Coordination in Business Organization
Coordination is the process that makes possible the interconnectedness between individual groups and departments or functional areas to achieve a common goal. In any business organization, the work is distributed or divided among individuals, groups, and departments. By allocating the other responsibilities to authorities the distributed work is completed by the groups, individuals, and departments. It is necessary to ensure the connection of all the efforts taken by this distributed work towards the common result or expected result. Coordination is the process that concentrates all the efforts taken by an individual group and departments to achieve the common goal of the organization. Coordination can broadly classified into two types. These Types of Coordination describes the way the coordination implemented in organization and for organization.
Mary Parker Follette Describes the main four principles of coordination which ensure the results of all the efforts are common.
Principles of early stage
The early stage describes what it belongs to. Coordination can be possible only pain it starts executing the first function of management which is planning. The early stage indicates the involvement of coordination should be in the planning stage of management practice. The activities of the organization start executing according to what a decision is taken in advance in the planning stage. To link all the distributed work towards a common result, the coordination is directed through the decisions taken in the planning stage.
Example
Functional areas of business organizations such as human resource management and production management are interrelated and interdependent with each other. Not only these two functionality but all other functional areas are interrelated and some results impact each other.
This isn’t taken in advance regarding the recruitment of new employees, training and development programs for them influence the productivity of production management. Changing the HRM practices impacts the results of production management and marketing management. As the employees are required in each functional requirement, HRM practices are interrelated and impact other areas of the organization. The principle of coordination is to ensure the result of each functional area is towards the common result of the organization.
Principle of continuity
Coordination is the continuous process of ensuring all the efforts taken by all the individual employees groups and departments are executed towards achieving a common goal. While running various activities or making various efforts by all these different employees it might be possible that their result is not linked with the common goal. To ensure the relation of their efforts with the common good the coordination needs to be executed again and again. I like that planning is a continuous process to get the expected result, the coordination involved in planning through the principle of early stage.
Example
- Decisions taken in advance regarding Increasing the quantity to be produced with the existing setup may not give the expected output. So planning involves making decisions regarding the adoption of advanced technology to increase production capacity. If an organization’s goal is to increase the market and become a market leader then it is very essential to increase the production capacity. The coordination process enables an organization to make decisions to increase production capacity and coordinate production management toward achieving a common goal.
- Decisions taken in the planning stage by the organization regarding the brand ambassador may not be effective as as it has to be. Share organization needs to make changes in the planning to coordinate the result of marketing management functional area to achieve the common goal.
- If an organization’s mission is to become a quality leader then every functional area should make an effort to be the quality leader in the market. To become a quality leader every department should focus on quality in product as well as in services. The production management department has an important role in ensuring better quality of their products. The marketing management department’s rule is to solve all the customer’s complaints and provide better service. If this type of book is not executed then the coordination process ensures the excellent execution of all those activities to contribute to the quality leadership of the organization.
Direct contact with subordinates
Any superior in an organization delegates the authority and distributes the responsibilities among the subordinates. If there is no better relationship healthy relationship between superheroes and subordinates then it might be possible that misunderstanding, confusion, and lack of awareness about what practices they have to make. So making direct contact with the subordinates increases transparency and improves the relationship between superheroes and subordinates.
Direct contact with the subordinates helps managers to make every employee aware of the organization’s common goal and what practices make it possible to concentrate their efforts towards achieving that goal. Direct contact with Subodh adds all the superiors can coordinate all the activities effectively.
Examples
1. Marketing managers do not communicate properly with sales personnel regarding what care they need to take while communicating with the customers, and then misinterpretation and misunderstanding occur. Misinterpretation and misunderstanding result in wrong interaction with the customers. Coordination through direct contact with all the subordinates enables managers to link their efforts to achieve the common goal of the company. To retain the customers for the longer. Time is very essential to keep a better relationship with the customers managers play an important role in guiding the sales team and marketing team.
2. In the production management department the supervisor and quality inspectors play an important role in guiding the operators and workers to execute their role in producing the product with expected and acceptable quality. The production manager’s role is to make direct contact with the supervisor, quality inspector, and operator and also to ensure that the activities are executed as per the expected standard.
3. In Bharat Forge Ltd the founder member Baba Saif Kalyani makes direct contact with low-level employees such as operator supervisors to know the ground reality. So direct contacts can ensure the coordination among all the functional areas to achieve the common goal.
Principle of reciprocal relationship
Every functional area of a business organization has interrelationships and interdependencies with each other. While making decisions regarding all the future courses of action executed by these functional areas it is very essential to think about the impact of those decisions. If one department is making decisions regarding its future course of action, the manager of that department needs to think about what will be the impact of these decisions on other functional areas or departments. Next
Examples
The human resource management department may make decisions regarding recruiting employees with or without experience. Before making decisions regarding selecting candidates without experience it is essential to think about what will be the impact of this selection on the results when this newly appointed employee has specific responsibilities.