In: Operations Management
Answer the following two questions in DETAIL:
1) How might downsizing affect organizational structures and employees? Do you think that stability is good or bad for employees? Explain your answer.
2) Differentiate between mechanistic and organic structural models.
1. Downsizing almost always has a negative effect on the employees as well as the reputation of the company as a result. While downsizing is necessary in some cases, especially when a company is no longer able to sustain the current structure in the long run, we can say that it not only gets the employee morale down, the employees that remain do not feel safe for their position in the company and their work output is affected as a result. Stability is a necessary factor for any process. We can say that a stable work environment is what breeds creativity, motivation and therefore increases the throughput of the employees.
2. Mechanistic structure model functions on a well defined and centralized structure of hierarchy. What this means is that the top management decides the structure and the function while the employees work separately on specific tasks in order to create the factors necessary for attaining the scope of the company's implementation process.
An organic structure is based on a decentralized structure of hierarchy. The employees are given authority to create the best process for them to work with as well as the fact that individuals work in groups rather than separate specific tasks is also an identifying feature.