Number of lateral structural arrangement used in an organization

Introduction

The structure of an organization dictates the flow of information in an organization. The flow of information can take different procedures depending on the structures put in place by the organization’s management. They tell who reports to whom in an organization (Favereau & Lazega, 2002). In most organizations, the power of decision making only rests with the top management, however, in some organizations, the decision-making responsibilities are shared and then distributed throughout the organization. In lateral structural arrangement, the arrangements of information consist of the structures that have been decentralized, with different departments working together for achieving a single goal as opposed to where the departments work independently as separate entities. Since lateral structured organizations offer diversity when it comes to decision-making and management by bringing different sectors together, it provides the best structures to be employed by organizations (Favereau & Lazega, 2002).

Lateral structural arrangements can be classified as follows

Integrated roles

It is usually not easy to get a leader who is accepted by all departments to be a cross-departments leader. This Problem arises because each department would be willing to provide a leader from their department. To help eradicate this problem, integrated roles for project managers, product managers, program managers are introduced. The powers created for this integrated leaders should be predetermined. The individuals tasked with integrated roles should be armed with external powers that are very strong and highly persuasive (Favereau & Lazega, 2002).

Mutual adjustments

Here the managers of the same ladder make a joint decision and therefore avoids decisions being referred upwards.

Liaison role

This class of leadership arrangement aims at reducing the rank’s coordination effort, when different types of communications exist between two separate departments. In this case, a liaison manager is chosen to go and foster communication.

Managerial linking role

This involves an addition of financial control to integrated roles with an intention of allocating the budget in the first place to administrative coordinating pins that are also tasked with buying products from line managers.

Team decision

These are teams of manager who are continuously given the task of changing temporary task force into permanent interdepartmental team.

Task force

In a situation where many departments get involved in decision making, a non-permanent task force from various departments can be created on a short term basis. It will be found that the decision arrived at here tend to be of high quality than when it is handled by an individual.

In conclusion, Lateral leadership is helpful to an organization because it allows numerous decisions, different kinds of decisions, better and faster decision making. This type of leadership also makes the managers free from discussing non-operational issues affecting their organizations. The possible disadvantages may include additional cost involved in lateral structured leadership because as many people are involved in communication, more cost is directly or indirectly incurred. Other disadvantages here may include lack of total optimization of power as middle managers may sometimes lack the overall overview fro top managers in decision making. These advantages of lateral structured leadership arrangement overwhelm its disadvantages therefore it should be adopted by all organizations.

References

Favereau, O., & Lazega, E. (2002). Conventions and structures in economic organization: Markets, networks, and hierarchies. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.