The Hierarchical Flat Structure Information Technology Essay

I been ask to research and explain the difference between hierarchical and flat structures, also explain how information flows and communication in organisations. I also have to find a real business example of one of these structures and explain it.

Hierarchical structure is an organisational structure which formed or produces the fundamental idea of goal and supports. This involves each individual employee on completing their jobs to from a structure on the subject of to the fundamental idea. There are many organisational structures to choose from the most popular one is the hierarchical organisational structure. It’s widely known for its top-down structure as shown.

As you can see on the structure it shows each employee’s role within the organisation and their relationship with the other employees. This usually start with the heights ranked employees within the organisation, as the structure makes its way down you can see some employee may have numerous of employee’s to work with directly under them. The Hierarchical organisation is often tall and has many levels depending on the relationship with the other employees in the organisation, which get wider when moving down the structure.

The advantages of having a hierarchical structure is you know what responsibility you have in the organisation as well as effective use of their jobs to their other employees. The employee’s will know who to report to and how it will escalate. This also identifies the passageway for their promotion and which employee’s are very loyal to their department within the organisation.

The disadvantages of having a hierarchical structure is communication on varies department can be poor particularly horizontal communication. Various departments are able to make decisions which will only benefit them instead of the whole business the reason could be rivalry in each department.

Hierarchical Flat structure

Hierarchical flat structure is also known as horizontal organisation. This is a level where there are just staffs and managers involved making this a small level of structure. In this organisation the most well trained employees are concerned to make the decision. This flat structure is mostly use be small organisation or a large organisation with small amount of staffs in there department. On the other hand, when these organisations started to expand and grow the organisation will develop into a hierarchical structure, which in generally makes most of the large organisations started using flat structure from the beginning.

Taking into consideration when using flat structure the decision making process engages most of the employees making this result into a more manageable organisation to run. The reason for this is that the flat structure makes the staff and mangers interact on a regular basis, there for this making the employees in this organisation to bond more with each other.

The advantages of having a hierarchical flat structure are that you the employee can communication between management and workers. This could lead to better team spirit and easier decision making.

The disadvantages of having a hierarchical structure are employees may have more than one manager to deal with. The other one is the role of each department or employee could be undecided and become into their job roles of others.

http://www.hsc.csu.edu.au/ind_tech/ind_study/organisation/Organisation_Management_of_Ind.html

Explain a real business structure

Look at the appendix to see a lager diagram of this structure

I chosen to use this business structure this shows a good example of FIFA employees and which department each employees work and how it information escalate to each departments which I will explain. As you can see the president on this organisation is Joseph S. Blatter he has two staff working under him one of them is his Executive Office (Christine Maria Botta) and the other is the General Secretary (Jerome Valcke) they report to him. It then carries on with the General Secretary he has two employees working under him which is Communications & Public Affairs (a.i Nicolas Maingot) and Legal Affairs (Marco Villiger) they report to him. Then the Member Associations & Development (Thierry Regenass), Finance & Administration (Markus Kattner), Competitions ( Mustapha Fahmy) and TV & Marketing all report to the Communications / Public Affairs and Legal Affairs. The HR & Services (Christina Collenberg) report to the Finance & Administration and the TV (Niclas Ericson) reports to the TV & Marketing which makes the Marketing ( Thierry Well) report to the TV. http://www.fifa.com/aboutfifa/federation/administration/organisationchart.htm

Compare both structures

The hierarchical structure is more for higher organisation (tall) were as flat structure is more for small organization (flat) the reason for this is the hierarchical structure has many employees working within the organisation meaning it will have many levels of authority meaning having many job roles on the structure which will make this structure tall. We’re as the flat structure is the opposite from the hierarchical structure because of the fewer employees they have in the organisation which makes this a less levels of authority meaning have lesser job roles in the structure which will make this structure flat.

Information flow in Organisation

Information flow is well known in an organisation which I will discuss. The main area in information flow is communication because every employees handle the information in a different why or manner. There are three whys communication flow in a organisation which are

Downward communication (superior and his subordinates in an organization)

Upward communication (lower levels of a hierarchy to the upper levels)

Lateral or Horizontal communication (co-workers in the same department or at different levels)

Downward communication is one of the main communications especially in organisation which includes instructions, circulars, orders, letters handbooks, memos, reports, bulletins, annual, and loudspeaker.

Upward communication this includes discussing work related problems, giving a plan or an idea for development and talking about your feelings about the job and co-workers.

Lateral or Horizontal communication this includes management of tasks, giving information about goals of the organisation, finding a solution on personal or work related problems and making a rapport.

Management Issues

Management issues can affect the organisation in many ways. This can be informally resolved by gathering information and analysing to identify the issues or having a discussion with the volunteer concerned. This can be resolved by taking action and find a solution to sort the issue to avoid things escalating. There are many issues that can occur in an organisation one of them could be internal issue and the other could be external these issues can affect some level of the organisation such as the department that client may work for or may involve the service or stakeholder (CEO). This is when you act on the management method to solve the problem which I explained after identify the problem you can then find out wither it was internal or external which will guide you to detect the cause of the issues.

Organisation Issues

In an organisation will have a lot of issues such as as informal organisational culture, policies -procedures, and communication. These are the main issues that occur in an organisation. The way round it is to Identifying and addresses the issues as soon as possible before it occurs or escalates. After solving an issue you will then need to address the issue to the employees so that if it occurs in the further you or the staff will know how to approach it. Discuses the issue is also helpful idea for the organisation so that you and the staff can come up with a better solution than the last one for the future.

Technologies Issues

Most organisations has accesses to new or old technologies of example computers, printers, severs, fax and telephones etc. These equipments have a huge effect in any organisation now days because of the quality of work it produces. This means if the organisation has any issues in this area it will have a huge problem. These problems could be lost of data or having to update your systems/ software to a new version or keep up with the technology market. The way to solve the issues is to consider which systems needs changing and keeping also checking the market to see how long the systems will last for so that the organisation will not lose out on income in the future.

Managing Information System

Information system is a key system for every business. This involves different types of system which provides information to the employees or customers this make employee jobs easier to do this include management information system which I will explain. This system helps any origination to archive its goal.

Management information system is a mixture between hardware and software uses. These tools are used to generate information automatically. Managing information is used within an organisation so that each employee can access and amend their information. In most location the information system mostly runs behind the scene, which makes some users in the organisation hardly notices the why the system runs.

In an organisation a computer is use to process orders which consider being a management information system the reason for this is that the computer takes instructions from the users and processes related orders. There are many other examples of managing information system and an excellent example is the internet (support websites) because it supports the company in their product in which automatically give information back to the end users after some information is put in by the customer.

Management information systems normally contain their own team of employees to maintain the systems which includes apply latest technologies inside the company. These position are regularly extremely particular, this makes the team of people to focus on other areas in the computer system.

Explore & discuss Marketing

Marketing is the Maine structure for success in an organisation without it the business will fall, this involves many task such as selling the company products, services to customers and promoting organisation/products through advertising. When these tasks develop throughout the company it helps them to build a strong customer relationships which will then create value for their customers and make profit for the organisation. Marketing is manly use to identifying customers making sure every customer is satisfied so they can remain in their business. With the customers being the centre of attention in marketing structure this will have many department roles and the main one is marketing management (business management).

In this marketing area to keep in track with their investments such as launch of new products or when to depart the new product the etc. The company needs to do sales forecasting this is important to the company because it covers the Employment levels required, Promotional mix and Investment in production capacity. There are two types of forecasting one of them is called Macro which is for forecasting markets in total and the other one Micro which is detailed unit sales forecasts.

Some company do primary research to see if the customers think about their product and services. It intended to answer parasitic question on the company survives which will be helpful to the business to improve on. These come in main methods like face-to-face interviews, online surveys, Questionnaires and Focus groups and consumer panels.

Secondary research is usually the most common research method that organisation uses in this area the employees look thought and get together people information/data which could be from the primary research, Websites, books and newspapers etc. This research is the simplest one to-do and low-cost than the rest of the ones I discussed. This research will help the company’s to establish the right data but not as accurate as the primary research. 

Explore & discuss E-Commerce

E-commerce (Electronic commerce) this is known for buying and selling products or providing services to their customers they do this by electronic systems such as the Internet (websites) or other networks systems. This is as big as it gets for information and work related usage because of it types of websites you can use on the World Wide Web one of the most impressive thigh about e-commerce is that everything gets send electronic making life more easier for example e-mail sending electronic mails . This also it helps people purchase or sell products on these systems such as online shopping (Tesco), eBay etc.

E-commerce helps to keep in check with their clients in this case which is helps the company and information that the company provides to the client which helps the customer’s needs a good example is online banking.

There are many tapes of e-commerce as shown

B2B (business to business) when two businesses purchases each other products so they for example manufacturer and a wholesaler.

C2C (customer to customer) this is when a customer purchase or sell products to another customer (eBay)

B2C (business to customer) this is for organisation to sell or download their products to an customer (ITunes / Tesco)

P2P (peer to peer) this is when users share their files to each other.

Explore & discuss E-Business

E-business is a function of information and application that help businesses to improve the productivity, mostly fall into internet technologies uses. This allows organisation to connect thought the internet internal or external. Theses method can satisfy the customer’s needs and hopes so that the company can achieve improvements in the business recital.

Electronic business involved e-business in there system one example will be websites this is the most universal one that business uses there are many well know e-business technologies to use like wireless technology, CRM (customer relationship management), mobiles and social media etc which help employees to work less harder.

There are many e-business solutions that can be available to use.

Effective E-marketing

E- commerce

CRM

Online meeting tools and shares workspaces.

Internal factors that affect success

Internal factors are issues that happening inside an organisation environment this normally affects Suppliers Distributors, Employees, Wholesalers, Shareholders and Partners etc. There are many ways these problems can take place one of them is from the management decisions like what kinds of business the corporation is in and what quality of services/ stock sold is it providing. The goal of internal factors is to prevent these problems from happing so that it can’t affect the business. There are many ways it can be controlled by the organisation and one of them is

Recruitment Policy: this involves the company system to develop or carry out plan and actions through filling up available job with most excellent experience people.

Human resource: this provides human power of the establishment such as the number of workforce to be employed and what requirement they must acquire.

Cost: the organisation will employer lower cost employer to work for them.

External factors that affect success

External factors are issues that occur outside the control of the organisation opposite from internal factors. All business will be affective by this because they cannot control what happens outside the organisation. There are two types of external factors in a business organization one is external micro-environment and other is external Macro-environment.

The macro-environment this has trends and forces which may not control the relations that a corporation has with its customers, mediators and suppliers this will then involve macro-environmental which will then make changes so that they can adapt to nature of these relations.

External Macro-environment includes: Political and Legal Factors, Economic factors, Technology, Competition, Demographics of the population and Social and Cultural Factors.

External Micro- environment includes: Agents, Suppliers, Warehouse, Wholesalers, Transporters, Distributors, Market and Retailers.

Data Processing Cycle

Data processing cycle is when a Device/computer collected data it will then process the data so it can then convert the data into useful information. The data is processed constantly in until it achieved the right result.

The most important action of data processing is it planning this has three basic actions which are Input, Processing and Output.

Input: this collects and process data which then transforms the data into a form that the computer can recognise. This is the main step since the output result depends on the input data so that can be carry out the next action available.

Processing: once finishing the input step the processing comes in so that it can process the output to work. This step is to gather the required result so that it can help the output to perform it task.

Output: once finishing the processing step the output comes in this is the final step. After the processing get the right result the output makes the data store on to a media so that it can be used when needed.

All these data appears in every item it normally appears on thy back side of an item it comes in black lines (bar code).This help organisations to know were there products is going and if they revised their products, where the product is made/manufacture, and to see if the product has the right data.