Organizational chart

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An Organizational Chart is a chart which represents the structure of an organization in terms of rank. The chart usually shows the managers and sub-workers who make up an organization. The chart also shows relationships between staff in the organization which can be:

Line - direct relationship between superior and subordinate.
Lateral - relationship between different departments on the same hierarchical level.
Staff - relationship between an managerial assistant and other areas. The assistant will be able to offer advice to a line manager. However, they have no authority over the line manager actions.
Functional - relationships between specialist positions and other areas. The specialist will normally have authority to insist that a line manager implements any of their instructions.

In many large companies the organization chart can be large and incredibly complicated and is therefore sometimes dissected into smaller charts for each individual department within the organization.

There are three different types of organization chart:

Hierarchical
Matrix
Flat

Limitations of an organizational chart

There are several limitations with organizational charts:

It only shows 'formal relationships' and tells nothing of the pattern of human (social) relationships which develop.

It shows nothing about the managerial style adopted (eg autocratic or democratic)

It very quickly becomes out-of-date, especially in large organizations who change their staff regularly.

Example of an Organizational chart

The following is an example of a simple Hierarchical organizational chart:

An example of a Line relationship in this chart would be between the Division Officer and the three departments Training PO, Division LPO and Material PO. These three departments are directly responsible to the Division Officer.

An example of a Lateral relationship in this chart would be between Section Leader 1, Section Leader 2, Section Leader 3 and Section Leader 4 who all work on the same Hierarchical level and all report to the Senior Section Leader.

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