Mintzberg's configurations
The five parts of an organisation, the five coordination mechanisms and Mintzberg's five configurations: recognising the key part and the mechanism of each.
- 26 cards
- 4 topics
- Free
The outline, topic by topic
Each topic is weighted the way the exam weighs it.
- Concepts
- Questions
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- Scenarios
A few cards from the deck
Technostructure: what is it?
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The analysts who design, plan and standardise other people's work without doing it themselves: methods, planning, management control.
It differs from the support staff: it shapes how others work, whereas the support staff provides an indirect service, such as payroll or the canteen.
A group sets each subsidiary a margin target and leaves it free to choose its methods. Which coordination mechanism is at work?
- Standardisation of outputs
- Standardisation of work processes
- Direct supervision
- Standardisation of skills
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Standardisation of outputs
Only the expected result is fixed, not how to reach it: this is the coordination of the divisionalised form. Standardising processes would mean imposing the methods.
The … is the chain of managers that links the strategic apex to the operating core.
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The middle line is the chain of managers that links the strategic apex to the operating core.
It passes orders down and sends information up. In the divisionalised form, it becomes the key part.
Support staff: what is it?
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The units that give the organisation indirect services outside its main flow of production: payroll, catering, legal advice, public relations.
It is not the middle line: these units command nobody in the production flow. They sit beside it.
A law firm hires a director who imposes on each lawyer a step-by-step, timed procedure for handling cases. The lawyers resist and two partners leave. What is the most likely cause?
- Mutual adjustment between lawyers has become too weak
- The firm lacks a technostructure large enough to train them
- The director's direct supervision is not strong enough
- A law firm coordinates through skills, not through imposed processes
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A law firm coordinates through skills, not through imposed processes
Trained professionals draw their autonomy from their knowledge. A detailed procedure from above is the tool of the machine bureaucracy: applied here, it only produces rejection.