Organizing is the managerial function of arranging people and resources to work toward a goal. The purposes of organizing include but are not limited to determining the tasks to be performed in order to achieve objectives, dividing tasks into specific jobs, grouping jobs into departments, specifying reporting and authority relationships, delegating the authority necessary for task accomplishment, and allocating and deploying resources in a coordinated fashion.

Henri Fayol first identified organizing as a function of management in his classic monograph General and Industrial Administration. This book was published in France in 1916 but was not translated into English until the 1920s, and it was not published in the United States until 1949. Fayol's monograph has had a profound effect on the teaching and practice of management in the years since. Early "principles of management" texts published in the 1950s generally were organized around management functions, including organizing, as are most...