five configurations - sample model

The Canadian academic, Henry Mintzberg, synthesised organisational design literature into five ideal organisational forms or configurations that do not exist in the real world, but provide consultants and managers a framework to understand and design organisational structures.

Mintzberg defined organisational structure as 'the sum total of the ways in which it divides its labour into distinct tasks and then achieves coordination among them'. Each configuration contains six components:
- operating core: the people directly related to the production of services or products;
- strategic apex: serves the needs of those people who control the organisation;
- middle line: the managers who connect the strategic apex with the operating core;
- technostructure: the analysts who design, plan, change or train the operating core;
- support staff: the specialists who provide support to the organisation outside of the operating core's activities;
- ideology: the traditions and beliefs that make the organisation unique.

The components are linked by four flows:
- authority;
- work material;
- information;
- decision processes.

The organisation's structure depends on the organisation itself, its members, the distribution of power, the environment and the technical system. Design decisions can be grouped into the:
- design of positions;
- design of superstructure;
- design of lateral linkages;
- design of decision making system.

Work constellations are quasi-independent cliques of individuals who work on decisions appropriate to their level in the hierarchy. These groups range from the formal to the informal.

Mintzberg used the components, flows, work constellations and coordination mechanisms to define five configurations:

1. Simple Structure
Entrepreneurial setting: relies on direct supervision from the strategic apex, the CEO.

2. Machine Bureaucracy
Large organisations: relies on standardisation of work processes by the techno-structure.

3. Professional Bureaucracy
The professional services firm: relies on the professionals' standardisation of skills and knowledge in the operating core.

4. Divisionalised Form
Multi-divisional organisation: relies on standardisation of outputs; middle-line managers run independent divisions.

5. Adhocracy
Project organisations: highly organic structure with little formalization; relies on mutual adjustment as the key coordinating mechanism within and between these project teams.

In later work Mintzberg added two more configurations:

6. Missionary Form
Coordination occurs based on commonly held ideologies or beliefs: standardisation of norms.

7. Political Form
No coordination form is dominant: control is based on forming alliances.

Each configuration represents a force that pulls organisations in different structural directions. For example, operators want to professionalize in their drive to control their work. Therefore, they favour a professional bureaucracy based on the standardisation of skills.

The structure an organisation chooses depends, to a great extent, on the power of each of Minzberg's six components.