HCM 433 MANGEMENT AND ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOUR.pdf

elations, quality control and maintenance. In other organisations, noticeably in service industries,
personnel can be seen as closely associated with a task function. But in the majority of
organisations, the personnel function does not normally have any direct accountability for the
performance of a specific end-task.
These two kinds of functions, task and element, differ in a number of ways and these differences
have important implications for organisation. Failure to distinguish between the two types of
functions can lead to confusion in the planning of structure and in the relationship between
members of the organisation. According to Woodward, for example, activities concerned with
raising funds for the business, keeping accounts and determination of financial policy are task
functions. But management accounting, concerned with prediction and control of production
administration, is an element function, and is primarily a servicing and supportive one.
Relationships between the accountants and other managers seemed better when the two functions
were organizationally separate. This is the case especially in divisionalised organisation when
each product division has its own accounting staff providing line managers with the necessary
information to control their own departments.
3.3.3 The Division of Work
According to Mullins (2000), work has to be divided among its members and different jobs related
to each other within the formal structure of an organisation,. The division of work and the
grouping together of people should, wherever possible, should be organised by reference to some
common characteristic which forms a logical link between the activities involved. It is necessary
to maintain a balance between an emphasis on subject matter or function at higher levels of the
organisation, and specialisation and concern for staff at the operational level.
,
Work can be divided, and activities linked together in a variety of different ways such as
follows:
i) Major Purpose or Function
The most commonly used basis for grouping activities is according to specialisation, the use of the
same set of resources, or the shared expertise of members of staff. It is a matter for decision in
each organisation as to which activities are important enough to be organised into separate
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