WHAT YOU MEAN BY ORGANIZATION...
Would you describe each of them as an "organisation"? Are a family and a bank sufficiently similar for each to be called an organisation? Like many problems of definition, it is, perhaps, easier to say what is not an organisation, rather than what is. However, one feature that probably excludes a family, or a crowd, from the definition is the need for an organisation at the simplest level to be organised! Does a crowd have a sufficient level of organised relationships between the individuals of which it is made up to qualify as an organisation? Probably not!
Towards a Definition of Organisations
These "things" that are, generally, called organisations seem to have a number of common characteristics – at least, as far as many of the writers on the subject are concerned. For example, Porter, Lawler and Hackman, 1975, identify the following:
1. they are composed of individuals and groups;
2. they exist in order to try to achieve certain goals;
3. they involve specialisation, and require rational co-ordination and control;
4. they have some degree of permanence.
First of all, then, an organisation is, essentially, a social entity. It involves two or more people – but the actual number and the way in which they are organised into groups vary from one organisation to another.
In the second place, it is generally agreed that organisations can be distinguished from other social groupings by virtue of the fact that they exist to achieve certain goals. This is, obviously, a matter of degree, for not all members may know – or agree on – what the goals are. The more explicit and specific the goals of a social grouping are, the more likely it is to be considered an organisation.
The third characteristic of an organisation is that it involves specialisation and requires co- ordination. The activities of people are organised into specialised groupings. Labour is divided up in ways that are believed likely to facilitate the achievement of organisational goals. Yet, this splitting-up creates a need for mechanisms to co-ordinate and put back together the various specialised activities. Once again, we must remember that the degree of specialisation and the ways of achieving co-ordination vary a great deal between different organisations. For example, an organisation with a small number of members probably only has a limited degree of specialisation; thus, it only requires relatively simple co-ordination, often provided by the owner alone. In large organisations, specialisation and co-ordination are likely to be much more sophisticated.
A fourth point is that organisations have some degree of permanence, in the sense that they usually have more than a momentary existence – or, even, an existence tied to the achievement of one objective. Occasionally, organisations are created (such as a pressure group to resist the building of an airport in a particular location) which have only limited objectives and, once these are achieved, the organisation will cease to exist. On the other hand, some organisations which start out with similar limited objectives continue to exist after they have been achieved, as they develop new objectives. We can, therefore, come to a general definition as follows:
Organisations comprise two or more people engaged in a systematic and co- ordinated effort, persistently over a period of time, in pursuit of goals which convert resources into goods and/or services which are needed by consumers. Additionally, the organisation can be seen as having an operational core composed of workers actually producing the goods or services (focussed on the technical task) and a management hierarchy concerned with formulating objectives, developing strategies, implementing plans and providing co-ordination. In between will be various groups of support workers such as human resource management, quality control and maintenance.
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