Common types of organizational structure

There are many types of organizational structures in use today, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. Here are some of the most common types that can easily be modeled in Hornbill if required:

1. Hierarchical Structure: Also known as the traditional or pyramid structure, this type of organization is characterized by a clear chain of command, where each level of management reports to the level above it. This structure is common in large corporations and government agencies. It can provide clear lines of authority, but may limit flexibility and adaptability.

2. Flat Structure: In a flat organization, there are fewer layers of management, and employees tend to have more autonomy and decision-making power. This structure is often found in startups and small businesses. It can promote faster decision-making and better communication, but may struggle with scalability as the organization grows.

3. Matrix Structure: This type of organization combines elements of both functional and project-based structures. Employees are grouped by function (e.g., finance, marketing) and by project or product, creating a matrix of reporting relationships. Matrix structures can be effective in fostering collaboration and efficient use of resources, but may also lead to confusion and conflict over competing priorities.

4. Divisional Structure: In a divisional organization, business units or divisions operate independently, each focusing on a specific product or market segment. Each division has its own resources and functions, such as finance, marketing, and HR. This structure can support flexibility and innovation within divisions, but may also create redundancies and a lack of communication between divisions.

5. Functional Structure: A functional organization groups employees by their specific skills or functions, such as finance, marketing, or HR. This structure is common in medium to large-sized businesses and can lead to operational efficiencies and clear lines of responsibility. However, it may also result in a lack of cross-functional communication and collaboration. Organizing groups of people into functional structures is critical if you want to assign responsibility for work through responsible teams/groups

6. Network Structure: This type of organization relies on a network of relationships between individuals, teams, or companies, rather than a rigid hierarchy. Network structures are often used by organizations that need to remain agile and respond quickly to changing conditions, such as consulting firms or technology companies. They can foster innovation and adaptability, but may also suffer from a lack of clear authority and accountability. Hornbill Collaboration is an application and feature set that easily facilitates this type of self-organization network approach.

7. Holacracy: Holacracy is an alternative organizational structure that distributes authority and decision-making throughout self-organizing teams or circles. It is designed to promote transparency, adaptability, and employee empowerment. However, it may be challenging to implement and sustain, particularly in large, traditional organizations.

Each organizational structure approach has its pros and cons, the different approaches give you different levels of complexity, the more complex you make it, the more significant the planning, maintenance, and changes will be.

Organization Structure Implementation Strategy

When configuring Hornbill to support your organization, you have a choice of a number of different approaches to defining your organizational structure in Hornbill. Different solutions will more precisely define the exact approach, what we are describing here is the Hornbill ESP platform capabilities.

• Single Company: With this approach you define a simple top-level OU of type “company”, and avoid using child OU items, and instead just define a single list of teams. You define a single top-level Company OU, and then define a flat list of assignment teams beneath the top-level company.
• Hierarchical: For organizations that have more complex, multi-level team structures, in this mode, you can define one or more top-level company OU’s and, beneath each company OU, you can define any number of teams within that company, and teams can optionally have child teams as required.
• Organizational: For organizations that have really complex, multi-level company/divisional and organizational structures where you want to represent the organizational structure making use of the full range of organizational unit (OU) types and an unlimited depth hierarchical structure, where you can inter-mix non-functional OU’s and teams as you need, then this more advanced approach may well be the the right choice.

This is an important choice you really need to make early on when deploying Hornbill into your organization, please ensure you read our Best Practice Guide for Defining Your Org Structure before making your choice. Its worth remembering that just because you can do something does not mean you always should, and this applies when it comes to mapping your organizational structure in Hornbill.

Organizational Units (OU’s)

In Hornbill, an organizational structure is made up of a tree-like hierarchy of Organizational Units (OU’s) where each node on the tree as an OU, and each OU can contain child OU’s. There are two types of OU’s, which are General and Functional. Users can be added as a member to one or more OU’s providing the flexibility to build one or more organizational structures, for example, line of report/org chart, cross-functional teams, or you can model a simple flat structure of Team OU’s and assignment OU’s.