Ridgway Furniture is a manufacturing organization that rapidly grew from a small scale operation to more than 700 people. Conavia is a rapidly changing consulting firm. This analysis will be an examination and comparison of the problems of structure, communication and motivation in these two organizations.

STRUCTURE

Organizational structure refers to the manner in which an organization divides its labour into tasks and how those tasks are coordinated. Work has to be divided, since no one employee can be expected to do everything. If tasks are not coordinated, the organizational goals will never be accomplished.

1. Mechanistic structures are organizational structures that tend to be tall with narrow spans of control, tend towards specialization, high centralization, as well as high formalization. These structures operate like a mechanical device with every part having its own function and being coordinated with the others. Ridgway and...