Organizational Structure, Format, Shape, Design and Architecture

This book describes a new configuration based on studies on organizational structure and its variations, such as organizational format, shape, design, project and architecture. Thus, this chapter presents basic concepts on the organizational structure as well as its main elements and functions. The primary objective is to introduce the subject and show the importance of the structure approach in describing different kinds of organizations. It is important to emphasize that despite the association of the term “organizational structure” with the studies of the so-called structuralist school, research on organizational structure has been reinvigorated by the emergence of other schools of thought, as shown in this and the following chapters. Therefore, a review of traditional structuralist authors is necessary, but some studies of more recent influence are discussed here as well. The extent of this review demonstrates the current and renewed condition of the studies related to this subject. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.