Work Specialization techniqu. Advantages and drawbacks - Essay Example

To effectively utilize all the resources, organizations recognize the need to capitalize on their managers and employees. In order for an organization to survive and for its well-being it is imperative for it to watch out for future trends likely to impact on the actions they must take to keep their organizations moving. The Organization structure is the interaction and communication patterns that are linked to map out the tasks performed by individuals and teams to achieve concrete goals and objectives.

The broad outline of organization structure is depicted by an organizational chart. However, the chart does not give a detailed view of what the tasks and the job of each individual is going to be. We consider Job Design to be a major structural aspect that defines the tasks to be performed by individuals. There are six key components that have to be kept into focus when designing an organization structure, these include: work specialization, chain of command, span of control, centralization, decentralization and formalization.

The topic under focus here is Work Specialization. It is one of the key elements to consider while devising a structure for one’s organization. Work specialization is defined as the extent till which work that needs to be done to achieve organizational goals is broken down into smaller manageable chunks of tasks. Most organizations might collapse without specialization because it is merely impossible for everyone to know everything and possess all the necessary skills needed to run the whole organization.

It is the process that breaks down the big goals into small parts and then each part is assigned to one individual according to his/her skills set. These workers specialize in performing the assigned activity possessing the skills they already had. It is the approach by which the skills of a particular employee can be utilized at the best. The work is performed in repetition which also makes the employee more experienced with it reducing chances of error and hence caters to the smooth functioning of the entire organization leading to the ultimate goal.

Advantages: Employee skills of performing tasks increase with repetition. Less or no set up time, or less or no time wasted between changing tasks. It is less costly to find workers for performing repetitive tasks. It increases efficiency and productivity. Disadvantages: Human Diseconomies of specialization that occurred from handling repetitive tasks from workers in the form of stress boredom, increased absenteeism and poor quality products. Reduced employee satisfaction. The contrary advantages of splitting into teams an reducing specialization.

Conclusion: To summarize the discussion, Work specialization is a technique that might be suitable and adequate for one organization while be incongruent with values of the other. The approach used and implemented will vary from one organization to the other and will have its own pros and cons. Organizations must devise a proper plan to decide which approach is suitable for it and then implement it accordingly. References Griffin, Ricky W. Management. 2006. org-struck-jo-my-rak. .