concepts of Organizing

The working relationships — vertical and horizontal associations between individuals and groups — that exist within an organization affect how its activities are accomplished and coordinated. Effective organizing depends on the mastery of several important concepts: work specialization, chain of command, authority, delegation, span of control, and centralization versus decentralization. Many of these concepts are based on the principles developed by Henri Fayol

Work specialization
One popular organizational concept is based on the fundamental principle that employees can work more efficiently if they're allowed to specialize. Work specialization, sometimes called division of labor, is the degree to which organizational tasks are divided into separate jobs. Employees within each department perform only the tasks related to their specialized function.
When specialization is extensive, employees specialize in a single task, such as running a particular machine in a factory assembly line. Jobs tend to be small, but workers can perform them efficiently. By contrast, if a single factory employee built an entire automobile or performed a large number of unrelated jobs in a bottling plant, the results would be inefficient.
Despite the apparent advantages of specialization, many organizations are moving away from this principle. With too much specialization, employees are isolated and perform only small, narrow, boring tasks. In addition, if that person leaves the company, his specialized knowledge may disappear as well. Many companies are enlarging jobs to provide greater challenges and creating teams so that employees can rotate among several jobs.
Chain of command
The chain of command is an unbroken line of authority that links all persons in an organization and defines who reports to whom. This chain has two underlying principles: unity of command and scalar principle.
• Unity of command: This principle states that an employee should have one and only one supervisor to whom he or she is directly responsible. No employee should report to two or more people. Otherwise, the employee may receive conflicting demands or priorities from several supervisors at once, placing this employee in a no-win situation.
Sometimes, however, an organization deliberately breaks the chain of command, such as when a project team is created to work on a special project. In such cases, team members report to their immediate supervisor and also to a team project leader. Another example is when a sales representative reports to both an immediate district supervisor and a marketing specialist, who is coordinating the introduction of a new product, in the home office.
Nevertheless, these examples are exceptions to the rule. They happen under special circumstances and usually only within a special type of employee group. For the most part, however, when allocating tasks to individuals or grouping assignments, management should ensure that each has one boss, and only one boss, to whom he or she directly reports.
• Scalar principle: The scalar principle refers to a clearly defined line of authority that includes all employees in the organization. The classical school of management suggests that there should be a clear and unbroken chain of command linking every person in the organization with successively higher levels of authority up to and including the top manager. When organizations grow in size, they tend to get taller, as more and more levels of management are added. This increases overhead costs, adds more communication layers, and impacts understanding and access between top and bottom levels. It can greatly slow decision making and can lead to a loss of contact with the client or customer.