Line and Functional (Staff) Organization

Line and Functional (Staff) Organization
To overcome the shortcomings of Line and Staff organization, this type of organization has been established. In such type of organizations, specialists are appointed for every field and they are being provided with assistants and other staff to assist on different activities.


Types of Staff

1. Personal Staff: Personal staff is attached with individual line officers. They fix routine meetings, open the post, maintain the diaries etc.

2. Specialist Staff: These are technically qualified persons who provide services of specialization to the organization. Such as additional managers or assistant managers.

3. General Staff: The officers like a legal officer comes under this category.











Production HR Finance R & D Sales Admin
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Advantages of Line & Functional Organization:
1. It introduces specialization in a systematic manner.
2. The unity of command is maintained in these types of organizations.
3. It is suitable for growth and expansion.
4. It leads to lessen the burden on line officers.

Disadvantages of Line & Functional Organization:
1. It results conflicts between Line and Staff personnel.
2. Lack of responsibility of staff officials.
3. Lack of co-ordination.
4. More dependence on staff.
5. Much expensive as large number of specialists are appointed.

CONFLICTS BETWEEN LINE & STAFF ORGANISATION

Line manager has following complaints against the Staff:

1. Undermining the line authority: Line officer thinks that the staff officer interferes in their work and gives their suggestions unnecessarily, which leads to the undermining of line authority.

2. Lack of Accountability (Responsibility): Staff people are not accountable for any job and ultimately the responsibility lies with line manager.

3. Approach of Staff: Staff persons are too much academic and do not understand the practical problems and can’t give practical advice.

4. Stealing of credit: The staff persons have the tendency to snatch the credit of successful decisions and shift the blame of unsuccessful decisions to the line officers.

5. Limited outlook of the Staff: Line officers are loyal towards the objective of whole organization whereas the staff is restricted to the specific field. So they don’t have practical knowledge, skills and ideas to deal with.


Staff complaints against Line Organisation:

1. Ignoring the staff: Staff complaints about the line officers that they don’t listen and implement the ideas and mostly ignores their ideas.

2. Lack of Inner authority: Due to the authorities, which are mostly held with line officers, they think that it’s lacking with them.

3. Resistant to new ideas: Resistant of the ideas from staff by the line officers is the unbearable thing to staff and they think that line officers are not generally enthusiastic about the new ideas given by them.

WAYS TO OVERCOME THESE CONFLICTS:

1. Clarity between Authority and Responsibility: The authorities and responsibility should have total clarity and should be justified to each and everyone.

2. Focus on company’s objective or awareness of company’s objective: Everyone should be aware of what are the objectives of the organization and should be focused and work collectively to achieve the same.

3. Proper training (Practical knowledge) to staff: The top management should shoulder the responsibility to give the proper training and give the practical on job training as and when required to staff.

4. Welcoming of ideas of staff: The top management should be open always to accept the new ideas and after necessary analyses, if feasible, try to implement them in order to achieve the organizational objectives.

5. Establishment of co-ordination between Line Organisation & Staff Organization: The top manager should always try to establish the co-ordination between them and create the healthy environment which in turn leads to smooth functioning of organization.