Research Proposal: Reform and opening of team structure
Introduction
The term Business Process Reengineering (BPR)
was already known in the business world as of the early 1990s, following its
introduction by Hummer (1993). Business Process Reengineering was just employed
in the manufacturing industry as its usage was also recorded in the service
industry. Considering that Hummer (1993) introduced this term, he is also
viewed as the father of business process reengineering. In its early years, BPR
was viewed to be the tool necessary for bringing about drastic change in the
business process of companies and it was adopted by American companies, with
the focus being on the private sector in the 1990s, functioning as a substitute
for the use of total quality management (TQM), an improvement on the Japanese
philosophy of kaizen. BPR can be viewed as a new measure being implemented by
organizations, which require the management of the business process in order to
bring about drastic change on the performance of the company.
In the business world of today, there is an
extensive level of competition is not just occurring on the regional level, but
also on the global level. Companies are constantly seeking to enhance their
competitive edge in order to tackle the major changes taking place in the world
today, and one of the measures these companies employ is the business process
reengineering, which is geared towards drastically redesigning the business
process. On the same note, there is a huge issue in the corporate world of the
today as many of the companies that focus on business process reengineering as
their strategy for growth and sustainability actually fail to implement BPR
(Ramanigopal et al., 2011), and the major reason for this is poor corporate
structure.
Changes are constantly being recorded across
all business sectors of today, such as the case of transformation, which now
implements online (e-commerce) services like the Uber and the financial sector
that has been greatly transformed with the emergence of fintech. This rapid
change in information and communication technology is the commercial arena that
brings about change in the organizational process. Therefore, companies must
restructure and redefine their corporate strategies if they are to tackle these
changes. The implication thus becomes that, reforming and opening of corporate
structure is necessary in order to handle the present changes being experienced
in the corporate world and help companies to create sustainable competitive
edge (Ozcelik, 2010; Ranganathan et al., 2011). As a support for this
statement, it was pointed out in the study of AlMashari et al. (2011) and
Chiplunkar et al. (2003) that about 70% of the failure recorded in BPR occur at
the implementation stage, which is caused because of lack of understand of
management in the organization.
In view of the above discussions, this
research is designed to understand how corporate structure can be reformed and
made more open, in order to create sustainable competitive edge for companies.
Background of research
The success of any company is highly
dependent on the volume of efforts that people in the company are making, and
especially on the structure of the company because it does determine the extent
at which a company can attain its aims through effective utilization of its
resources (Bridges and Bridges, 2017). On this note, the ability of management
to motivate the employees and inculcate in them the desire to work does play
significant role on the attainment of their corporate goals, and the
implication is that the management structure of any company does serve as a
vital link between the staffs in the company and the management that coordinate
the corporate processes. Because of its role in organizing the principles,
policies, and implementation of the corporate process, the structure of a
management is considered useful when it comes to efficient utilization of
technologies, investments, advanced working methods, the method of motivating
human resources and other activities in the company that are geared towards
enhancing overall productivity of the company (Brandt et al., 2016).
In its simplest form, the structure of a
company is considered to be the formal and rational distribution of job,
powers, responsibilities, and the process of communicating and coordinating
these distributions in order to ensure that the main objectives of the company
are attainable; and it is the first institution that arises in any company from
its inception (Ramadani, 1994). When it comes to enhancing productivity, the
first step is to identify the factors that influence it. As shown in past
researches, the structure of a company is one of the most influential factors
that affect the efficiency of a company on both the short- and long-term basis.
Presently, the corporate world of today is in the age of organization, and the
implication is that the importances of organization and organizing for better
management of affairs have become an issue that needs to be redressed. Therefore, if companies are consistent with
the crucial task of managing goals and governed based on scientific principles,
the impact would be an increase on their efficiency and productivity as such
company would be more successful in the execution of orders and attainment of
corporate goals (Scott, 2016). In contrast, when the structure of an
organization is not aligned with its goals and responsibilities, and doesn’t
combine its human resources with environmental requirement, the impact would be
that the operations of such company will face numerous difficulties that will
eventually for the managers into spending more time on problem solving and this
arises because of poor structure in a company. In the business world of today,
efficiency is viewed to beyond a mare economic gauge or index, instead, it is
considered to be a holistic approach, a system-oriented attitude and culture,
and an overview of all the components that form a corporate system. The
implication is thus, that the outcome would be mutual on the social, economic
and cultural aspects of a country, an organization, and even an individual
(Moshabakki, 1996).
Increasing productivity in organizations is
one of the major concerns of decision-makers and executives of today, and the
impact is that majority of companies now base their major development programs
on increasing productivity. This is also
the same case for even countries as they want to outperform the other, and the
result has been that in the past 2 decades, productivity of countries have
increased by over 45 percent. On the other hand, productivity emanate as a
result of improvement on standards of living and reduction on rate of
inflation. On the other hand, it does bring about relative change on the price
of commodities, increase in actual production, and efficient allocation of
resources. Within the economic setting, the growth of any economy is dependent
on the growth of its productivity (Mccombie and Thirlwall, 2016). Organizations
represent set of people that have come together to realize a common goal and in
order to ensure that such goals are realizable; the people that are effecting
them need to be organized in the best possible structure. The decision on the
structure to employ in the management of any company does represent the most
basic strategic decision, as the structure of an organization is capable of
either creating or destroying it (Mccombie and Thirlwall, 2016).
Efficiency is one of the management
performance indicators and it does indicate the extent to which a company is
successful. There are different factors that influence the efficiency of a
company per say, but management structure has the fundamental role in this
regard (Kadkhodaii, 1997). Based on the notion that efficiency is a company’s
performance index as it leads to identification of factors that affect the
performance of a company and create favourable and dynamic sphere in them, it
does come with the ability of with the ability of helping a company to attain
acceptable and high rate of performance. In consideration of this, the impact
of company structure and productivity can be measured in order to have a clear
picture of the organization and industrial unit (Pradhan and Routroy, 2016).
Economic growth and development are a clear sign that the company is efficient
and the level of productivity that the company yields is a measure of its
growth and economic development. In evaluating performance of a company,
productivity is a vital measure, as it evaluates the criteria for the company’s
effort when creating the vital indicators that can be used to measure success
or failure of companies (Mccombie and Thirlwall, 2016). Simply put,
productivity is a concept that measures the relationship between an
organization’s resources and its output. It is determined by measuring the
number of inputs used to bring about a given output. By improving this ratio
through efficiency, the impact is that a certain level if inputs would bring
about more or better outputs. In essence, efficiency is all about producing
things in an effective way (Estalaki, 2017).
The overall impact of the management
structure in this sense is that it simplifies the distribution activities;
making it balanced and bringing about increase in production as the entire
process are made more efficient (Estalaki, 2017).
Problem statement
Over the years, a number of studies have been
conducted to understand the influence of bureaucratic systems (an un-open
organizational structure) on the performance of a company with most of the
studies focusing on companies in the public sector. The relationship between
the management practices that form the basis of operation in the public sector
and bureaucratic outputs have been the focused question within the public
administration sector (Wilson, 1989; Lynn et al., 2000; Ingraham et al., 2003;
Honig, 2018), implementation of policy (Pressman and Wildavsky, 1973), and also
on researches within the field of governance and bureaucratic development
(Tendler, 1997; Ang, 2017; Andrews et al., 2017; Pepinsky et al, 2017). To be
precise, there are two broad schools of thought that stand out among others.
The first is that if bureaucratic structures are considered in the form of
agents that reduces efforts or that preferences that are divergent from their
main principles, the system need to be managed through top-down tools of
control like strict monitoring regimes and reward/punishment schemes that bring
about enhanced efforts from those charged with responsibilities under the
system while also reducing the level of moral hazards that might occur [Finer,
1941; Duflo et al., 2012]. Rose-Ackerman [1986] offered an alternating view
which is that public bureaucratic systems need to have a higher level of
delegated autonomy and the bureaucrats should also have discretions, because
they rely on their expertise and professionalism in order to deliver their
designated public services (Simon, 1983; Miller and Whitford, 2016). This is
also the same case with public firms as the activities of the people that have
been designated with certain role at a high level of openness need to be
controlled or monitored to ensure that they don’t drift from the corporate
goals or engage in activities that might eventually put the company at risk
(Miller and Whitford, 2016).
In the existing literatures on the
relationship between the management practices of a company and the impact of
bureaucratic systems on their output have numerous limitations. This is because
majority of the empirical studies focusing on management practices – like those
that focused on incentive programs – have centred their study on one example of
the practice (normally implemented within a controlled condition), on a single
worker (normally frontline bureaucrats), or on a given type of bureaucratic
outputs, which results in questions on how their findings can be generalized
(e.g. Meier and O’Toole., 2002; Hasnain et al., 2014; Khan et al., 2015). In
terms of the investigation on performance across a broader line of activities
in the public sector, the studies have normally focused on the subjective
measures that are used to determine the performance of a company, and this
raises concerns about how bias the findings can be (Meier and O’Toole, 2012).
On the same note, quantitative studies conducted on bureaucratic discretion
have focused normally on the potential downside in relation to discrimination
(Einstein and Glick, 2017), or corruption (Olken and Pande, 2012), instead of
its broader influence on the overall performance of (Andersen and Moynihan,
2016).
This gap is what this research aims to
fulfil. In this study, a broader review of the relationship between spectrums
of management practices and output through bureaucratic processes across both
the public and private sector will be conducted. As such, this research is
targeting a response in the region of 3,000 to 5,000 in order to ensure that
the findings can be applied in broad area.
Research objective
Based on the research gap above, this central
objective of this study is to assess how
organizational structure can be reformed and made more open (less bureaucratic),
and the impact of such openness and reformation on the overall performance of
organizations. However, to attain this objective, this research will also
present comprehensive review of what organizational structure is all about and
how it influences productivity and sustainability of an organization.
Justification to conduct the research
For this study, a number of justifications
amount. The first is in the academic sector. As pointed out earlier, majority
of the studies on the influence of openness and reformation of structure on
performance of companies have focused on one particular variable (e.g. Meier
and O’Toole., 2002; Hasnain et al., 2014; Khan et al., 2015). This present
study will consider a broader range of variable and the implication is that
there will be a new stream of knowledge in relation to the research topic based
on different variables.
This research is also justified because of
the influence in can have on policy and decision making in different organizations.
Essentially, the findings from this research will be able to demonstrate the
influence of openness and reform of structure on performance of companies, and
as such, the decision makers and policy makers of different companies can
reference the findings from this research to decide on measures to implement in
their own organization.
Finally, this research is justifiable because
it will serve as a source of knowledge to the general public as well as laying
the foundation for further research. The existing gap that this present study
aims to fill was determined by reviewing past studies, thus, this research can
also help scholars to see knew areas that need to be studied.
Contribution of the findings / outcomes to
the research area
One major contribution of this research will be in the area of applicability of findings by policy makers. Remember, a number of researches (e.g. Meier and O’Toole., 2002; Hasnain et al., 2014; Khan et al., 2015) pointed out that past studies in this area have either focused on a single sector, variable, or outcome, but this present study aims to cover a broader length of these sphere. Therefore, unlike the findings from past studies that cannot be generalized, the findings from this present study can actually be generalized. Therefore, policy makers from different sectors will have a section of findings from this research they consider important, one that can aid their overall decision making process effectively and efficiently. On the same note, it should also be pointed out that this research will have a great deal of impact on understanding organizational openness and reformation, as well as the impact of such on effectiveness and efficiency of corporate systems.
SECTION 2
Review of literatures
There are numerous studies that have been
conducted in the area of this present research. However, discussions in this
section will be centred only on 15 of them, presenting a review of these past
studies and identifying further areas that the present study should aim to
cover as well as further validation for the justification discussed above.
In the research titled: Bureaucratic structures and organizational performance: A comparative
study of Kampala capital city authority and national planning authority,
Matte (2016) looked at how the structure of a company can affect its
performance. The research started by pointing out that Uganda has experienced
significant level of economic growth and institutional performance in the
course of the last decade which can partly be linked to the implementation of
reforms in the public sector, restructuring of public institutions,
decentralization, and creation of new agencies with the sole aim of making
delivery of services rational in the country. The paper then assessed the
relationship that exists between organizational performance and the
bureaucratic structures present in Kampala Capital City Authority and National
Planning Authority. The specific objective of this research were: to conduct
critical review of the hierarchical nature of organizational structures; the
examine the role that rigid procedures and rules have on producing optimal
resource utilization, and in determining the ability of the system to deliver
functional outputs; and finally, to conduct an assessment of the role that
leadership has on ability of the organization to deliver functional output.
This study was a qualitative review of existing data based on past literature.
The findings from this study show that bureaucratic structures can be effective
in cases where the resources well organized and the hierarchy unambiguous, the
regulation and guidelines employ critical approaches when it comes to
operationalizing the structure in an effective way, and any lapses in their
enforcement and popularization has the potential of bringing about low
performance and high level impunity. Therefore, it was stated that companies
that have bureaucratic structure should pay attention to the group factors, and
deciding on the structure of an organization does minimize the risks associated
with decision making. On the final note, it was highlighted that leadership
style rationalizes appreciation and doesn’t compromise national political
interests in the course of exercising their technical professionalism, and this
is crucial when the company aims to obtain higher leverage for delivering their
strategic output. In any case, it is important to point out that the study
doesn’t provide quantitative view on the relative effects that the structure of
a company can have on performance, providing a new area for further research.
Rooij and Fine (2018) looked at the influence
of structural reformation and openness on the performance of companies with
their study titled: Toxic Corporate
Culture: Assessing Organizational Processes of Deviancy. They started by
highlighting that organizational culture has always been recognized as crucial
when assessing companies that are involved in wrongdoings and crimes. The
structure of a company also determines the kind of culture that the company
will adopt. In any there seem to be little information on how to examine and
alter the toxic elements that are in a company in order to build a better
system for sustainable growth. Based on this, their study, which draws on
anthropology, management sciences, sociology of law, social psychology, and
criminology to offer explanation on what organizational culture is and how it
brings about the kind of behaviour that are manifested in such organization.
This paper analyzed the culture that exist at BP, Volkswagen, and Wells Fargo,
to show that organizational toxicity doesn’t just exist in the event that the
corporate norms are not aligned with the legal norms, as they can also exist in
cases where: 1) it condone, enables, or neutralized the breaking of rules; 2),
obstructs and disables compliance; and 3) the actual practices are in contrast
with the values that the company is supposed to abide with. The findings from
this study lead to the conclusion that detoxing corporate culture demands more
than just changing the incentive structure or leadership. In particular, it
doesn’t demand that the structures, values, and practices that aid the
obstruction and violation of compliance in the company, and well as drifting
from a given focus to more of liability management (which entails assigning
punishment and blames) be reformed to an approach that prioritizes the
promotion of openness, honesty, and responsibility in order to create and
sustain cultural change. Therefore, it is evidenced in this research that structural
reformation and openness is necessary in creating sustainability but the
research didn’t offer much insight on how this can be attained.
Ravanfar (2015) conducted a research title: Analyzing Organizational Structure Based on
7s Model of Mckinsey. In this study, which was a descriptive-survey
research, the researcher investigated and analyzed the structure of Qeshm free
zone by adopting the 7S model as developed by Mckinsey. For the selected
research population, simple random sampling was used and the number of
respondents was decided based on the Cohcaran formula, with the total response
being 84. The study was conducted with the aid of questionnaire. The test of
reliability and validity were also conducted with a value of 0.848 obtained for
the Cronbach Alpha, and this validity was also confirmed with the aid of
experienced experts and professors. In order to analyze the data, t-Test, Kolmogorov-Smirinov, and
Freedman tests were adopted. It was founded from the research that developing
an organizational structure that is based on the 7-S McKinsey in Qeshm free
zone is unfavourable, with the worst conditions recorded in the case of clerks,
sharing common values, and structures. That is to say, there is no single or
uniform structure that can be applied to all companies. This is understandable
because each company has its own objectives, making it right that they define
the structure they will employ to attain these objectives on their own.
In another research conducted by Safarov
(2018) and titled: The Essence and
Analysis of Approaches to Reengineering Innovative Business Processes, the
researcher looked at the important of adopted innovative business process
reengineering in relation to the influence of corporate structure and culture
on the whole process. In this article, an analysis of the major approaches used
for reengineering the business process in an innovative way was discussed. As
such, the discussions considered both the practical and theoretical points that
were identified in the study. One of the major highlights from this study is
that the process of business reengineering and most of its points have
witnessed major developments in the innovative business process. Thus, the
study was conducted with the objective of gathering and reviewing past studies
that have been done in the field of business process reengineering, making it a
secondary research. This study was focused on providing a comprehensive
overview of the overall developments that have been made on BPR in relation to
it: concepts, models, theories, measures and outcomes, and causes of success
and failure. In this view, the study conducted a critical review of research
papers and divided the present study into different subheadings as:
introduction, why do companies change, background of BPR, methodologies in BPR,
approaches, success and failure causes, and BPR in practice. Finally, this
study concluded by drawing on past studies that there is no universal approach
to BPR and there is no guarantee that adopting BPR will provide assurance for
the success of any organization, and it also concluded that the success of any
BPR measure implemented in a company is dependent on how the company’s
structure has been reformed towards meeting the objective of such programs.
Ogbo et al. (2015) conducted a research
titled: Impact of structure on
organizational performance of selected technical and service firms in Nigeria.
The aim of this study was to establish the impact that corporate structure can
have on the performance of an organization. It was pointed out in this research
that the present corporate systems are becoming automated and complex, and as
such, it calls for the need to maintain and enhance the performance of such
systems by structuring and restructuring them based on the strategy developed
for change. This was a survey based study and it focused on two companies in
Nigeria: Innoson Nigeria Ltd, and Etisalat (Enugu Regional Office). The study
made use of two sources of data as: primary and secondary data. The primary
data was gathered by administering questionnaire to 80 respondents, of which a
total of 78 responses were confirmed valid for further analysis. The analysis
of data and testing of hypothesis were based on Simple percentage (%),
chi-square (* a) and correlation. From this study, a number of findings were
made as: decentralization of structures brought about enhanced and more
informed decision making in the services and technical firms in Nigeria; the
past routine had both negative and positive effects on productivity; and that
there is a significant positive relationship between the reduce bureaucracy and
organizational efficiency. Thus, this study reached the conclusion as well as
recommendation that organizational managers need to adopt more of an open and
reformed corporate structure because it would bring about improvement on
decision making process, that the managers should also fuse together the task
routine and variety in the course of organizing the employees to undertake
specific tasks because it would allow them to reap the advantage of both
systems and task assignment, and that the employees need to be empowered to be
more innovative because it would enhance the entire system and productivity.
In another study, Osifo (2014) looked at The Effects of Coordination on
Organizational Performance: An Intra and Inter Perspective. It was a
secondary research that reviewed existing literatures. In this study, it was
noted that an organization goes through different activities that can be both
complex and broad. As such, it is important to understand the elements
necessary for attaining an ideal balanced performance in the company. This is
because; companies exist as a result of the desire to fulfil needs. Thus, the
necessary frameworks that are required to attain this objective are normally
accorded necessary attention. As such, the best way for companies to answer the
questions that are raised in relation to competition, performance, and
expectation is to have the right network of personnel, materials and ideas. The
main result of this research indicates that efficient and effective link
between the internal and external features of a company will aid in reducing
the complexities that the company face both internally and externally. Thus, it
is necessary that companies reform their structures in line with the change
they aim to attain.
Lai et al., (2015) conducted another related
study titled: The Impact of
Organizational Structure and Business Strategy on Performance and Risk-Taking
Behavior in Insurance Industry. This study assessed the influence that
corporate structure and business strategy has on creating efficiency,
risk-taking behaviour and profitability among insurance companies in Taiwan.
The study noted that in Taiwan, the insurance companies does offer an
interesting environment for studying these issues as a result of the fact that different forms of
organization have learned to coexist in the insurance industry. Thus, the study
asses four companies by looking into their organizational structure and two
kinds of business strategies they adopt. This study employed two frontier
methodologies in the form of stochastic frontier approach and data employment
analysis approach, to measure the efficient performance of the insurance
companies. Findings from this study does indicate that corporate structure and
business strategies does have significant influence on profitability,
efficiency, and risk-taking behaviour of the companies studied. Additionally,
it was also found that profitability, efficiency, and risk-taking behaviour
were also influenced by the line of business, size of company, market share, and
leverage ratio. Overall, the evidence from this study goes to suggest that a
more competitive business environment need to be encouraged in the Taiwanese
insurance industry in order to bring about improvement on the efficiency of the
insurer.
In the study titled: Organizational Structure and an Effective Communication: The Moderating
Effect of Transformational Leadership, as conducted by Yahaya et al.
(2018), it was pointed out that effective communication is complementary to the
effective management of an organization and it also serves as means of
attaining the objectives of the company. This study highlighted that the setting
obtainable in larger corporations normally make it difficult to bring about
effective communication. One major source of this is in the features of the
structure employed by the company. As such, the study was designed to confine
to the impact of organizational structural variables as having effect on
communication in companies. The communication channels that the structure of a
company creates deliver certain functions through downward, upward and lateral
communication. As such, the structure of a company must be designed in such a
way that it facilitates effective flow of communication. Based on this, the
paper assesses the relationship between selected variables of organizational
structure and effective communication within the managerial ranks of GTBank in
Nigeria. The study, which was survey research and based on questionnaire,
revealed that an open corporate structure enhances flow of communication,
making it easier for companies to attain their defined objectives.
Rasul et al. (2019) focused their attention
on the public sector in their research titled: Management and Bureaucratic Effectiveness: Evidence from the Ghanaian
Civil Service. The study looked at the relationship between management
approaches and bureaucratic outputs, by making use of original survey of the
universe of Ghanaian civil servants which spanked through 45 organizations and
had administrative data of over 3600 tasks and projects that were undertaken by
these organizations. The research first showed that there is a significant
variation across the organizations of the government, both in the management of
quality and delivery of output. It then illustrated that the output shows a
positive partial correlation with discretion/autonomy-based practices, while
having negative partial correlation with practices that are related to
monitoring/incentives. Further investigations were made on the validity of this
relationship by considering a separate sample from Nigeria and the findings
were found to be in line with the theories of bureaucratic conditions,
influence activities, intrinsic motivation, and output clarity. Discussions
were also made on the implication for empirical methodology, theories and
policies.
Riyanto et al. (2018) looked at reformation
in the corporate sense and its influence on performance in their work titled: Reengineering support for competitive
advantage through organizational basis, information and communication
technology: a literature review. It
was a secondary research based review of existing literatures in this area with
the central purpose of collecting and investigating past studies that are
related to reengineering the business process in the manufacturing industry as
a means of attaining competitive edge. That is to say, this research aims to
offer a general overview of the relationship existing between the variables of
BPR, variables of competitive edge, variables of organizational commitment,
variables of organizational change management, and information and
communication technology. The findings showed that based on existing
literatures, there is a correlation between these variables in the sense that
if the business process is reengineered with technologies and the system is
committed to this change process, there will be a resulting increase on their
competitive edge. In any case to get the system (employees) committed demands
that the company adopt a reformed structures, one that will make all members of
the organization to feel like they are part of the system and that the change
process will bring about positive outcomes on them.
The work of Estalaki (2017) was titled: On the impact of organizational structure on
organizational efficiency in industrial units: industrial units of Kerman and
Hormozgan Provinces, and it employed applicable attitude to assess the
relationship between structure of a company and efficiency among employees.
This is quantitative survey based study that employed standardized Robbins’s
(1998) questionnaire to gather data on the structure of organizations and
Hersey and Goldsmith’s standard questionnaire to assess the impact of such on
corporate productivity. The research made use of random based sampling and
Morgan table to sample a total of 384 respondents and with the gathered
responses analyzed with correlation coefficient and linear regression. The
findings indicate that there is a significant correlation between corporate
structure and efficiency of companies in the industrial areas because it
impacted certain components of the corporate process which include: formality, complexity
and concentration.
In consideration of the fact that employees
represent an integral part of any corporate process, Mustafa et al. (2019)
looked at it from the impact of structure in their article titled: Structural Impacts on Formation of Self-Efficacy
and Its Performance Effects. The paper started by pointing out that the
role of organizational structure is a pivotal contextual variable and it has
been long recognized as having influence on the attitude and behaviour of
employees, but there are limited empirical and theoretical research that are
geared towards assessing the way in which the structure of a company influences
self-efficacy among the employees and its impact on overall performance of the
study. Based on this, the research was designed to address this gap as it
explore how the two core components of structure – formalization and
centralization – can both independently and jointly influence self-efficacy
among employees and how they impact on the performance of the employees based
on the new developed (or enhanced) self-efficacy. On the same note, the
research looked at the extent to which the structure influences individual
performance of employees from the perception of self-efficacy. This was a
quantitative survey based research with data gathered from 120 Pakistani
employees in the public sector and the gathered data were analyzed with partial
least square structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) and polynomial regression
in order to confirm the stated hypothesis. Findings from the empirical analysis
indicate that formalization has positive influence on self-efficacy while
centralization has negative influence on association and as s result of that,
attenuation / improvements in self-efficacy is transformed partially into performance
improvements. Further revelation from the findings is that self-efficacy and
performance diminishes under systems that are based on high formalization and
high centralization. Further discussions were also made on the implication for
theory and forwards provided for directions on future research.
Hassan et al. (2014) conducted a study
titled: The Impact of Organizational
Structure on Employees’ Creativity: a Sector Based Study. The quantitative research, which employed
structured questionnaire, had a total of 202 responses. It was designed to
examine the major elements that build organizational structure and its
influence on creativity of employees in the telecommunication sector in
Pakistan. Unlike the previous research by Mustafa et al. (2019), this research
employed three elements of organizational structure as: formalization,
centralization and work specialization in order to assess the impact of
corporate structure on creativity of employees in the workplace. Findings from
this research show that formalization and centralization had negative influence
on creativity management in the workplace, while work specialization was found
to have less significant negative influence on the creativity of employees when
compared with the other two structures. Findings from this research are said to
be capable of helping managers and top management of companies to make
effective structural changes in their sphere, one that will bring about
enhanced creativity of the employees.
Another study titled: How does the organisational structure influence a work environment for
innovation? as conducted by Gaspary et al. (2018) started by pointing out
that companies operating in markets that are rapidly changing and dynamic need
to have their organizational structure designed in a way that it will foster
innovation. In any case, the study pointed out that gaps still exist in
literatures when it comes to understanding the impact of organizational
structure on development of an environment capable of stimulating creativity and
innovation. Therefore, the paper conducted an analysis of the influence of
different dimensions of organizational structure on the development of a work
environment for innovation. This study was a case study research and it
employed mixed method approach with the focus being on Brazilian subsidiary of
multination company that is known across the globe for its innovativeness.
Findings from this research contributed to the theory as it demonstrated that
different dimensions of organizational structure – mainly based on level of
communication, job codification, and level of formalization – do have effect on
the work environment and overall innovativeness of the systems. On the same
note, the study was found to be enriching to the comprehension on how managers
should design certain dimensions of their corporate structure in order to bring
about enhanced level of creativity and innovation.
The final review is the work of Baia et al.
(2016) titled: Organizational Structure,
Cross-Functional Integration and Performance of New Product Development Team.
This study pointed out that in this era of global competition, improvement on
performance of new product development team is a critical scientific issue.
Thus, this research adopted the organizational structure of the enterprise as
the explanatory variable, the intermediary variable being the cross-functional
integration of the team, in order to construct a cross level conceptual
framework that analyzed the performance of new product development team, with
the survey data gathered from manufacturing industry and high-tech industry in
China and later analyzed with multilevel linear model. Findings from the
research show that the features of organizational structure does have influence
on cross level performance of new product development team, with the
cross-functional integration of the said team having partial mediating
influence between the mechanical company and the performance of new product
development team and a complete mediating influence between the performance of
the new product development team and the organic organization.
Overall, the key message from these part literatures is that the form of organizational structure adopted by a company influence its performance. This is because the structure has influence on effective communication, accountability, risk-taking behaviour, and effective decision making process. However, all the literatures have focused mainly on performance alone without looking into all these variables in their minute level. Thus, this is the gap that this research aims to fill as it is designed to assess reform and opening of team structures and its influence on the performance of the team and organization as a whole. On the same note, this research will also viewed both the public and private sector organizations, something that has not be been done in the past researches as reviewed above.
QUESTION 3
Definition of variables
In terms of definition, organizational
structure refer to the formal arrangement of work roles in a company and the
measures employed for management and integration of these work, which also
encompasses organizational activities (Baia et al., 2016). It is all about the
means that a company adopts to attain its goals. In essence, the goal of a
company is reflected in a number of ways but it can be summarized into two
categories as: efficiency in stabilizing operations and innovation ensure
dynamic adaptation. On the same note, there are two typical form of
organizational structure as mechanical structure and organic structure. When
talking about the mechanical organizational structure, one is talking about
bureaucratic administration, in which the organization has a high degree of
labour division and functional division for the work, and choose the staffs
best qualified to meet the specific job requirements as designated in the work
in order to meet the corporate goals and not with the intent of subjecting the
person to emotional impact. In this type of structure, there is strict level of
control on specialized works, as they are divided and developed based on a
number of measures, standards, and norms (Baia et al., 2016). The second form
is the organic organizational structure, which is also known as the adaptive
organizational structure. In this kind of structure, the company does not set
any form of rigid position on how the tasks should be undertaken and the
functional boundary is strictly determined by the department. As such, the
grassroots personnel have the power to decide on the action they want to take
based on their skills and level of information mastering. There is a direct,
oblique and horizontal communication and coordination between the members in
this form of structure, something that replaced the vertical level of control
and communication as the mains for attaining goals (Baia et al., 2016).
In view of above discussions, this research
has a number of variables. First is the openness
and reformation of organizational structure, which are the independent
variables while the performance of an
organization is the dependent variable. That is to say, the extent to which
the structure of a company is open and reformed in line with the goals of the
said company will have an influence on the performance of the company. This is
because, the structure of a company affects effective communication,
accountability, risk-taking behaviour, and effective decision making process,
and they are all mediating variables that determine the extent of the
relationship between the independent and dependent variables as discussed
above.
Figure 1: Relationship between independent
and dependent variables
from the figure (1) above, the relationship
between the variables is demonstrated and it is all about the notion that if
the structure of a team in an organization is made open and reformed in line
with the goals of the company, it would bring about a number of effects with
eventual impact on performance of the company. To lead to influence on the
performance of the company, such structure can affect the level of effective
communication in the company, accountability, risk taking behaviour and
effective decision making.
When the relationship is positive, the
communication will be effective, the level of accountability will be high, risk
taking behaviour will be influenced by the extent the outcome of such behaviour
can impact performance positively, and the decision making will be made more
effective. Eventually, the employees will start to witness enhancement in their
performance because they are working under the right structure, one that
empowers them, and this will result to improved performance of the team and
eventual improvement on the overall performance of the company.
Statement of hypothesis
Based on the discussions above, the following
hypothesis are adopted for this research
·
HI: An open and reformed team structure will enhance effective
communication in the team.
·
H2: An open and reformed team structure will enhance accountability in
the team.
·
H3: An open and reformed team structure will moderate risk taking
behaviour among members of the team.
·
H4: An open and reformed team structure will enhance effective decision
making in the team.
·
H5: An open and reformed team structure will enhance overall performance
of members of a team.
·
H6: An open and reformed team structure will enhance overall performance
of the team
· H7: An open and reformed team structure will result to improve performance of the organization in general.
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