An Alternative View of Organisations

We can gain a different view of organisational types when we look at the work of Henry Mintzberg (Structure in Fives - Designing Effective Organisations.) He divides organisations into five groups, the sizes of which can differ depending on the type of organisation and the functions that it performs. His groupings are:-

• The Operating Core - the people who perform the basic work of producing the products and rendering the services. In ELT organisations, these are the teachers and tutorial staff.

• The Strategic Apex - the person or group of people who are in a direct supervisory role over the operating core. In ELT institutions, this is the Director or Head of faculty in a university, for example. It could also be the Director, Financial Controller and Head of Marketing.

• The Middle Line -a hierarchy of authority between the operating core and the strategic apex. This can consist both of managers of operators and managers of managers. This divides workers into those who do the basic work and those who administer it. This is where Directors of Studies or Heads of Departments fall.

• The Technostructure - this group is formed of analysts who standardise the work done. This group falls outside the connected group of strategic apex, middle line and operating core, and is outside that hierarchy of line authority.

There is here a second administrative division of labour - between those who do or supervise the work, and those who standardise it. In ELT institutions, this department tends to be very small, mainly concerned with accounts and planning.

• Support Staff - staff units who add a different dimension or set of services to the services provided by the operating core. In ELT institutions, this group could be represented by a cafeteria, a bookshop, or a self-access centre, for example.

In Mintzberg’s diagram, shown here, the operatingcore at the base is joined tothe strategic apex at thetop by the middle line.The technostructure andsupport staff are off to theside to indicate that theyare separate from the mainline of authority andinfluence the operatingcore only indirectly.

He goes on to describe five different “structural configurations”, under the headings of simple structure, machine bureaucracy, professional bureaucracy, divisionalized form and adhocracy. These can be further detailed in that each configuration is led or pulled by one of its parts. The breakdown is described thus:

Simple structure - the strategic apex pulls towards centralisation and thus retains control over decision making. It achieves this when direct supervision is relied on for co-ordination.

Machine bureaucracy - the technostructure pulls for standardisation, particularly of work processes. designing and regulating work processes is the raison d’être of the technostructure. This can be seen clearly if we consider mechanisms such as quality control.

Professional bureaucracy - the members of the operating core seek to minimise the influence of the administrators, managers as well as analysts, over their work. When they succeed they work relatively autonomously, achieving the necessary co-ordination through standardisation of skills. The operators exert a pull for professionalism, i.e. reliance on outside training that enhances their skills

Divisionalised form - the middle line seek autonomy, but must achieve it by drawing power down from the strategic apex and, if necessary up from the operating core. They want to split the structure into market-based units that can control their own decisions.

Adhocracy - the members of the organisation are autonomous but collaboration is called for in decision-making, due to the expertise of those members. In this configuration, the organisation is structured into work constellations to which power is decentralised selectively. Co-ordination between the constellations is arranged by mutual adjustment.

The structure which most closely parallels that of many ELT institutions is theprofessional bureaucracy, so it is worth examining this structure in a little moredetail.

Mintzberg describes it as follows:- “ the professional bureaucracy relies for coordinationon the standardisation of skills and its associated design parameter, training and indoctrination. It hires duly trained and indoctrinated specialists - professionals - for the operating core, and then give them considerable control over their own work.”

The diagram for the professional bureaucracy, according to Mintzberg’s models, is shown below.

By “indoctrination” here, Mintzberg does not imply anything sinister. Rather he is talking about the process of familiarising staff members with the ways of operating and reacting within a particular organisation which may be distinct to that organisation. We have all experienced the change of systems and approaches which occur from workplace to workplace, and which manifest themselves in issues such as a “dress code”, the code of professional conduct which some institutions apply, or an unspoken set of guidelines as to what is appropriate in a given situation. McDonalds, with its precisely defined trainingprogramme for employees and senior staff, is a clear example of Mintzberg’s use of “indoctrination.”

Features of the Professional Bureaucracy

The professional works independently of his colleagues, but closely with the clients she serves. Teachers have the autonomy to make their own decisions about how they work in the classroom, generally speaking. (although there are exceptions, depending on the nature of the organisation.)They may need to consult and liaise with colleagues and Heads of Departments as to the content of the syllabus, but the decision as to how they teach new language is generally left to their professional judgement. The liaison is informed by the common understanding the professionals have by virtue of their shared training andexperience. Listening to any two colleagues making decisions about who will teach what in a shared class could lead the uninformed to imagine that their classes will be either book-bound or vague. Comments such as “If you do page 53 and 54, I’ll do a fluency activity to practise that aspect of Present Perfect and a bit more on the vocab. section” are not uncommon. Observation of that lesson would paint a very different picture, however - the teachers, on the basis of their shared professional knowledge and experience, can present a polished and varied lesson around this rather dry outline. They also trust each other’sjudgement, which is another feature of the professional bureaucracy.

But for all professionals, although the “procedures” may be the same, the range and variety of the client groups mean that ingenuity and flair is called for to satisfy the clients’ needs. The same approach cannot be used willy-nilly. “The pleasure that a good professional experiences in her work is not simply a pleasure in handling difficult matters; it is a pleasure in using a well-stocked kit of well-designed tools to handle problems that are comprehensible in their deep structure but unfamiliar in their detail.” (Simon, “The New Science of Management Design”).

In a professional bureaucracy, there are often two parallel systems at work – a democratic, bottom-up system for the professionals and a bureaucratic and top down system for the support staff. If you compare the structures which operate between teachers, Senior teachers and Directors of Studies against the structure in the accounting department of an organisation, then clear differences may well emerge. Both systems are appropriate for the staff that work within them – and attempts to apply a more bottom-up and democratic approach within the (of necessity) carefully structured and carefully controlled accounts department would do the organisation little good. It is not very helpful to have a department which is participative and free-ranging in its division of responsibilities if theelectricity bill does not get paid on time as a result of this policy. The professional bureaucracy, as defined, is a very “modern” one. “It is democratic, disseminating its power directly to its workers (at least those of them who are professionals).And it provides them with extensive autonomy, freeing them even of the need to co-ordinate closely with their peers, and all the pressures and politics that entails.” (Mintzberg, ibid.)