CRH CHARACTERISTICS

Organisational theory is especially useful for people who manage organisations, or who aspire to do so in the future. But whether or not you are a manager, if you work in public health, you will be working with organisations - hospitals, charities, local and national government etc - and so you need to understand them. It enables the manager to see that his or her organisation and its problems are rarely wholly unique. Usually, much of value can be learned from examining the behaviour of other organisations in broadly similar circumstances. It can help us to explain what is happening in our own organisation and to identify possible solutions to its challenges, issues and problems, provided the solutions selected take into account cultural and other key aspects and are not simply 'broad-brush' or replica implementations based on what is done elsewhere.

Organisations, especially large organisations are generally 'complex', having many inter-related facets and areas that need to be co-ordinated, managed together to achieve efficiencies and effectiveness in achieving stated goals and objectives. Organisations also need to be 'adaptive', they need to respond to ongoing changes in the environments in which they operate e.g. the political, social, economic and technological conditions that together form the environment in which organisations operate.

Even if you do not aspire to be a manager, organisational theory should be of interest to you. We live in a world of organisations - work, university, clubs, trade unions, professional bodies, shops, and so on. Organisational theory can help explain how they work and why they work in the ways they do. Understanding how they work may even enable you to get the best out of each of them!

Drucker: suggests three criteria for effective organisations:

They must be organised for business performance

Their structure should contain the least number of management levels

Organisational structure should facilitate