Building Organisation Capacity

Running head: BUILDING ORGANISATION CAPACITY
Building Organisation Capacity
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1BUILDING ORGANISATION CAPACITY
Organisational Structure is a key towards the success of every health organisations,
particularly when they are located in very complex business environment where the people
are well aware of their current situations (Brustbauer, 2016). Whitlam Memorial Hospital
(WMH) is one of the health care facilities based in Sydney. It is widely known for providing
emergency and acute services in relation to the health of the people. Sydney is very positively
influenced because of the existence of this hospital. This essay shall elaborate on defining the
organisational structure and the reason behind its importance. It shall provide a brief critical
description regarding the functional structure, the strengths and weaknesses of the functional
structure in relation to the WMH case study. Furthermore, it will then suggest an alternative
structure in order for the hospital to be better able to achieve its mission, vision and
objectives.
According to Kang et al. (2016), organisational structure refers to the system that used
for defining the hierarchy of an organisation. It is something that defines how a company
operates in order to achieve its mission, vision, goals and objectives. It is to note that the
organisational structure is of utmost importance in order to ensure growth of the company as
it provides clarity and guidance on a particular human resource issue like managerial
authority. Organisational structure provides a guidance to all the organisational members by
means of laying out the official reporting relationship, governing the company’s workflow.
As per Cooper (2015), in absence of a formal organisational structure, staffs and employees
in an organisation might find it difficult to assess who they are officially reporting to during
different situations and this may become very unclear to assess and understand exactly who
has the final responsibility for what. According to Baumgartner and Rauter (2017), it is the
organisational structure that improves the operational efficiency of an organisation by means
of providing a clarity to all the employees at all levels. Also, organisational structure act as
the foundation of the process of decision making.

2BUILDING ORGANISATION CAPACITY
Functional organisational structure refers to the structure that is basically used for
organising the workers. They are the groups that are based on their specific knowledge and
skills. It organises all the activities of a business all over the areas of specialisation. It is to
note that the daily activities and the various different communication channels of the
organisations are all influenced by the structure that an organisation follows and therefore,
there is a high need for considering the type of structure in order to make the organisational
operations successful. The Whitlam Memorial Hospital at present makes use of the traditional
functional organisation structure, i.e., the bureaucratic structure. However, it is to state that
this organisational structure may not be efficient enough with the continuous complexity
present in its business environment. According to Allen, Hurcan and Queyranne (2016), the
traditional bureaucratic structure is basically characterised by the tall and thin organisational
charts that are based in the centre. It means that the process of decision making is burdened
on the management level and at the same time, it also encourages the cultured focused
organisation where the different practices and rules are all set and allow a close supervision
of all the controlled methodologies. At WMH, the skill sets are all grouped into different
functional departments within the organisation like that of the administration department, the
accounting department, the ICT support etc.
Notwithstanding this fact, it is to mention that this type of organisational structure has
its own strengths and weaknesses. The manager at the top of the hierarchy is the only one
who is able of exercising the huge control over the strategic decision making of the
organisation as well as their implementation process (Rahman, 2018). Hence, the time that is
used in the process of making an important decisions is very short and at the same time, it
proves to be of the quality uses as it depends on the set of skills of the top level organisational
managers. One of the other advantages or strengths of it include the fact that the
departmentalisation of it allows the collection of a particular set of skills which allow the