Basic Elements of an Organization

Basic elements of an organization

Topic Introduction

Today, no day passes without hearing people talk about organization from different parts of the world irrespective of size. But, among all these people that discuss about organization, how many of them can give clear definition of the word 'organization'?

Again, among all these persons, who can stand boldly and give five principal elements of an organization without making any mistake.

There are elements that make every organization. In fact no living thing exists without element, as it is the basic composition of anything that exists. You as reader this piece is composed of many elements. Some elements in you include blood, water, head, hands, eyes and so on. If any of these elements is missing in you, you are not complete as they make you whole. In that same way, if any of these basic elements that are yet to be discussed on this note is missing in any organization, the organization becomes incomplete.

An organization is a collection of individuals who have come together to achieve a common goal. It can also be defined as a function of a management. The emergence of organization as a group of persons who came together to achieve a particular goal was because it was difficult for an individual to achieve a good result alone. With the help offered by employees to the management or the employer, organizations come out with remarkable results.

Organization elements that need to be understood

What are the Basic Elements of an Organization?  

There are many elements that make up all organizations, but this topic centres on the ‘basic’ elements that are constituted in every organization. The basic elements that make up an organization are social structure, technology, participants, goals and environments.

Social structure

This concerns human-to-human association in every organization. Organization is made up of many individuals with much behaviour. The behaviour displayed by ‘staff A’ may not be the same with the one displayed by ‘staff B’ as they come from different families and given different trainings from homes.

Above all, all workers are expected to associate and socialize with one another in different workplaces of the world irrespective of the status that anyone bears in the organization. Organizational social structure brings unity and progress in organizations in accordance with the statement ‘united we achieve great result’. When workers socialize effectively in organizations, the organization stands firm and give maximum and beneficial result to the company or establishment.

Social structure as one of the elements of an organization calls people from far and wide together. Because of this socialization, people learn the language of the person from another tribe. This language in some cases helps the organization when they want to advertise their goods in local languages and have one of the employees as the speaker of the local language. This employee helps in the sales of the goods or service rendering through his or her interpretations.

Technology

I wonder how organizations would have performed effectively in the modern world without technology. It is viewed as the state of the arts in a society or the cause effect beliefs in the transformation process. It exerts influence on the organizational structure and can constrain the activities of employees.

Technology limits the stress that workers would have incurred in their organizations. Think of how long it will take a cashier in an organization to use his brain to calculate individual sales of about $2 million in a week. If it is end of year account, how much time do you think it will take the treasurer and the financial secretary of a big company to calculate all the sales made for the year when there is no calculator to assist? But, with the help of small portable calculator, all these calculations will be made within few minutes.

Technology as element of organization plays important role in production process. Many would have die of hunger if not because of the help offered by technology in production processes. Today, mass production is made possible because of use of machines in production processes. In drying machine, many materials are dried within a limited time for the use of the masses. If an example is given on fish drying using large drying machine, do you know the large number of fishes that can easily be dried with the help of the machine? When compared with the old and traditional drying process, you will find out that there are clear difference between use of machines in organizations and old system of drying. Truly, machines are principal parts of any organization in this present world.

Elaborating more on the use of technology as one of the principal elements of every organization, there is no department in all organizations in the world of today that does not make good use of technology. Mention any part at all; is it in the kitchen of any organization, toilets, offices, reception rooms, manufacturing department or any other you can remember? In the kitchen of any organization, technology takes the form of electric and gas stoves. When considering the use of technology in offices, it appears as calculators, mobile telephones, pens, books and so on. Books and pens are product of technology as technology is the use of materials or resources around us to manufacture new products. Technology is seen in organizational toilets in the form of water closets and toilet papers. In receptions, televisions, videos, air conditioners and monitoring machines are products of technology.

Participants

In a layman’s understanding, a participant is someone who takes part in doing something. Defining participants with respect to management, they are those workers who work in any organization. Participants are core elements of organizations as organizations seize to exist without those working to make it up. In fact, human beings make up any organization and without them, who form the group, organization, there will be nothing like that.

Participants in any organization can be referred to as the employees and they perform great functions. The employees are the people that keep every organization going. They are the one that instruct machines used in organizations on what they will do. Employees assist the managers of organizations to achieve great results and in profit making. When employees fail to do their works effectively, the organization they work for will be affected negatively.

Goals

It is defined as the objective of an organization and its achievement serves as a measure of organizational effectiveness or performance. In the world of football, between two teams that play in a football pitch, their aims are is to score goals. That a team played wonderfully well and secures the whole possession in a football and score no goal at the end of the match is nonsense. What matters are the goals scored at the end. If the opponent to that team played less and scored goals, they are the people that achieve great result.

The goals of an organization should be time targeted

Every organization set goals right from the onset of the organization in order to achieve greatness in future time. Example of goals set by organization can include profit making and organizational expansion. An organization that goes into production with about $80 Million may set a profit of $40 Million in each month of production or service. The already set goal will make the management of the organization to work hard and meet up with the goals, and this can make the management to adopt certain strategy to make sure that the goals are ‘scored’.

Environments

According to the study of management, environments are entities, forces, variables, institutions and so on, which affect the organization without organizational control over them. Environment can also be defined as a surrounding where organizations carryout their day-to-day functions.

No organization is built on the air but on the environment. It is after making necessary map outs and arrangements that organization can be fixed to a particular geographical area. Other factors like dry and wet seasons are included in environment. Weather enables organization to know when to produce more or engage more in the services they render to people.

Conclusion

Element simply implies the constituents of a particular thing. In the field of Science, it is seen as compositions of substances called Compounds. This write-up is on the compositions or elements of an organization. The elements as written on this note are social structure, technology, participants, goals and the environments.