Organizational paradigms

Every organization is different, and there is no perfect organizational paradigm that fits every organization in all situations. Although hierarchies, holarchies, coalitions, teams, congregations, societies, federations, and matrix organizations are the most common organizational paradigms, there are many more types that exist, which are a combination of these with a few extra attributes. "What is clear is that all approaches have different characteristics that may be more suitable for some problems and less suitable for others" (Horling & Lesser, 2005).

I believe that a combination of hierarchical and team-based designs offers the best attributes among these organizational paradigms.

Hierarchically structured organizations are one of the oldest and time-tested paradigms with very clear advantages over the other paradigms. A hierarchical organizational design helps with decomposition, and that is its major advantage. Additionally, hierarchical organizations are formed with a number of departments, each with a hierarchy of its own, which helps the organization tackle large-scale projects, and scaling is comparatively easy depending on the need of the situation.

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They are also the simplest to understand, and the induction of new employees and their reporting system is comparatively more systematic and well-organized. However, the trouble with hierarchical systems is that they tend to develop bottlenecks, and decision-making processes tend to take longer. That is the reason for my belief that if the hierarchical organization creates teams within itself, it would improve the overall flexibility of the organization and avoid the creation of bottlenecks.

Teams are a set of employees who work towards a common goal, supporting and coordinating with each other.

Whenever a larger problem arises that cannot be handled by individuals, the team can take care of it and take the organization forward.

Reference:

Horling & Lesser, 2005, "A Survey of Multi-Agent Organizational Paradigms," retrieved May 14, 2009, from http://polaris.ing.unimo.it/didattica/cas/L6/Lesser_OrgParadigms.pdf.