Analysis of Whitlam Memorial Hospital's Organizational Structure

This report analyzes the organizational structure of Whitlam Memorial Hospital (WMH), a community hospital facing increasing demands from a growing population. It begins by defining organizational structure and its importance, highlighting the need for flexibility and efficiency. The report then examines the current functional organizational structure of WMH, discussing its strengths (easy to understand, compartmentalized) and weaknesses (inflexibility, communication issues). The core argument of the report is that a consumer-based organizational structure should replace the functional one. The report describes the consumer-based structure, its strengths (specialization, consumer satisfaction) and weaknesses (resource sharing issues). The report concludes by linking WMH's mission, vision, and goals to both the current and proposed structures, arguing that the consumer-based approach is crucial for managing the increasing consumer base effectively and improving the quality of care. The report emphasizes the importance of the new structure in allowing WMH to provide specialized healthcare services to its consumers.

Running head: MANAGEMENT
Management
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Organizational structure of an organization has the potential impose a huge impact on the
quality, productivity as well as performance of the company. In this report, the strengths and
weaknesses of the current organizational structure of the Whitlam Memorial Hospital along with
the strengths and weaknesses of the organizational structure that should be implemented in order
to enhance the quality of service and productivity of the mentioned organization will be
discussed. The Whitlam Memorial Hospital is a community hospital that currently possesses
bureaucratic organizational structure. Considering the fact that the population of the area that is
served by the mentioned organization is increasing with time, the organization is facing issues
while handling the workforce. Hence it has become highly crucial for the organization to
implement an effective organizational structure in order to manage the vast workforce (Ashkenas
et al., 2015). The thesis statement of this essay includes, Consumer based organizational
structure should replace the functional organizational structure of the Whitlam Memorial
Hospital to manage its increasing consumers in an effective way. Along with discussion of
both the current strategy and new organisational strategies, discussion of mission, vision, goals
and linkage of the WMH with the mission, vision and goals with both the old and new structure
of the mentioned organization will be performed.
In this paragraph, the definition of the organizational structure along with the reason
behind its importance in an organization has been discussed. An organizational structure is
referred to the process of task allocation, coordination as well as supervision are directed towards
the achievement of aims of the organization (Avgerou & Walsham, 2017). It is crucial for an
organization need to flexible, efficient, innovative as well as caring for achieving a sustainable
competitive advantage. Organizational structure can also be considered as the perspective and
viewing glass through which people view their organization as well as its environment.

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According to a recent survey, organizations with effective organizational structure are
developing in a higher speed in terms of both revenue and consumer base compared to the
organizations that lacks appropriate organizational structure (O'Neill, Beauvais & Scholl, 2016).
When it comes to the importance of organizational structure, one of the chief importance of the
same is to provide effective guidance to both the employees and the management by laying out
an official reporting relationship that governs the workflow of the organization. One of the chief
evidence of the success of an organization due to implementation of appropriate organizational
structure is the Starbucks Coffee shop. Starbuck has been able to achieve a good reputation
along with high revenue due to its efficient organizational structure. Starbucks evolves to ensure
that its organizational structure matches current business needs. Unlike other organizations, it
does not stick to a specific organizational structure but changes the same with time and
requirements. Thus it can be clearly understood that organizational structure is highly crucial in
order to gain success in the highly competitive industry of this era.
In this paragraph, description of the functional organizational structure and
discussion of its strengths and weaknesses in relation to the WMH has been performed. The
functional or bureaucratic organizational structure is most commonly used in businesses. It
involves a top down flowchart with the high rank executive or executives in the top, the
managers like the HR manager, operational and accounting managers in the middle and the
employees in the lower level (Bustinza et al., 2015). The mentioned departments are managed
separately by the department manager and they are the ones who answer to the top level
managers. Two of the major strengths of the functional organizational structure that it is very
easy to understand and as the potential to keep the business neatly compartmentalized. On the
other hand, the mentioned organizational structure also possesses a good number of weaknesses

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as well. Firstly, the being a higherarchical organizational structure, in this organizational
structure, employees faces high difficulties to respond to the change immediately. Another
weakness of this structure is lack of ability of the functional group to communicate more often
that in turn diminishes the innovation and flexibility of the organization. Additionally,
managerial issues may take place due to its bureaucratic approach and the fact that effective
horizontal coordination within the departments does not take place (Knofius et al., 2016). When
it comes to the link of Functional structure with the given case study, it can be clearly understood
that the Whitlam Memorial Hospital is facing several issues due to its present organizational
structure which is functional. Firstly considering the fact that the organization is planning to
implement some changes in the function in order to satisfy the needs of the growing community,
due to lack of flexibility, employees may not react to the changes instantly. Secondly, since
WMH is planning to increase the number of services and beds, it is crucial to restructure the
organizational structure in order to diminish the risk of conflict within the employees due to lack
of communication between the departments. Hence it can be concluded that the organization
needs to implement a new organizational structure that possess the potential to provide great
consumer service as well as manage the increasing number of consumers in an effective level.
In this paragraph, description of the consumer based organizational structure, its
strengths and weaknesses along with its relationship with the WMH has been discussed. The
consumer based organizational structure possesses different business segments at the bottom are
each split into a specific customer group. These types of organizational structure are mainly used
in healthcare settings. Considering the fact that consumers of healthcare organizations differ
significantly, it makes sense to customize the service. The major strength of this setting is that
staffs obtain the potential to specialize in terms of consumer types and this in turn can make

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organizations more productive along with enhancing the satisfaction of the consumers (Sabbagh
et al., 2017). The directors of each consumer centre are supposed to report directly to the chief
medial officer in this organizational structure and this prevents the risk of overlap, redundancies
and confusion. According to researchers, this organizational structure is appropriate for
organizations that serve the product as well as service needs of specific consumers (Hirsiger et
al., 2017). However, when it comes to the weaknesses of the mentioned organizational structure,
one of the major weaknesses of the mentioned organizational structure is risk of lack of sharing
of resources across division and high investment costs due to supplication of infrastructure
(Rouquet, Goudarzi & Henriquez, 2017). When it comes to WHM, the consumer based
organizational structure will help the organization not only to tackle the increasing consumer by
segregating employees according to their specialization, but will also help the organization to
drop unprofitable service line. Not only this, WHM will also be able to enhance consumer
satisfaction since this structure will allow the management to focus on the needs and preferences
of the consumers. Finally it can be concluded that, in order to cope up with the issue of high
consumer flow align with the mission, vision and goals of WHM, it is highly crucial for the
management to implement the Consumer based organizational structure.
In this paragraph, definition as well as discussion of mission, vision and goals and its
link with WHM to both the old and new structure has been performed. The term mission
statement is defined as a general statement that presents a big picture of what the company wants
to achieve. The mission statement of an organization defines how the company will be able to
achieve the mission. When it comes to the core values of an organization, it can be defined as the
ethical as well as behavioural values that the company will implement in order to behave
appropriately in this process (Gurley et al., 2015). Goals, on the other hand are defined as the

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statements that defines the specific needs that the organization needs to accomplish for
implementing a strategy (Bryson, 2018). When it comes to WHM, the mission of the
organization is to provide its consumers with highest quality, cares, specialist healthcare in
partnership with patients, the community at large and other health care providers. Considering
the fact that the present organizational structure of WHM is functional, it is becoming difficult
for the organization to provide speciality healthcare to its consumers. However, implementation
of the consumer based healthcare service will enable the organization to segregate its employees
according to their specialization and thus fulfil their mission. When it comes to strategic goal of
WHM, it involves, develop high performing, multidisciplinary teams within the specialist
services in order to provide high quality, patient-centred care that is effective, efficient and able
to respond to the changing health needs of the population. However, lack of communication
between the employees and rigidity towards new changes due to functional organization
structure, is hampering the productivity of the organization. However, implantation of the
consumer based organizational structure will resolve the issue making it easier for the
organization to develop efficient, high performing specialist healthcare team.
From the above discussion it can be concluded that consumer based organizational
structure should replace the functional organizational structure of the Whitlam Memorial
Hospital to manage its increasing consumers in an effective way. Considering the fact that the
functional organizational structure is affecting the productivity and consumer satisfaction of the
organization, implementation of the consumer based organizational system will help the
organization to resolve the issues through efficient categorization of staffs according to their
specialization and enhancing communication between the departments.

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