Understanding Administration and Organizations

Posted on Mar 21, 2025 in Business Administration and Management (BAM)

Administration

Administration is the scientific discipline, technique, and art that studies organizations. Its objectives are to discover and understand an organization’s functioning and behavior, predict its actions, influence its behavior, and manage its development. The objects of administration are the organizations themselves, their study, containment, and management.

Branches of Government

  • Public Administration: Studies the public sector.
  • Financial Administration: Studies the origins and financial resources in general, and of organizations, banks, and financial institutions in particular.
  • Staff Administration: Examines issues relating to human resources in the organization.

Tasks of a Manager

  1. Create the notion in the organization that it is a system with a life of its own, and that the elements that form it are part of it.
  2. Create an effective and efficient production system.
  3. Plan, decide, and control both human and material resources.
  4. Harmonize human conflict occurring between members of the organization.
  5. Ensure the functioning of the organization.

Organizations

An organization is a social system composed of individuals who, through resource utilization, develop a system of interrelated and coordinated activities to achieve a common objective within a given context. Examples include hospitals, schools, and businesses in general.

Elements that Characterize Organizations

  1. Objectives and Goals: These are the purposes for which the organization directs its attitude, while specific end goals are expressed quantitatively.
  2. Human Resources: The people that integrate the organization and relate to each other.
  3. Material Resources: The physical, natural, and financial resources that the organization uses to reach its objectives (production of goods and services). Examples include machinery and raw materials.
  4. Information: The resources generated by the human mind, with or without the use of technology.

Characteristics of Organizations

  1. Provide work and generate employment.
  2. Create and satisfy needs, producing products and providing services.
  3. Produce and broadcast technology.
  4. Generate, possess, and transmit power.
  5. Are means to create, store, transmit, and modify knowledge.
  6. Are indicative of today’s society.
  7. Allow links between individuals and groups, who constantly interact with each other.
  8. Are spaces for personal and professional development.

Types of Organizations

According to their structure, organizations are divided into:

  • Formal: Activities, responsibilities, and authority are distributed among its members explicitly and simply. Examples include companies in general.
  • Informal: There is no defined distribution of activities, tasks, responsibility, and authority. Examples include family businesses.

According to their objectives:

  • For-profit Organizations: The objective is to make money.
  • Nonprofit Organizations: The objective is to provide better service or improve the quality of life.

According to their attitude to change:

  • Rigid: Have a structure that is impervious to changes occurring in the social context.
  • Flexible: Adapt to changes that occur in a social context.

Organizational Culture

  • Values: The beliefs or convictions of the group of individuals comprising the organization. Examples include responsibility and honesty.
  • Visions: The ideas of the individuals in the organization’s hierarchy about its future.
  • Drivers: Phrases that conceptualize the vision of leaders and are taken up by members of the organization. For example, McDonald’s promoters are quality, service, and cleanliness.