Traditional organization vs Contemporary organization: The difference between two organizational designs

 The difference between traditional organizations and contemporary organizations

The organizational structure should help the staffs work efficiently, effectively, should build formal relationship between employees, should be useful to divide tasks between employees, to group them according to the tasks assigned.

A manager making changes in the structure, developing the structure is the process of organizational designing. Traditional organizational designs, contemporary organizational designs are the two common organizational designing. 

A manager selects the structure that best suits the organization considering the six key factors:

1. Work specialization
2. Departmentalization 
3. Chain of command
4. Span of control
5. Centralization 
6. Formation .

Traditional organizational designs

Traditional organizations and contemporary organizations can be differentiated by the factors of focus, flexibility, the style in which tasks are completed, authority of decision making, and by the kind of relationship that is maintained between the employees. 

Traditional organizations are steady, inelastic, job focused, results oriented, and top-level managers hold the decision-making authority in such organizations. 

Traditional organizations do not adopt their organizational structure according to the new technologies available. 

The three designs under traditional organization are:

i. Simple structure-

the  Simple structured organizations are small scaled, power is centralized on a single person, has low departmentalization. 

ii. functional structure-

Functional structured organizations are structures in which groups employees according to their occupational specialization

iii. Divisional structure-

Divisional structured organizations are organizations which have separate business units, divisional manager assigned for each unit.

Example:  Most of the public sector organizations follow the traditional organizational structure. As they will not be flexible with the working hours, they mostly do not make much changes in the ways the business is conducted as their purpose is to fulfill the needs of the customers. 

Contemporary Organizational designs

Contemporary organizations are unstable, elastic, skill focused, group oriented, and the employees are given chance to involve in decision making in such organizations.

Contemporary organizations usually adopt their business activities according to the new technologies available. 

The 4 different kind of designs under contemporary Organizational structure are:

1. Team structure-

The structure in which the whole organization is divided into teams is team structured.

      2. Matrix-project structures-

• Matrix structure- matrix is the structure which groups specialized employees only for a specific task.
• Project structure- project is a structure in which specialized staffs work together in all the projects

      3. Boundary less organization structure-

                                                                                                                                                  Boundary less structured organization do not have any limits on spams of control, cannot be    explained by the chain of command. It also includes virtual, network organizations in it.

      4.Learning structure - 

 Learning structure is the structure in which staffs continuously gain, share new knowledge.

Whereas, a private sector organization can be said as an example for contemporary organizations They create a dynamic environment in which they make seasonal variations, promotions to attract customers, work with the purpose of fulfilling the needs of the customers by providing various products that fulfil wants of the customers.