Highlight the major characteristics, similarities and differences of Machine and Professional Organizations that described by Mintzberg.
...hly specialized in horizontal dimension (Mintzberg, 1983); solicitors in law firms are an example. Training and Indoctrination Mintzberg (1983) defines training as the process by which job-related skills and knowledge are taught, whereas indoctrination as the process by which organizational norms are acquired. Mintzberg (1983) describes that the operating tasks of Machine Organizations are simple and repetitive, generally requiring a minimum of skill and little training, often taking only hours and usually in-house, for examples, cashiers of supermarkets and food processing in fast food restaurants, whereas the Professional Organizations are complicated, requiring highly trained skills and knowledge, often over a period of years and outside the organizations. A typical example will be the years of study in university and on-the-job training of doctors in hospitals. Behavior Formalization Behavior Formalization refers to the standardization of work processes by imposition of operating instructions, job descriptions, rules, regulations, etc. (Mintzberg, 1979). Furthermore, if the organization members are capable of exercising excellent judgment and self-control, formalization will be low; if they are incapable of making their own decisions and requiring lots of rules to guide their behaviors, formalization will be high (Hall, 1996). Machine Organizations are obviously high in behavior formalization. This is resulted from standardization of work processes, highly rationalized work flow, workers are left with little discretion in their work, rules and regulations permeate the entire organization (Mintzberg, 1983). On the contrary, Professional Organizations are low in behavior formalization because they rely for their operating tasks on highly trained professionals and skilled people must be given considerable control over their own work (Mintzberg, 1983) and professionals need the autonomy to do their jobs effectively (Robbins and Barnwell, 2002). We can imagine that if solicitors in law firms are formalized with behavior, they can hardly apply their knowledge and skills in their professional jobs. Grouping The various bases for grouping, such as by work process, product, client, area, etc, can be reduced to two fundamentals of Function Performed or Market Served (Mintzberg, 1979). Machine Organizations are function performed as a result of grouping operators into units that deal with distinct part of work flow (Mintzberg, 1983). Undoubtedly, a credit card centre is function performed such as Data Capture Department, Customer Services Department, Credit Department, etc. Professional Organizations are however, at the same time, both function performed and market served; this is because clients are categorized, or categorize themselves, in terms of the functional specialists who serve them (Mintzberg, 1983). Hospitals are both function performed and market served; it has Nursing Department, Administration Department, Purchasing Department, Engineering Department, etc while it diversifies its market by providing various kinds of medical services towards different customers. Unit Size Mintzberg (1979) defines unit size as the number of positions or units contained in a single unit. Both Machine and Professional Organizations appear to have a very large operating core to carry out operating tasks; the unit size of both is simultaneously wide at bottom and narrow elsewhere (Mintzberg, 1983). We may simply compare the unit size of McDonald with different hospitals; both are wide at bottom and narrow elsewhere. Planning and Control Systems Planning and control systems are used to standardize outputs; they are divided into Action Planning Systems and Performance Control Systems (Mintzberg, 1979). Considerable power in Machine Organizations rest with mangers of Strategic Apex and the only ones to share informal power are the analysts of technostructure; hence, the process of strategy making is clearly a top-down affair with emphasis on action planning (Mintzberg, 1983). The situations in Professional Organizations are different. The professional work processes are too complex to be standardized and the outputs of professional work cannot easily be measured; Professional Organizations are thus cannot rely extensively on systems to plan and control them (Mintzberg, 1983) such as the work of professors in universities. Liaison Devices Liaison devices are mechanisms that facilitate mutual adjustment between position and units and are generally used where work is horizontally specialized, complex and highly independent at the same time (Mintzberg, 1979). A sharp differentiation between units at the same level of hierarchy and the general emphasis on formal communication and vertical reporting relationship resulting a minimal use of liaison devices in Machine Organizations, for examples, we can hardly think of any liaison devices used by McDonald, while liaison devices are not common in the operating core of Professional Organizations but they are important design parameters in the middle line administrative work (Mintzberg, 1979) like the situation in hospitals, integration managers, task forces or matrix structures as liaison devices are found in the middle line administrative work. Decentralization Mintzberg (1979) discusses centralization and decentralization in terms of power to make decisions and such decision-making power can be dispersed vertically and horizontally. Machine Organizations require many analysts to design and maintain their systems of standardization and the organization’s dependence on these systems to function, these analysts, key part of the organization – technostructure, for example, the department head of a credit card centre who writes the Standard Operating Procedures, gain certain informal power resulted a limited horizontal decentralization whereas the formal power still rests vertically centralized at the top (Mintzberg, 1979). Professional Organizations such as KPMG and Price Waterhouse Coopers are highly decentralized both vertically and horizontally. This is because a great deal of power over the operating work rests at the professional operating core (Mintzberg, 1983). Furthermore, their work is too complex to be supervised by managers or standardized by analysts and their services are typically in great demand; giving the professionals mobility and enable them with considerable autonomy in their work (Mintzberg, 1983). Situational Elements Situational Elements refer to the Age and Size, Technical Systems, Environment and Power (Mintzberg, 1979). We will be going through all these elements for both Machine and Professional Organizations in this part. Age and Size According to Mintzberg (1979), the age and size of the organization affect particularly the extent to which its behavior is formalized and its administrative structure elaborated. The age and size of Machine Organizations are typically old and large, this is supported by Mintzberg’s description “The Machine Bureaucracy is typically found in the mature organization, large enough to have the volume of operating work needed for repetition and standardization, and old enough to have been able to settle on the standards it wishes to use“ (Mintzberg, Structure in Fives: Designing Effective Organizations, 1983, p.171). Toyota Motor Corporation is a very good example, it was established in 1937 and it has totally more than 264 thousand employees all around the world nowadays. Age and size in Professional Organizations are less significant than the Machine Organizations. Larger Professional Organizations, for example, hospitals, may tend to be more formalized but this does not preclude the existence of small Professional Organizations, for example, CPA firms, or the young ones (Mintzberg, 1983). The major difference in age and size between Machine and Professional Organizations is that Machine Organizations have a lengthy start up time because standards need to be worked out internally, whereas Professional Organizations, in contrast, skilled employees such as Accountants, Doctors, Lawyers, Professors, bring the standards into the organizations with them when they join and thus there is only little start up time (Mintzberg,...