Organisational Structure Analysis of Whitlam Memorial Hospital (WMH)

This essay provides a critical analysis of the organisational structure of Whitlam Memorial Hospital (WMH), a community hospital in Sydney. The essay begins by defining organisational structure and its importance, then examines the functional structure currently used by WMH, discussing its strengths (such as departmental efficiency) and weaknesses (including limited innovation and top-down decision-making). The essay then proposes a matrix organisational structure as an alternative, highlighting its potential benefits like improved information exchange and employee motivation, while also acknowledging limitations such as internal complexity and potential for conflict. The analysis further links the hospital's vision, mission, and objectives to the organisational structure, concluding that the matrix structure is better suited to WMH's evolving needs, particularly with its expansion and the introduction of new services to meet the demands of a growing and diverse community. The essay draws upon various academic sources to support its arguments.

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

3BUILDING ORGANISATION CAPACITY
efficiency in the activities that pertain to the particular department. However, its limitations
or weaknesses include the fact that the bureaucracy functional structure discourages
innovation and creativity in the organisation by means of limiting the process of decision
making to the top management level through allowing certain form of dictatorial style of
management (Getha-Taylor & Gibson, 2017). It becomes very hard for the employees in such
organisation to air any idea or any sort of grievances that might take place. This further
results in the employees not getting the chance of having a conducive working environment
that leads to reduced productivity of the organisation.
The chosen alternative structure for WMH is that of Matrix organisational structure. It
is to note that Matrix organisational structure follows a system in which the reporting
relationships are set up in the form of matrix or grid, instead of traditional hierarchy (De
Vries & Van der Poll, 2016). In this case, the organisation employees have dual reporting
relationships- that of product manager and functional manager. As stated above, WMH at
present make use of bureaucratic organisational structure which is not efficient enough to
manage the continuous complexity present in its business environment. Its current expansion
to 250 hospital beds and the introduction of the new services and products targeting the
varied audience would be overwhelming and this may result in reduced quality of the offered
services and hence, would hamper the reputation of the hospital in Sydney. Following the
matrix organisational structure would insure in effective information exchange, increased
employee motivation, encouraging skills and innovation and at the same time, would ensure
flexibility within the organisation (Gaspary, de Moura & Wegner, 2018). Along with this
organisational structure solving the various issues affecting the organisation tends to become
easier, efficient and faster as there presents an effective line of communication, which allow
efficient and fast decision making. With the same, there is also a good collaboration of the
different departmental strategies within the firms, which allow the managers to respond

4BUILDING ORGANISATION CAPACITY
instantly. This is very suitable for the WMH because assessing the data and information of
the patient who has undergone treatment through different phases in different departments is
very important for successfully treating the patient. However, the limitations of this type of
organisation structure are the fact that it has internal complexity, is very expensive and there
may be rise in conflicts in the organisation because of the presence of two authoritative
figures as this results in mixed reactions. The matrix organisation structure is very complex
and this gets increased with the size as well as the diversification of the services and
products. Many a times, the employees can get confused with the mixed loyalty as there is a
presence of dual authority which if not used properly, could result in a rift in the organisation
and can slow down its productivity.
As per Bryson (2018), the vision statement of an organisation refers to the road map
that indicate what the company desire to become. On the other hand, mission statements
refers to the statement of why the organisation exists in the market and what is its goal. The
vision and mission of an organisation have always been strategically important for the
success of the organisation in the business environment. They create a foundation where the
organisational members are required for underlining their activities in order to mirror their
objectives and goals and at the same time, they need to link up with the structure of the
organisation. The mission statement of WMH involve the addition of the values of the health
care centre. On the contrary, the vision statement is much more future oriented as compared
to mission statement. This is due to the fact that it helps in declaring the true purpose of the
organisation. According to Duygulu et al. (2016), there is a link in between the vision
statement and the mission statement of a company and it is that the mission statement
determines the purpose of the organisation and on the basis of this purpose, the vision
statement highlights the necessities for the organisation. The mission of WMH is to provide
high quality care and service to the patients and the stakeholders. On the other hand, its vision

5BUILDING ORGANISATION CAPACITY
include developing health experts who can help in responding to the important changes in the
different health care centres. According to Zhu, Wang and Bart (2016), the objectives or
goals of a company help it in remaining in line with the vision and mission. Gagne (2018)
have defined organisational goals as the strategic objectives established by the management
of the company for outlining the expected outcomes and guide the efforts of the employees.
For WMH, its goal is to make sure that there is high performing and multi-disciplinary teams
within the organisation who can provide all its patients with high quality special service.
Hence, from the above analysis it can be concluded that organisational structure has a
notable impact on the ability of an organisation to communicate in effective manner. The way
in which an organisation is structured, influence its ability of communicating affectively and
active its mission, vision and objectives. WMH uses bureaucratic organisational structure at
present but it is not efficient enough to manage the continuous complexity present in its
business environment. Therefore, using matrix organisational structure has been suggested in
this paper as it can help it in the long run. All the benefits and limitations of this
organisational structure has been described in this paper, illustrating its suitability for the
hospital.

6BUILDING ORGANISATION CAPACITY
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7BUILDING ORGANISATION CAPACITY
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