Organization

In the Middle Ages, juries in continental Europe were used to determine the law according to consensus among local notables.

Parliamentary procedure, such as Robert's Rules of Order, helps prevent committees from engaging in lengthy discussions without reaching decisions.

The pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline talks about functioning as this type of organization in this external article from The Guardian.

One hierarchy is "functional" and assures that each type of expert in the organization is well-trained, and measured by a boss who is a super-expert in the same field.

This arrangement is often associated with the basis that there are enough to imagine a real pyramid, if there are not enough stone blocks to hold up the higher ones, gravity would irrevocably bring down the monumental structure.

In the social and political sciences in general, an "organization" may be more loosely understood as the planned, coordinated, and purposeful action of human beings working through collective action to reach a common goal or construct a tangible product.

These elements and their actions are determined by rules so that a certain task can be fulfilled through a system of coordinated division of labor.

From an economic point of view, markets and organizations are alternative coordination mechanisms for the execution of transactions.

In the absence of sufficient personal competence, a manager may be confronted by an emergent leader who can challenge his role in the organization and reduce it to that of a figurehead.

It follows that whoever wields personal influence and power can legitimize this only by gaining a formal position in the hierarchy, with commensurate authority.

Each employee receives a salary and enjoys a degree of tenure that safeguards him from the arbitrary influence of superiors or of powerful clients.

The higher his position in the hierarchy, the greater his presumed expertise in adjudicating problems that may arise in the course of the work carried out at lower levels of the organization.

It is this bureaucratic structure that forms the basis for the appointment of heads or chiefs of administrative subdivisions in the organization and endows them with the authority attached to their position.

[8] In contrast to the appointed head or chief of an administrative unit, a leader emerges within the context of the informal organization that underlies the formal structure.

His need to identify with a community that provides security, protection, maintenance, and a feeling of belonging continues unchanged from prehistoric times.

Their personal qualities, the demands of the situation, or a combination of these and other factors attract followers who accept their leadership within one or several overlay structures.

Instead of the authority of position held by an appointed head or chief, the emergent leader wields influence or power.

Power is a stronger form of influence because it reflects a person's ability to enforce action through the control of a means of punishment.