The Organizing Function of Management

MGT/330 [ July 20, 2012 ]

The Organizing Function of Management
Sikorsky Aircraft is an aerospace company that was founded in 1925 by Igor Sikorsky, a born Engineer and American Immigrant. These days, Sikorsky Aircraft makes several different models of rotary aircraft, which fills business and armed forces roles worldwide. In addition, the United States of America Presidential Transport Program contracts at this time belong to Sikorsky Aircraft. Igor Sikorsky built a company that is currently one of the best in helicopter design and development. Sikorsky aircraft currently owns quite a few subsidiaries, as well as but not limited to Helicopter Support Inc. which deals with after market support, and Schweizer Aircraft Corporation that builds small helicopters, light planes, gliders, and U.A.V.s. Now in terms of vertical structure, Sikorsky Aircraft is a strong business that is made up of several integrated departments and sub departments, which lead up in the course of several layers of allocation. At the top of the ladder is of course, a CEO, the board of directors, and shareholders. Horizontally, Sikorsky Aircraft is a bit of a "crossbreed" organization because it is divisional, however not every department has its own marketing sub division, for example. Sikorsky Aircraft is made up of several departments because there are several facets that make up the helicopter production business. For example, the interior paint shop. This part, in several ways, operates as its own unit. The paint shop has an individual chain of management, schedule, and its own costs metrics. The paint shop handles painting airplanes from quite a few programs inside Sikorsky Aircraft. Sikorsky Aircraft also operates as separate entity within their own company, engineering teams etc. Marketing, sales, and human resources are vital departments; for example, the "S-76 Commercial Aircraft program" does not have its own separate sales department. The Test Laboratory situated within Sikorsky Aircraft is a distinctive organization. The Test Lab facilitates vital flight safety, stress, and electrical testing on all existing flight programs in addition to developmental programs. For example, technicians’ and engineers perform stress tests on aircraft mechanisms using hydraulic fixtures. These tests are done to determine the projected amount of wear and tear that particular aircraft components can handle before serious failure occurs. In addition, the labs use on and off site storages for test equipment, test equipment kits, and tooling. At the utmost level, the Test Lab would appear as a functional organization, with a general manager that answers to higher management, and some lower level managers with different responsibilities under him. Physical resources are the foundation of the Test Lab's functionality. Sequentially the majority of the lab's processes would be unattainable without such assets. A lot of the material and all of the test subjects that end up passing through or being stored within the Test Labs are owned by the government, or are under the control of another department. On the other hand, the test lab owns a great deal of the equipment, and physical assets, that are used to assist in the tests, take measurements, and collect data. The significance of these resources is well known within the organization; for that reason the responsibility of managing these resources is delegated to a specific manager, and then to a team of associates. These associates work to list, store, request, and track the Test Lab's physical assets by means of electronic and "hands on" techniques. This process is very much decentralized in that the associates enthusiastically make decisions on their own, at the same time as the manager issues status updates via e-mail and team meetings. In this particular case, the manager delegates by setting goals and providing assets, although because the process is fairly tasking, he must depend on his subordinates to make decisions on his behalf. This is an successful way of managing the department's physical resources. This is a great example of how delegation moves downward throughout the organizational structure, yet as you might expect it is up to a team of associates to ensure success. The Sikorsky Aircraft Test Laboratory faces a lot of the monetary issues that divisional organizations face on a regular basis. All of the organization's functions have got to operate within both price and time restraints. Project budgets are contracted to the department through government or company sourced channels. If a test must meet a time frame of "A", and a budget of "B", it falls on top of the shoulders of the general manager and his team of associates to ensure operations are successful, and remain within such constraints. It has been said that "a structure with fewer horizontal layers saves time and money (Thomas S. Bateman, 2009)." The Sikorsky Aircraft Test Lab has only one general manager, and three frontline managers. The general manager sees a snapshot of his organizational cost structure, while the three frontline managers keep an eye on the cost and schedule of their individual projects. Here we have an organizational structure that would appear to be quite flat, and in fact, "Most executives today believe that fewer layers create a more efficient, fast-acting, and cost-effective organization. This also holds true for the subunits of major corporations. A study of 234 branches of a financial services company found that branches with fewer layers tended to have higher operating effectiveness than branches with more layers (Thomas S. Bateman, 2009)." Streamlined project, well-organized delegation, and a generally flat chain of command permit the Sikorsky Aircraft Test Laboratory to remain an essential example of favorable organizational structure. Therefore, it continues to maneuver ahead of schedule and within budget constraints. The test lab acts a gateway for which major structural and electrical aircraft machinery must pass in order for them to be considered safe for the customer. The Test Lab also measures the capability of multi-million, and even multi-billion dollar developments. For this reasons alone, it is very important for Sikorsky Aircraft's Test Laboratory to remain organizationally sound.

References

Thomas S. Bateman, Scott A. Snell. (2009). Management: Leading & Collaborating in a Competitive World, Eighth Edition. Retrieved June 21, 2012 from Thomas S. Bateman, Scott A. Snell, MGT330 website Sikorsky Aircraft, Main Site. (2010). Retrieved July 14, 2012, from Sikorsky Aircraft:
http://www.sikorsky.com