Reference no: EM13306204

One page response APA style please.

Enhancing organizational efficiency and effectiveness in large organizations can be accomplished by wisely grouping activities in such way as to avoid overlapping, reducing redundancy and to enhance cooperation, communication and the ease of managerial coordination and control (Simon, 1973). Also emphasizing the efficiency factor, Cremer (1980) sees an organizational structure as the grouping of functions into units to obtain the most efficient coordination between related functions. Specific to a large organization, this grouping of activities come to existence usually either in the incipient organizational designing stage, or some time later, through decentralization and reorganization. In the first situation, designing a large organizational structure which is able to maximize efficiency of its processes, presupposes envisioning organizational goals in the context of environmental obstacles, followed by a judiciously division of organization in units, departments, and teams. In the second situation, when administrative organizations become too large and too complex to be managed, the measure of decentralization is a must (Cremer, 1980). A political-correct description of reorganization is given by Arnold (1974), who said that "the propositions that administrative organization should be structured by like functions and purpose, that overlapping functions should be minimized, and that control should be unified, lie with every proposal for reorganization" (Arnold, 1974).

At a theoretical level, the idea is not complicated at all: the more layers there are in the chain of command, the more distant the management is from the realities that it should be aware of; by fractioning the organization in manageable-size and complementary divisions, the management has a better chance to control the accomplishment of organizational goals.Too often, in large organizations the individual voices are not being heard and the sense of futility and of not being able to make a difference is common. This is why, through reorganization and grouping activities in a coherent functional way, it ensures that these individual voices are heard and can make a difference in the bigger scheme; this is how individuals can be motivated to join the organization, remain in it, and effectively contribute to organizational goals; after all, "a happy employee is a productive employee" (Simon, 1973).

Peri Arnold (1974) takes the grouping/reorganization concept to a higher administrative level, and assigning it to an early-administrative historical context, he gives it a richer meaning. Arguing that a President's political efficiency ultimately lies in his ability to manage the elements of structure, personnel, budgetary, and other systems of the Executive Branch, Arnold analyzes President Hoover's attempt to streamline and improve efficiency of (his) Administration and the clash with the big politics. Emphasizing the administration-politics juxtaposition, Arnold makes an interesting connection relevant to our assignment, stating that "the fundamental logic of administrative reorganization has been the tenets of administrative orthodoxy" (Arnold, 1974). So, having as a stepping stone the efforts of the early reform movement which managed to implement the merit system and sought an increased efficiency in administration, the administrative reorganization represents a hope and a "promise of the performance yet to come" (Vogelsang-Coombs and Cummins, 1999, p. 148). Fast-forwarding past more than 100 reorganizations attempts since Hoover's ill-fated one, Vogelsang-Coombs and Cummins discuss about the faith in reorganization that many American administrations had so far. Moving over its proclaimed purpose of improving the overall efficiency of the administrative act, the authors do not accept the allegation that "the government isn't working", and argue that the reorganization is a costly and a largely inefficient product of a political leadership whose only intent is to consolidate the balance of power in President's favor (Vogelsang-Coombs and Cummins, 1999, p. 149). Well, seeing it from this perspective, the reorganization/grouping of activities helps to attain program objectives, more specifically President's agenda.