Organizational Structure: Behavior, Power, and Politics
Daniel Ayala, Monique Gonzalez, Richard Kalkbrenner,
Taekwonda Bowman, and Christopher Lamerson
MGT/311
March 25th, 2013
Richard A. Clemens

Organizational Structure: Behavior, Power, and Politics According to Robbins and Judge (2011), “Organizational culture refers to a system of shared meaning held by members that distinguishes the organization from other organizations” (pg. 520). It is a culture that reflects down from upper management and is the working environment of the organization. Every employee’s personal traits, skills, values, and behaviors are the basis of the culture and the culture allows the employees to complete the tasks necessary for the organization to have success. Whether an organizational structure is starting out for the first time or going through a renovation, a detailed blueprint is crucial to success. For example, a hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, purchases a nearby casino and the hotel staff acquires new responsibilities and tasks as a result of the purchase. Unfortunately, management did not provide the staff with a new organizational structure. As a result of this, employees are experiencing conflict with one another whereas departments are disagreeing and compromising the service and production employees provide for customers. The design of an organization structure covers many components, such as work specialization, chain of command, span of control, centralization, decentralization, ad formalization, and departmentalization. To design an organization structure there are initial decisions management must make. For instance will the organization adopt a simple structure, virtual matrix, bureaucratic or boundryless style? Another initial decision when decision structure is whether the organization will embrace mechanistic or organic model (Robbins & Judge, 2011). Despite the logistical decisions management will make during the development of the organizational structure, reward systems should be equally important in the development process. The reward system will have a significant impact on the organizational culture. Informing employees that particular behaviors and actions will warrant a specific reward is the first step. Also the employees should consider the rewards to be of value and management should extract feedback from employees regarding the value of rewards (Agarwal, 1998). Organizational structure and employee behavior go hand in hand. Not every employee will respect or like the organizational structure but most employees will follow the structure. Organizational structures also can be both beneficial and a liability. An organizational structure is beneficial because it sets the tone for employee behavior. An organization has a specific motto, slogan, or mission statement employees should believe in and follow. This is the backbone of the organization and will assist employees with understanding the company’s functions and purpose along with ensuring the company is productive and able to reach its goals. The organizational structure is a liability because a number of employees may share beliefs and values, such as old policies, techniques, or styles of management causing the organization to fail to progress or advance