Work And Workers: Five Methods Of Departmentalization

According to author Chuck Williams from our book, “Principles of management”, there are five methods that haven been used to departmentalize work and workers.

The first method is functional departmentalization which organizes workers into separate responsible functions or areas of specialty. One of the advantages is that it allows people who are expertise in their area to perform at a high quality level. One disadvantage is for example managers are more interested in doing what is right for their specialty rather than for the entire organization.

The second method is product organization which is organizing work and workers separately in reference to the production of certain products or services. One advantage is that just like functional departmentalization it allows people who are expertise in their area to perform at a high quality level. The primarily disadvantage is that it duplicates meaning that it will results in higher costs.

The third method is customer departmentalization which organizes work and workers separately into those responsible for certain types of customers. The primary advantage is that it focuses on the customer rather than on the products. One disadvantage is that just like customer departmentalization it duplicates.

Another departmentalization is geographic. Geographic departmentalization organizes work and workers into different geographic areas of doing business. An advantage is that it helps businesses greatly in targeting different markets. A disadvantage is that I can lead to duplicates of resources. Lastly, the matrix departmentalization which is two or more departmentalization such as product and functional are used together. A advantage is that it allows companies to work in an efficient way. A disadvantage it is way more complex the level of coordination required to manage a large project.

In Chapter 10 of Principles of Management, the two types of conflicts found where cognitive and affective conflict. The main key is not to avoid conflict but rather to work through it together and have the team experience the right type of conflict. Cognitive conflict is more relatively associated to the job improvement performance of the team as to affective conflict is completely the opposite and focuses on the decreasing of the team performance. Cognitive conflict team members disagree because of the different point of views of each individual. However, with cognitive conflict there is always the willingness to reconcile. On the other hand, affective contrast, deals more with the emotions such as anger, resentment, and distrust as well as other emotions. Affective conflict decreases the team performance overall and the effectiveness of the team.