Page 182 - DCOM102_DMGT101_PRINCIPLES_AND_PRACTICES_OF_MANAGEMENT

Principles and Practices of Management

Notes 2. Vertical and horizontal coordination: Coordination between different levels of an
organisation is called 'vertical coordination'. It is achieved by top management, through
delegation of authority. When coordination is brought between various positions, at the
same level in the organisation (i.e., between production, sales, finance, personnel, etc.) it
is called 'horizontal coordination'. Horizontal coordination is achieved through mutual
consultations and cooperation.

Task Enlist various types of coordination that you see around you in the
organisation that you are currently related to.

10.9 Issues and Systems Approach to Coordination

The systems approach decomposes an organisation into three broad components of actors, goals
and resources. The actors, comprising of entities such as management, employees, customers,
suppliers and other stakeholders perform interdependent activities aimed at achieving certain
goals.
Multiple actors and interactions, resources and goals need to be coordinated if common desired
outcomes are to be achieved. Viewed from the need to maintain perspective and solve problems
that might arise from these multiplicities, coordination links hand in glove with the concept of
systems thinking. Actors in organisations are faced with coordination problems. Coordination
problems are a consequence of dependencies in the organisation that constrain the efficiency of
task performance.
Organisations are systems in the sense that they comprise of elements that interact to produce a
predetermined behavior or output. Change in a constituent part of a system may constrain
efficient functioning of other parts of the same system or alter required input or output
specifications.

The solution to coordination problems, according to coordination theory, lies in the actors
performing additional activities called coordination mechanisms. The theory maintains that
dependences and mechanisms to counter them are general in the sense that they arise in one
form or another in nearly every organisation.
A simplified typology of the kind of dependences that call for coordination in an organisation
may be:
1. Task-task: Tasks may have overlapping, conflicting or outputs with the same characteristics;
Common inputs for tasks may be shareable, reusable or non-reusable; the output of one
task may be the input of other tasks or a prerequisite for performing subsequent tasks.
There may be conflict in specifications that need coordination.
2. Task-resource i.e. resources required by a task.
3. Resource-resource: A situation in which one resource depends on another resource. Each
of these dependences requires an appropriate coordination mechanism to manage it.
In conclusion, solution to organisational problems, implementation of change or formation of
a new organisation involves the management of numerous dependences among tasks, resources
and goals.

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