Organizational Design Preference: What is organic and mechanistic?

Question

I tryed looking this up on the web but i could find anything describing these, only huge term papers university students wrote. I simply need to know what is Organic and mechanistic lines and what are the differences?

thanks

Answer 1

This is a terminolgy coined by biz researchers "Burns and Stalker" in the 60's.

Briefly, mechanistic is a highly bureacratic organization that deals with well established technology. Jobs in the companies are well defined. The reason that the status of the technology is relevant is that bureacracies' inflexibility makes them poorly adapted to technological change.

Organic firms are found in dynamic environments that expereicne huge amounts of change.  Basically many people wear many hats because no one is sure whether some changes are permanent or temporary.

It's easy to "dis" mechanistic organizations. Many critics point to the enormous technological change everyone has experienced.  However, if you think about it, in environments that are relatively less volatile than others, one firm which is more mechanistic along factors which don't change that much will be able to exploit a lot of efficiencies that organic firms waste via duplication or lack of specialization that would lead to economies of scale.

  So the "preference" would be: organic in dynamic environments and mechanistic in static environments.