Managing Organizations

Managing Organizations

An organization will have a general overall objective. A book publishing company, for example, may have the overall objectives of providing high-quality educational materials and making a profit from their sale. It is up to the managers to divide this overall objective into smaller ones or subobjectives. These subobjectives will guide individuals in different parts of the organization toward doing things to help the organization reach its overall objective. The objective for the editorial department may be to choose the best books to publish and to ensure the quality of their content. The objective of the production department would be to use materials such as paper and ink efficiently and manufacture the books on time. The objective of the mar¬keting department would be to determine what type of books the customers want. The objectives of the sales department would be to reach a certain sales quota. In this way, each worker and each department and each division of the organization contribute to the overall success of the organization, even though the various people and the various units are all doing different things.

The overall organizational objective and the subobjectives assigned to various segments of the organization are referred to as a hierarchy of objectives.

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