DSpace at Khazar University

of the coordination is handled at the top. Even the support staff is minimized, in order to
keep the structure lean, the organization flexible.
The organization must be flexible because it operates in a dynamic environment,
often by choice since that is the only place where it can outsmart the bureaucracies. But
that environment must be simple, as must the production system, or else the chief
executive could not for long hold on to the lion's share of the power. The organization is
often young, in part because time drives it toward bureaucracy, in part because the
vulnerability of its simple structure often causes it to fail. And many of these
organizations are often small, since size too drives the structure toward bureaucracy.
Not infrequently the chief executive purposely keeps the organization small in order to
retain his or her personal control.
The classic case is, of course, the small entrepreneurial firm, controlled tightly
and personally by its owner. Sometimes, however, under the control of a strong leader,
the organization can grow large. Likewise, entrepreneurial organizations can be found
in other sectors too, like government, where strong leaders personally control particular
agencies, often ones they have founded. Sometimes under crisis conditions, large
organizations also revert temporarily to the entrepreneurial form to allow forceful
leaders to try to save them.
The Machine Organization
The machine organization is the offspring of the industrial revolution, when jobs
became highly specialized and work became highly standardized. In contrast to
entrepreneurial organizations, the machine one elaborates is administration. First, it
requires a large techno structure to design and maintain its systems of standardization,
notably those that formalize its behaviors and plan its actions. And by virtue of the
organization's dependence on these systems, the techno structure gains a good deal of
informal power, resulting in a limited amount of horizontal decentralization, reflecting
the pull to rationalize. A large hierarchy of middle-line managers emerges to control the
highly specialized work of the operating core. But the middle – line hierarchy is usually
structured on a functional basis all the way up to the top, where the real power of
coordination lies. So the structure tends to be rather centralized in the vertical sense.
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