Table of Organization

The social organization of institutions for most of the nineteenth century was marked by individualism and casual cooperation. With the emergence of an urban industrial society, organizing people for work or public service required more deliberate and formalized models. German sociologist Max Weber wrote extensively about the importance of rationalization for organizing people for optimal problem solving. Bureaucracy was Weber's optimal rationalization model. The table of organization, or organizational chart, is a graphic representation of an organization's structure—the division of labor, roles, and hierarchy of authority that characterize the formal structure of the organization.

A division of labor breaks the work of the organization into separate jobs, each with a specific set of tasks clearly differentiated from other tasks. The division of labor assumes that the responsibilities of one job are well-defined and can be clearly delineated from the responsibilities of other jobs. Differentiation is aimed at reducing redundancy and interpersonal conflict and increasing efficiency.

Organizations most commonly differentiate their structures vertically and horizontally. Vertical differentiation refers to the number of authority levels in an organization. Authority and power in a bureaucracy are largely centralized at the higher levels of the organization. An organization's vertical coordination involves people at higher levels of the organization coordinating and controlling the actions of people at lower levels of the organization through positional authority and rules. Offices within the hierarchy have clearly defined authority over lower-level offices and are, in turn, supervised by clearly specified higherlevel offices. With responsibilities and authority clearly defined, the system can be coordinated topdown from level to level, with rules and procedures rather than through personal supervision.

Horizontal differentiation is the degree of differentiation among workers at the same level of authority or the number of subtasks required to process raw material or produce a product. Horizontal differentiation breaks tasks into manageable pieces. Lateral coordination of tasks occurs through communication among individuals who work at the same level of authority or engage in the same tasks or subtasks in the organization.

The problem with organizational charts or any graphic representation of organizational structure is that they often fail to represent actual work groups and dynamics. While it is true that organizations may have clearly visible, formal structures, they also have often invisible, informal structures, norms, groups, relationships, and dynamics that are less tangible but highly influential.