Attempts of humans to unite in cohorts, and further in a certain commonwealth is caused by the necessity of satisfaction of their needs for security, implication, mutual support, dialogue, etc. In such systems, personalities supplement each other, joining own capabilities, which makes them stronger in the struggle for survival.
Having arisen, the similar structure begins to live and act on its own principles, carrying out communication between persons. The bonds between a worker and an institution must be balanced. Therefore, any company, as a rule, requires huge experience, active involvement in its affairs and obeys the accepted norms of conduct.
Meaning of Formal Organization
By official association is meant a legal composition formed according to certain rules on the basis of a clear hierarchy of power. Typically, it uses thought-out tactics to obtain a given aim. The current world is filled with examples of such systems, in particular, schools, universities, corporations, courts, and state bodies. But a friendship group isn’t an example of a formal organization because there is no place for duties ladder.
Practically all official agencies are shaped by teamwork and a distinct distribution of functions. It resembles a mechanism in which every detail is in its place. Such a sequence in the presence of good interaction allows you to work efficiently for the sake of a common future. I.e. similar communities could be regarded as a kind of full-fledged relations between people and their professional status.
The characteristics of formal organizations involve a certain order, fixed in charter, plans, behavior patterns, which give you a possibility to consciously coordinate social interactions to achieve a specific objective. Therefore, it functions as a planned activity.
Features of Formal Organization
It should be noted that official association has certain particulars like rationality, impersonality, and uniqueness. However, under definite conditions, these signs may turn it into a bureaucratic entity, defined by absolutization of separate sides. The system could lose meaningful goals of own existence and subordinate business principles to the task of preserving and strengthening the body. So, official foundations are credited with the next attributes:
- Power hierarchy
- Specificity in distribution of labor duties
- A large amount of working documentation
- Collectivism
- Top-down communication
- Specified procedures for replacing inefficient wage earners
- Duration of functioning
- Independence from the participation of specific persons
Three Types of Formal Organizations
Among scientists, there is no consensus on the criteria for classification, so let us turn to traditional kinds of perfunctory association.
Coercive systems are characterized by forced membership and exercising control by force. Their bright instances include prison, psychiatric clinics, boarding schools, military units. The joining of new participants is authorized by a higher power in the person of the chief or director. Such institutions are inherent puissance ladder, strict discipline, and compliance with stated rules. Everyday life is quite monotonous; some workers of team wear overalls, which emphasize the leveling of individuality.
Utilitarian structures involve those that bring benefits. Persons will rejoin them because they see some prospect of a mutually beneficial exchange. This could be an internship in a company, successful passage of which promises a high salary in the future. Or an excellent graduation from a school/university, as a result of which the student not only receives first-class knowledge and habits but also, offers cooperation from the best employers.
Normative associations are immanent in maintaining order through education and having an ordinary set of norms. Generally, fellowship in them is free, although some participants could add to them out of a sense of solidarity, duty or even fear. Such structures include church, brotherhoods, and political parties. The latter is understood as the formal organization that directs a political life of a society. Participating in them, persons feel belonging to general good and purpose.
Formal Organizational Structure
Like any company, an official association is built on clearly defined principles to achieve maximum impact. They include:
- A consciousness of creating so-called collective action for the sake of obtaining a great future;
- Orientation to result. In similar systems, working atmosphere reigns, which prefers to fulfill the tasks set, but not to wage earners.
- Fragmentation of obligations. A strategic objective is divided into minor small-scale units. Each worker is assigned his/her own functions according to his/her qualifications and major. In addition, the institution itself consists of departments, agencies, and services, headed by its chief. The “general” headquarters prepares director’s orders and transfers them to subordinates, controls the current workflow and provides assistance in coordinating the staff’s deeds. The headquarters relieves the manager of trivialities of administrative actions, giving him/her an opportunity to exercise monitoring over a wider range and focus on the most significant deeds.
- Bureaucracy. The status of a person determines the level of own authority. The higher you are on a social ladder, the greater your functions and the number of resources. Recognizing the effectiveness of bureaucracy as a specific form of relations, M. Weber compared it to a machine that had undeniable advantages over non-mechanical production methods. But at the same time, it’s most vivid manifestations and traits like accuracy, responsibility, strict subordination, knowledge of rules, reduction of various costs, etc., the scientist considered primarily in the system of production and economic bonds.
- The delegation of duties. Workload is distributed from the head to the staff. We need such a volume and scope of delegated powers, which will motivate laborers, promote their professional growth, and provide satisfaction with the content of work. An optimal scope depends, first of all, on the capabilities of the employee. The process involves transferring individual specific tasks, offering appropriate resources and formulating the obligations of subordinates to carry out the mission assigned to them.
- Coordination of actions. Directors supervise the implementation of delegated assignments by creating effective links between structural units. Their goal is to tie together the working outcomes of many thousands of people. Usually, such a hierarchy has the form of a pyramid, in which every official is accountable to his/her superiors both for own decisions and for the staff’s solutions. The magnitude of boss over the subordinates is clearly marked.
Given all of the above, we could highlight the next advantages of a formal organization structure:
- Clear definition of the association’s purpose and relations between employees.
- Optimal and effective using of limited resources.
- A well-established system of interaction thanks to skillful delegation of duties.
- An absence of duplication concerning functions.
- Career obeys the strict canons of the promotion
- Low level of dismissals, because such systems are stable and predictable.
- Synthesis of formal organizational objectives with professional roles of wage-earners, which stimulates the maximum disclosure of their potential.
Although the formal structure of relations helps to seek certain aims, it also has some drawbacks:
- Passivity. Due to the fact that a great deal of attention is focused on compliance with formalities, a lot of laborers are embarrassed to use their creative inclinations to perform routine assignments.
- Dissatisfaction with social needs. Staff ceases to share experiences and interact with colleagues since communication is based solely on teams and orders. A wage earner must discard all personal considerations and retain the fullest emotional impartiality. Similarly, you should treat your subordinates. This formality of bonds is facilitated by social distance between hierarchical levels, officials and their clients.
Other negative consequences of strengthening formalization may be closed corporate identity, centralization, and fixing of all forms of life as an applying violent ways in supervision. All this causes the reorientation of human ties only to success and self-interest, so in society one-sided instrumental rationality that generates social pathologies begins to predominate.
Thus, in spite of formal organization promotes optimization of activities, human acts within it predominantly not as a creative person, but as a functionary one, that’s why relations between people acquire a shade of indifference. The advantages of official ties still do not provide not only a sufficient level of integration but also the fullness of human needs for interaction, and support.