It is beneficial to absorb employees which are good at multi-tasking and are multi-skilled. The strategies and power source more or less remains the same here to influence the project team members. 3.2.4. Recommendations Quite often in such setups, at micro level there is no standardization practiced by the bank. There is no standard for time required for projects involved in the process. Moreover there is no standard practiced adopted for various banking operations as projects are considered at very short span of time. Though the kind of service that a bank provides needs a great deal of customization but still there should be a standard process for that too. Considering the quantum of business handled by the bank, this trade off between customization and standardization calls for mass customization (Tseng & Jiao (2001)). This will call for great deal of involvement of information technology tools. 4. Conclusion Any organization in general has its special anatomy. This represents its way of working. As discussed in this assignment banks can broadly be segregated in two different organizational anatomies. The functional model has vertical alignment whereas a matrix organization has lateral orientation. Both of these models widely differ in their actual functioning from their theoretical outline. The team building and delegation methodology is also different for them. The former one exploits sustainable nature of the teams whereas the later one is challenged by the temporariness of the project teams. Both of these setups in fact use same strategies and power sources to influence the team members. Quite often the volume of business takes toll on the quality of the services provided. But any firm should never loose its sight from the satisfaction level of the end customer which in turn is the function of quality. The system should have inbuilt error detection mechanism. The end results until shared by all cannot bring prosperity for the company. Thus free flow of information is of paramount importance. The company should try to make customer as a partial employee as it will help customer understand the process. Moreover it will also optimize the expectations. 5. References a) Tarnow, Eugen (2000). A quantitative model of the amplification of power through order and the concept of group defense. http://cogprints.org/4275/ (Surfed on 18th May 2009) b) Henry Mintzberg (1981). "Organization Design: Fashion or Fit" Harvard Business Review (January February) c) Carl R Rogers; Fritz Jules Roethlisberger (1990). Barriers and gateways to communication. Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business Review d) Daniel Katz; Robert Louis Kahn (1966). The social psychology of organizations. New York: Wiley e) Henry P. Knowles; Borje O. Saxberg (1971). Personality and Leadership Behavior. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley. pp. 884–89 f) O'Connor, J. & McDermott, I. (1997). The Art of Systems Thinking: Essential Skills for Creativity and Problem-Solving. San Francisco: Thorsons Publishing. p. 11. g) Tseng, M.M.; Jiao, J. (2001), Mass Customization, in: Handbook of Industrial Engineering, Technology and Operation Management (3rd ed.), New York, NY: Wiley, p. 65 h) Simon Briscoe, 2005, The trouble with targets, OECD Observer, No. 246-247 Read More