Who’s at the top and who’s at the bottom?

An organization consists of a group of individuals piloted by a leader that shares a common goal. These individuals are assigned tasks so as to make the materialization of the organization’s vision more efficiently. This is where the organizational structure comes in.

Organizational structures are designed layouts or arrangements of tasks or sets of tasks created while taking into considerations the allotment of the job, distribution of authority, as well as operational links of the subgroups or departments in an organization. Organizational structure, therefore, maximizes the group performance by allotting each member individual responsibilities and tasks without redundancies and at the same time monitors the group performance by assigning authorities to supervise and coordinate with the members of the group.

Organizational structures, however, differ from one group to another. It varies with the goal of the organization, the type of leadership a certain group has, as well as the organization’s view of their clients or benefactors. To sum things up, organizational structures can be broadly classified depending on the distribution of power, authority and responsibility: the traditionaland the inverted organizational structure.

Traditional organizational structure is the orthodox type of group arrangement that follows the typical pyramidal structure. In this pyramid, the leader or the president is at the top, followed by officers or subgroup leaders at the middle layer, while leaving the participants or members down at the bottom of the pyramid. The traditional organizational structure illustrates the division of labor wherein the control, influence, supremacy and responsibilities for conducting the organization is placed at the top, and goes down in the structure towards the officers or the departmental leaders. The members of the organization have minute power and authority in the group. Command and control are emphasized on this type of organizational structure; however, in this type of arrangement, the members tend to feel restricted as they have little and insignificant participation in decision-makings and would oftentimes do only what they are told to do so. Moreover, abuse of the higher ups in the pyramidal structure is more likely to occur in this type of organizational pattern.

Inverted organizational structure, however, defies the conventional pyramid structure. In this design, the members occupy the topmost portion, going down to the departmental leaders and down to the president. Since the leader takes the bottommost portion of the structure, his/her sole responsibility would be to support the members for the benefit of the organization as a whole. More so, in this type of organizational structure, the wants, needs and talents of the members are taken into great consideration. However, abuse of democratic authority of members, should be taken into account in this type of organizational structure.

Assessing the best type of organizational structure suited for a certain group is one of the major aspects to a successful leadership. Ability to ascertain the type of organizational structure that best fits the group as a whole without conflicts or resistance is one of the typical qualities of a leader. Moreover, being able to prevent abuse of authority as well as abuse of democracy by the members in a group is one of the key determining qualities of a leader, irrespective of the type of organizational structure the group has.

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