What is meant by organisation structure?

The purpose of all work that is carried out within or on behalf of an organisation should be to accomplish the mission of the organisation.

Generally, an organisation, profit or non-profit, will require many people to contribute to the work that must be done to accomplish the mission. An organisation structure is how people are organised into specific roles and responsibilities to undertake the organisation's mission.

The organisational chart below depicts a common situation for a non-profit organisation. There are three major components of this structure:

A Management Committee: A body of elected people who are the ultimate authority within the organisation
Salaried Positions: Small organisations may be staffed by entirely voluntary personnel. Medium organisation that have 500 members or more will likely need paid staff such as a club manager or executive officer to cope with the elvel of administration and coordination required. Still larger organisations may need salaried personnel such as a development officer and/or a coaching director.
Volunteers: Irrespective of whether an organisation has paid staff or not, the bulk of the work is most often carried out by volunteers who need to be organised into specific roles and duties based upon the time they can give.

Organisation Structure showing levels of paid and voluntary staff

Different organisation structures suit different types of organisations. The organisation structure of a non-profit organisation can be very different to a for-profit organisation.

Some examples of organisation structures can been seen below. The organisation structure of a major football club depicted below was drawn from a real example.

Typical Sport Club (not-for-profit enterprise)

organisation structure of a non-profit sport club .

Major Football Club (for-profit enterprise)

Example of a organisation structure for a major football club (professional, for-profit enterprise)

There is no perfect solution to developing an organisation structure. There is always change and therefore organisation management must review the structure of the organisation and modify as necessary.

Some factors that impact on organisation structure are listed below.

The mission of the organisation	An organisation with a mission to provide service will be structured differently to an organisation that exists primarily to sell products.An organisation that is a non-profit organisation will be structured differently to an organisation that is a for-profit business.
The priorities of the organisation	Managing an organisation is about dealing with the problem that there is always too much to do and too few staff to carry out the work.Management must determine which tasks are most important and assign personnel to them. Therefore the organisation structure will depend on what decisions have been made by management with respect to priorities.
Goals and objectives to be achieved	Statements of "Goals" and "Objectives" represent what the organisation wants to achieve. They change from time to time as a result of the changing environment in which the organisation lives. As Goals and Objectives change so will the organisation's structure.
Available people	Generally the human resources of any organisation is the key factor determining success. With enough good people, organisations can achieve all that is desired. However finding good people is often very difficult, especially when you need them as volunteers (unpaid) in non-profit organisations. It is often the case that priorities, goals and objectives and funding are determined according to what "good people" can be found,
Financial resources available	Organisations cannot solve problems by simply employing more people, if only this was the case! The number of paid people in an organisation is limited by the availability of funding. Even when organisations rely on volunteers, the need for money does not subside.