The organization is defined as the planned coordination of the activities of a number of people for the achievement of some common, explicit purpose or goal, through division of labor and function, and through a hierarchy of authority and responsibility (Scheme, 1980). Historically, there have been many definitions of organizations, depending on whether they focus on: ; Their size: Seems, Large and Public Sector. (Curran and Stonewort, 1988); ; Their prime beneficiaries: members, shareholders, users, the public. Blab and Scott , 1962 – Mammal, 2003); ; The degree to which they are mechanistic (highly structured organization with centralized policies, rigid hierarchical ranks, a strong emphasis on administration and clear boundaries between departments) or organic (a flattened structure, colleague, rather than command and control relationships as the predominant mode, short lived and flexible administrative systems and mobile departmental boundaries (Burns and
Stalker , 1966); ; Their structure meant as the relationships between employees at vertical and horizontal level (tall or flat/lean, hierarchical, matrix, flexible, virtual) (Leatherwork et al. , 2010). Thinking about a mixed economy such as I-J, organizations can be classified in: ; Public organizations, generally providing essential services such as health, education, social services, policing. They are responsible to central government and those who run them are accountable to the public (Taylor and Wilkinson, 2012).
The nature of their funding (taxpayers) requires them to prove their responsibility with the public none. Their HRS department tend to be large and able to provide HRS specialist support in different areas. Because of the accountability to the public, HRS tend also to be bureaucratic and inflexible. ; Private organizations are those owned by private individuals/families/stakeholders (Taylor and Wilkinson, 2012). These are industrial and commercial companies that respond to the demands of the market and exist to make a profit for their shareholders.
In the private sector, HRS tend to be a small department with more room for innovative strategies. ; Third sector organizations re understood to be non government and non profit. Non distribution of profits to shareholders is a defining feature, as is a degree of volunteerism. They tend to fill in the gaps in areas of state and market deficiencies, and are nowadays growing in global significance (Crampon et al, 2001). They are typically a mix of government funding, gifts, grants and earned Income. Examples of third sector activities are health.
Staff is frequently very mission-focused and gains a lot of Job satisfaction by just being committed to the cause. Large organizations in the third sector are likely to eave specific HRS departments while smaller organizations are unlikely to have specific HRS departments and HRS functions may be tagged’ on to the role of managers or staff more generally (Veneer and Sung, 2009) The nature of organizations and the style used to manage the people in it are strictly related, as the management style highly depends on the particular business.
However, as seen for the definition of organization, the definition of management and its classification have long been debated. At the beginning of 19th century the most important of the classical Management horses was the scientific approach or Tailors which involved breaking down the components of manual tasks in manufacturing environments, timing each movement so that there could be a scientifically proven “best” way to perform each task. Employees could be trained to be ‘first class’ within their Job by their managers. In the ass’s, there was a new approach focused on the “human factor”.
In “The Human Side of Enterprise” by McGregor, he distinguished between: ; Theory X, that adopts the authoritarian view that people normally abhor working and must be forced to work with punishment for failing to meet the objective. These people actually prefer to be directed and lack ambition. ; Theory Y, adopts the participative management style, which operates on the idea that people are inherently motivated to work if they find the Job fulfilling The System Theories focused attention on organizations as ‘systems’ and on the complexity and interdependence of relationships of their inter-related sub-systems.
This approach attempted to synthesize the classical approaches (organizations without people) with the later human relations approaches that focused on the psychological and social aspects (people without organizations). The Contingency theory, developed in sass, argues that there is no ‘one best way’ to structure an organization and we face different possibilities when determining how it should be structured and how it should be managed. Successful organizations adopt structures that are an appropriate response to a number of variables, or contingencies (Enoch, 2006).
