In this installment of our guide to organizational management we look at management structure…

Management is the process of planning, organizing, leading and controlling the efforts of organization members and resources to achieve stated organizational goals.

Depending on an organization’s size, there will be different levels of management: regional managers have responsibility over a geographic region in which the company operates; divisional managers have accountability for a specific division in the company such as human resources, sales, or finance; and department managers who are tasked with leadership over a particular department within the organization.

Management structure (also known as organizational structure) is the method by which staff, departments, divisions and regions work and interact with one another. There are two main types of such structures, known as flat and hierarchal.

Organizations that have few or no levels of management that intervene between the workers and the leaders are employing what’s known as a flat management structure. A flat management structure promotes the involvement of staff in the decision-making process by decentralizing said process.

By elevating the level of responsibility of baseline employees, and by eliminating layers of middle management, comments and feedback reach all personnel involved in decisions more quickly. Since the interaction between workers is more frequent, this management structure generally depends upon a much more personal relationship between workers and managers.

The military is a good example of a hierarchal management structure – each person is charged with reporting to, or dealing with, a specific manager, who then takes information up (or down) the chain. In this structure, each body within the organization, except one, is subordinate to an immediate supervisor.

This is the dominant mode of organization among large organizations, with most corporations, governments, and organized religions using it. Structuring organizations in this way is useful partly because it can reduce the communication overhead by limiting information flow; this is also its major limitation.

In practice, the complexity of an organization’s structure is often proportional to its size and its geographic dispersal. A flat management structure is generally possible only in smaller organizations or individual units within larger organizations. When they reach a critical size, they can retain a streamlined structure but cannot keep a completely flat manager-to-staff relationship without impacting productivity.