What is Organizing? Definition, Objective, Features, Process, Principles, and Importance

Once the organizational plans are made, it is necessary to manage people, resources, and other components of the organization to make plan implementation effective. Such activities are known as organizing. Let’s dive into what comes with organizing.

What is Organizing?

Organizing is the process of dividing and designing the jobs, setting the proper job relation, grouping the jobs to make the units & departments, assigning jobs to employees, allocating resources, and coordinating efforts among the organizational members.

In simple words, organizing is nothing but the managing of people and other organizational resources in order to make the organization’s desired objectives achievement possible. It decides how to best do the organizational activities.

Organizing is the second most important management function following planning and decision-making. It creates the functional structure of the organization required to implement plans and decisions for organizational goal attainment.

It shapes the authority-responsibility relationship in the organization to ensure who has to do what and what decision can be made. This involves designing jobs and defining authority and responsibility relationships. It ensures the implementation of plans and strategies, and the utilization of resources to achieve organizational goals.

Organizing in Nutshell:

• Divides the work to be done into specific jobs and departments.
• Assigns tasks and responsibilities associated with individuals’ careers.
• Coordinates diverse organizational tasks.
• Clusters job into units.
• Establishes relationships among individuals, groups, and departments.
• Establishes formal lines of authority.
• Allocates and deploys organizational resources.

What is the Objective of Organizing?

The main objectives of the organizing function of management can be pointed out below:

• To ensure effective allocation of roles and responsibilities among each organizational member.
• Establish a productive relationship among employees, tasks, groups, departments, units, etc., or in the organization.
• Make effective implementation of made plans and strategies.
• Direct the efforts of all organizational members toward the same objective.
• Effective utilization of resources and ensuring goal achievement.

Characteristics of Organizing

The major features/characteristics associated with organizing are:

Activities Identification

Every organization has definite objectives to achieve. For this, it is essential the organization should realize performing various activities to achieve the objectives is desirable. Identification of such activities to achieve desired objectives is one of the important functions of organizing.

Related: Planning Function of Management

Division of Labor

Works are also assigned to employees based on their specialization. For the effectiveness and timely completion of given tasks division of labor in the workplace is necessary.

Grouping of Activities

Departmentalization is another important aspect that comes with organising. Activities having a similar nature are put into groups or subgroups. This part includes creating departments and specific units that may be a production department, marketing department, procurement department, etc.

Authority-Responsibility Relationship

The sound organizational structure clearly defines authority-responsibility relationships among all the members. Such clarification brings smoothness to the performance. It develops a feeling of self-responsibility among members.

Basis of Coordination

It is the basis of coordination. It is regarded as an essential tool for coordinating efforts among various corporate departments and individuals.

It establishes a formal relationship between the various management levels and promotes communication and cooperation between them.

Performance Evaluation

Evaluation of real performance that is achieved within a set timeframe is another aspect of organizing. It’s crucial to verify the actual work done after the strategy has been implemented.

It makes it easier to compare the actual work done with the estimated amount that was planned, and it encourages corrective action if the actual work done deviates from the estimated amount.

Process of Organizing

It is the process of deciding how best to group organizational elements i.e. functions, responsibilities, and authorities. It consists of activities in which organizational works are divided, organized, and coordinated.

Organizing is a continuous process involving a series of activities as its basic elements. Generally, there are five basic steps for a successful organizing process. They are:

Job Design

The practice of breaking a difficult job down into manageable tasks or activities and assembling related tasks into a job package is called job design. It outlines the obligations a person has at work.

Related: Controlling Function of Management

For this, the organization’s goals must be recognized and clearly stated, and the actions necessary to achieve those goals must also be identified. Jobs must be completed more effectively and efficiently, which requires simplifying processes.

Job Grouping

In this step, similar job activities are grouped into units or departments with some logical arrangements. Such a process is known as departmentalization.

Owners control everything when businesses are small; but, as businesses expand, this becomes nearly impossible. In such circumstances, several managerial positions must be developed, and managers must be hired. Departmentalization can be done on the basis of time to serve, function, product, etc.

Establishing Reporting Relations

After creating the required number of departments for functional specialization, relationships among positions need to be created. It is essential to clarify who needs to report to whom. Normally, lower positions are required to report to subsequently higher positions.

Distributing Authority

Every work position should have a certain level of authority that enables workers to make choices as they complete their tasks. To ensure effective coordination, swift decision-making, and discipline inside the organization, there must be a balance between responsibility and responsibility.

Thus, in the organizing process, the authority should be properly distributed among the job positions. Only required and sufficient authority should be fixed with responsibility.

Coordinating Activities

The process of connecting the operations of multiple divisions within an organization is called coordination. As you are aware, departments are created to promote work specialization.

Coordination of departmental efforts and output is necessary to boost organizational effectiveness and assure the achievement of organizational objectives.

Principles of Organizing

Principles are guidelines that are formulated with the findings of a series of tests and practices. Management experts have propounded a number of principle guidelines for designing the organizational structure. Some basic principles of organizing are mentioned below:

• Unity of Objectives – The goals, and objectives of the organization should be the same for all involved and all should invest their efforts in the same goal achievement.
• Specialization – This principle is also known as the division of labor. Tasks should be given to the employees based on their interests, knowledge, qualification, and skills.
• Span of Control – A supervisor or senior employee should have an appropriate number of subordinates so as to make him control them appropriately.
• Exception – The exception principle states that all managers must make decisions as per their authority level.
• Scalar Chain – There must be a clear and formal relationship between responsibility levels in the organization.
• Unity of Command – There must be a command from only one manager to an employee at a time.
• Delegation of Authority – By this principle, the authority should be delegated according to the need for responsibility.
• Efficiency – It states that there must be efficient management so that the organization achieves efficiency.
• Simplicity – Organizational structure must be as simple as possible so that every member of the company can understand their duties and authority.
• Flexibility – The organization structure must be flexible having provisions for changes in responsibility and authority in case of necessity.
• Balance – The balance principle states that there must be a balance between centralization and decentralization.
• Direction – There should be one objective and one plan for a group of activities having the same objective.
• Continuity – This principle states that organizing should be continued till the existence of the organization.
• Coordination – The manager should strive for a good relationship between employees and departments.

Importance of Organizing

Organizing is the means to ensure effective and efficient organizational goals achievement by establishing authority relationships in the organization. Correctly established organizing function in the organization encourages expansion, promotion, and diversification of business.

The following points justify the importance of organizing functions of management.

Facilitates Specialization

It divides complex work into simple pieces of activities and groups them into a job of homogeneous activities. This helps to accomplish each job with similar skills and experience with minimum effort and greater efficiency.

Defines Responsibility-Authority Relationship

It establishes a clear relationship between authority and responsibility. This indicates that organizing fixes responsibility to various level personnel and assigns decision-making authority to the appropriate position.

This both defends the organization against abuse of power and fosters a sense of personal accountability.

Establishes the Channels of Communication

It allocates job responsibilities into various levels and coordinates into positions. Job positions are logically connected from the top level to the lower level which serves as a chain of command.

Each message created at different levels of management can be transmitted to the desired person or levels through this chain without any interruption.

Best Use of Human Resources

The primary components of an organization that mobilizes additional resources are people. The correct person will always be in the proper position thanks to a sound organizational structure. It also helps to develop human talent and intelligence.

Serves Organizational Growth and Diversification

Organizing helps to establish cooperation and coordination among employees. This reduces duplication and overlapping of responsibilities as a result efforts and resources can be properly utilized for increasing productivity.

Organizing increases the job satisfaction of employees and motivates them to increase organizational output. All these factors help in organizational growth and diversification.

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