The Effective Organization

Downsizing will do only one thing: make the organization smaller.

Global, political, economical, environmental, and behavioral factors strongly influence over the organizations, and the organizations themselves have to adjust to these types of situation in order to survive. Many scholars and theorists have so far conducted different sorts of guidelines, approaches, concepts, paradigms, and theories applied in the organizations in order to assist them to run smoothly and successfully. In relation to this, Stuart Crainer (1998, p. 47) in his book “Key Management Ideas” wrote that there are 7 habits that can be used to build up the effective organizations, and these include:

A. Flexible and free flowing: The effective organizations can be conjured up anew each day. The organizations themselves are to be flexible and adjusted to both internal and external environment, or they are going to fall behind. For example, the organizations, at the information age, have to confront the environment of changes. So as to survive, the organizations have to be flexible and adaptable to this situation.

B. Non-hierarchical: Even though the ideas of bureaucracy used to be popular and widely used, but it has almost died away now. Top-down and centralization have been taken out, yet decentralization, flat organizations, and two-way communication have been employed and considered to be effective and efficient in the present organizations.   

C. Based on participation: Teamwork is considered to be useful and valuable for every organization, for every body is involved and taken part in both making a plan and decision. The organizations should encourage the participation from each level, and this participation can be: in meeting, discussion, planning, asking for opinions, attacking protection, or creating policy.

D. Creative and entrepreneurial: The entrepreneurial process drives the opportunity seeking, externally focused the ability of the organizations to create new business. Concerning with this, dreaming and imaging are required to be used, and these will be helpful and make the organization move forward when we make them become true.

E. Based round networks:  We can compare good and effective organizations with the popular theaters. The dedicated theaters comprise of many networks such as itinerant workforce of actors, directors, writers, technicians as well as experienced financial bakers, and do the organizations if they want to survive within the changed and competitive environment.

F. Driven with corporate goals: Corporate or grand strategies are established at the highest levels in the organizations, and they involved in a long range time horizon. Moreover, they are concerned with the overall direction of the organization, and they are divided into 4 types included (a) growth strategy, (b) stability strategy, (c) defensive strategy, and (d) combination strategy.

G. Utilizing technology as a key resource: Technology will not only make the work run quickly and easily but also reduce the workforce and use less energy. It can be suggested that the organizations should bring the new technology into the mainstream rather than regarding it as the preserve of commercially naïve geeks.

Sam Aun (Andy)