What Is a Hierarchical Organizational Structure?

Hierarchical organization structure is a pyramid-shaped system organization, arranged in a top-down manner among the relationship entities in the organization.

Hierarchical organization

Responsibility and rights are centered on the top pyramid and decisions flow from top to bottom. See Centralization and Decentralization. Pyramids can be steeper. Steep pyramids have many levels of management, and a unit organization is relatively small. The opposite form of organization is a systematic relationship in which the direction of activities is not fixed in a way (top-down), but flows back and forth between entities to participate. In other words, the parties must agree to the activities of the other party.

Linear organization (linear organization structure) Linear organization structure comes from the military organization system. It refers to the organizational method of arranging responsibilities and powers according to vertical relationships. In the linear organization structure, each work department has only one instruction source, which avoids affecting the operation of the organization system due to contradictory instructions. However, in a large organization system, because the instruction path of the linear organization system is too long, it will cause difficulties in the operation of the organization system.

The characteristic of the linear organizational structure is that the responsibility and authority of the upper layer is greater than the lower layer, and it is gradually reduced to form a pyramid-like responsibility management system. In such a system, each person is responsible for only one superior.

Pros and cons of linear organization

The advantages of linear organization are:

The responsibilities and powers are clear, the relative stability is relatively large, it is easy to maintain good discipline, and it is not easy to cause the confusion of responsibilities and powers.

The disadvantages of linear organization are:

May lead to rigid management style, arbitrary work style or even dictatorship; one leader is overburdened, while others are idle; some departments may emphasize local goals and local interests and ignore overall goals and overall interests; The entire job may be affected by the departure or relocation of a leader.