Learning Outcomes for Organizing

The following is a sample list of Course Learning Outcomes for Organizing topic in an Engineering Management Course. They will be measured in all activities within the related section.

Course Learning Outcomes for Organizing

At the end of this topic, you should be able to

• Describe Organizing function of management
• Classify different forms of organizing
• Explain Advantages of Sole Proprietorship
• Explain Disadvantages of Sole Proprietorship
• Explain Partnership
• Explain Advantages of Partnership
• Explain Advantages of Partnership
• Explain Corporations type of Organization
• Explain Advantages of Corporations
• Explain Disadvantages of Corporations
• Explain Cooperatives
• Explain Virtual Organizations
• State the steps in Organizing
• Explain Organizing by Key activities
• Explain how to identify key activities
• Classify different Departmentalization types
• Explain Functional Departmentalization
• Explain Product Departmentalization
• Explain Geographic Departmentalization
• Explain Mixed Departmentalization
• Explain Cross-functional teams
• Describe span of control
• Explain advantages of narrow span of control
• Explain disadvantages of narrow span of control
• Explain advantages of wide span of control
• Explain disadvantages of wide span of control
• Explain factors determining effective spans
• Explain conditions affecting a manager to effectively supervise people
• Classify Production types in Production Companies
• Understand Impact of Information Revolution on Organizations

What does organizing involve?

Organizing involves following:-
1. Identification and Classification of Required Activities
2. Grouping of Activities to Obtain Objectives
3. Assignment of a manager to each group with the authority
4. Provision for Coordination horizontally and vertically

1. Identification and Classification of Required Activities

Activities, or business processes are set of interrelated activities which take business inputs, transform them to outputs by consuming, adding values. This process of transformation is affected by controls (policies, procedures, regulations etc) and realized by means of resources available (human resources, equipment, capital etc). In modern businesses, we have thousands of activities. The first step in organizing is to identify and classify required activities to achieve organizational objectives set in the planning function of management. A wise manager will start first with key activities. (See Effective Organizing)

2. Grouping of Activities to Obtain Objectives

Similar activities are grouped in this step. After grouping, we have activities as such production activities, design activities, marketing activities, sales activities, financial activities etc. When grouping the activities, the contribution of a certain activity toward the achievement of organizational objectives and significance, and interrelations with other activities are considered.

3. Assignment of a manager to each group with the authority
A specific management level is assigned for every group of activity from first-level, middle level, and top level management. Then an appropriate manager style is assigned for each group. Please note that at this step there is no human resource assignment. We only assign the manager as a styleship to effectively and efficiently manage a certain group of activity.

4. Provision for Coordination horizontally and vertically

At the last step, the relationships as horizontal and vertical are defined between different activity groups. The responsibilities, delegations, authorities should be well defined in this step.

Effective Organizing

Effective organizing must first consider basic mission and long-range objectives established for the organization and the strategy. There are a lot of activities to be considered in organizing. A good manager starts with first the most inportant activities for success (aka key activities).

For an effective organizing, we must find these key activities. How do we find these key activities then?

You can ask three questions to identify key activities

1. In what area is excellence required to obtain the company’s objectives?
2. In what areas would lack of performance endanger the results?
3. What are the values that are truly important to us in this company?

Pareto analysis is a widely known method for such a process. Pareto analysis will be explained in another entry.

Organizing Function of Engineering Management

As we know, the most important function of management is planning.

A key issue in accomplishing the goals identified in the planning process is structuring the work of the organization. Organizations are groups of people, with ideas and resources, working toward common goals. The purpose of the organizing function is to make the best use of the organization's resources to achieve organizational goals. Output of organizing process is a set of organizational charts, organizational units. This process is also known as departmentalization.

Organizing can be viewed as the activities to collect and configure resources in order to implement plans in a highly effective and efficient fashion. Organizing is a broad set of activities, and often considered one of the major functions of management. Therefore, there are a wide variety of topics in organizing.

This blog will include experiences, notes, learning resources about organizing function of management, organizations, types of organizations, ways to organize effectively in terms of especially engineering organizations.