An Alternative View of Organisations

We can gain a different view of organisational types when we look at the

work of Henry Mintzberg (Structure in Fives - Designing Effective
Organisations.) He divides organisations into five groups, the sizes of
which can differ depending on the type of organisation and the functions
that it performs. His groupings are: The Operating Core - the people who perform the basic work of
producing the products and rendering the services. In ELT organisations,
these are the teachers and tutorial staff.
The Strategic Apex - the person or group of people who are in a direct
supervisory role over the operating core. In ELT institutions, this is the
Director or Head of faculty in a university, for example. It could also be the
Director, Financial Controller and Head of Marketing.
The Middle Line -a hierarchy of authority between the operating core
and the strategic apex. This can consist both of managers of operators
and managers of managers. This divides workers into those who do the
basic work and those who administer it. This is where Directors of Studies
or Heads of Departments fall.
The Technostructure - this group is formed of analysts who standardise
the work done. This group falls outside the connected group of strategic
apex, middle line and operating core, and is outside that hierarchy of line
authority.
There is here a second administrative division of labour - between those
who do or supervise the work, and those who standardise it. In ELT
institutions, this department tends to be very small, mainly concerned
with accounts and planning.
Support Staff - staff units who add a different dimension or set of
services to the services provided by the operating core. In ELT institutions,
this group could be represented by a cafeteria, a bookshop, or a selfaccess centre, for example.

In Mintzbergs diagram,
shown
here,
the
operating
core at the base is
the strategic apex at the
top by the middle line.
The technostructure and
support staff are off to
side to indicate that they
are separate from the
line of authority and
influence the operating
core only indirectly.

joined to

the
main

He goes on to describe five different structural configurations, under the

headings of simple structure, machine bureaucracy, professional
bureaucracy, divisionalized form and adhocracy. These can be further
detailed in that each configuration is led or pulled by one of its parts. The
breakdown is described thus:
Simple structure - the strategic apex pulls towards centralisation and thus
retains control over decision making. It achieves this when direct
supervision is relied on for co-ordination.
Machine bureaucracy - the technostructure pulls for standardisation,
particularly of work processes. designing and regulating work processes is
the raison dtre of the technostructure. This can be seen clearly if we
consider mechanisms such as quality control.
Professional bureaucracy - the members of the operating core seek to
minimise the influence of the administrators, managers as well as
analysts, over their work. When they succeed they work relatively
autonomously,
achieving
the
necessary
co-ordination
through
standardisation of skills. The operators exert a pull for professionalism, i.e.
reliance on outside training that enhances their skills
Divisionalised form - the middle line seek autonomy, but must achieve it
by drawing power down from the strategic apex and, if necessary up from
the operating core. They want to split the structure into market-based
units that can control their own decisions.
Adhocracy - the members of the organisation are autonomous but
collaboration is called for in decision-making, due to the expertise of those
members. In this configuration, the organisation is structured into work
constellations to which power is decentralised selectively. Co-ordination
between the constellations is arranged by mutual adjustment.

The structure which most closely parallels that of many ELT institutions is
the
professional bureaucracy, so it is worth examining this structure in a little
more
detail.
Mintzberg describes it as follows:- the professional bureaucracy relies for
coordination
on the standardisation of skills and its associated design parameter,
training and indoctrination. It hires duly trained and indoctrinated
specialists - professionals - for the operating core, and then give them
considerable control over their own work.
The diagram for the professional bureaucracy, according to Mintzbergs
models, is shown below.

By indoctrination here, Mintzberg does not imply anything sinister.

Rather he is talking about the process of familiarising staff members with
the ways of operating and reacting within a particular organisation which
may be distinct to that organisation. We have all experienced the change
of systems and approaches which occur from workplace to workplace, and
which manifest themselves in issues such as a dress code, the code of
professional conduct which some institutions apply, or an unspoken set of
guidelines as to what is appropriate in a given situation. McDonalds, with
its precisely defined training
programme for employees and senior staff, is a clear example of
Mintzbergs use of indoctrination.
Features of the Professional Bureaucracy
The professional works independently of his colleagues, but closely with
the clients she serves. Teachers have the autonomy to make their own
decisions about how they work in the classroom, generally speaking.
(although there are exceptions, depending on the nature of the
organisation.)They may need to consult and liaise with colleagues and
Heads of Departments as to the content of the syllabus, but the decision
as to how they teach new language is generally left to their professional

judgement. The liaison is informed by the common understanding the

professionals have by virtue of their shared training and
experience. Listening to any two colleagues making decisions about who
will teach what in a shared class could lead the uninformed to imagine
that their classes will be either book-bound or vague. Comments such as
If you do page 53 and 54, Ill do a fluency activity to practise that aspect
of Present Perfect and a bit more on the vocab. section are not
uncommon. Observation of that lesson would paint a very different
picture, however - the teachers, on the basis of their shared professional
knowledge and experience, can present a polished and varied lesson
around this rather dry outline. They also trust each others
judgement, which is another feature of the professional bureaucracy.
But for all professionals, although the procedures may be the same, the
range and variety of the client groups mean that ingenuity and flair is
called for to satisfy the clients needs. The same approach cannot be used
willy-nilly. The pleasure that a good professional experiences in her work
is not simply a pleasure in handling difficult matters; it is a pleasure in
using a well-stocked kit of well-designed tools to handle problems that are
comprehensible in their deep structure but unfamiliar in their detail.
(Simon, The New Science of Management Design).
In a professional bureaucracy, there are often two parallel systems at work
a democratic, bottom-up system for the professionals and a bureaucratic
and top down system for the support staff. If you compare the structures
which operate between teachers, Senior teachers and Directors of Studies
against the structure in the accounting department of an organisation,
then clear differences may well emerge. Both systems are appropriate for
the staff that work within them and attempts to apply a more bottom-up
and democratic approach within the (of necessity) carefully structured and
carefully controlled accounts department would do the organisation little
good. It is not very helpful to have a department which is participative and
free-ranging in its division of responsibilities if the
electricity bill does not get paid on time as a result of this policy. The
professional bureaucracy, as defined, is a very modern one. It is
democratic, disseminating its power directly to its workers (at least those
of them who are professionals).And it provides them with extensive
autonomy, freeing them even of the need to co-ordinate closely with their
peers, and all the pressures and politics that entails. (Mintzberg, ibid.)