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The science of organizational design: fit between structure and coordination

• Open access
• Published: 01 March 2018
• Volume 7 , article number  5 , ( 2018 )

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• Richard M. Burton 1 &
• Børge Obel   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1283-5489 2  

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Organization design is a major factor determining an organization’s performance and how the people work together in these organizations. In the paper, we argue that designing organizations should be scientific-based and forward-looking. This raises challenges in designing organizations in contexts and situations that are new and have not been seen before. Experimentation of what is and what might be is the basis for exploring and examining what makes a good science for organizational design. Experimentation permits us to examine what might be for organization designs, which are not well understood or may not exist yet. Collaborative communities, new ventures, agile organizations, and temporary organizations are examples; experimentation permits us explore and examine what is and what might be and to examine the organizational design problem and perform experiments to understand the relationship between structure and coordination mechanisms of information, communications, decisions, trust, and incentives—the basis for the multi-contingency theory of organizational design.

An organizational design must specify the fit between the structure of division of tasks in the organization with its coordination, or how to make these tasks work in concert. These tasks can be interdependent and uncertain. To design good organizations, we need empirical evidence about what is and exploration about what might be; we need a good theoretical basis for being able to generalize our knowledge. To illustrate our point, we examine two experiments on the classic M-form hypothesis—a computer simulation that examines coordination, organization structure, and interdependency and a laboratory experiment that examines the effect of incentives on opportunism and performance. Together, we find that the M-form is a robust organizational design, but with contingent conditions.

Finally, we discuss how observation and experimentation together is the foundation for the development of scientific-based theory of organizational design.

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The design of an organization has a significant impact on the performance of the organization (Doty et al. 1993 ). Thus, it is important to know how a particular organization should be designed. Van de Ven et al. 2013 state: “Much has been learned, and even more needs to be learned, about designing organizations and institutions.” Further, they urge scholars to return to the frontier of organization studies by addressing a new agenda in designing organizations with promising new research methods. Levitt ( 2012 ) suggests that future research on organization design extends the frontiers of organizational micro-contingency theory. Gulati et al. ( 2012 ), on the other hand, suggest a focus on meta-organization design where organizational design is looked upon in an inter-organizational and community context.

Do we have scientifically based knowledge that can help us design efficient and effective organizations for the future, and is there a science of organizational design? At first, it may seem that science and design are opposites and that the two are not compatible. Science is the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment, while design is a plan or drawing produced to show the look and function or workings of a building, garment, organization, or other object before it is made.

In this paper, we will discuss and present a science of organizational design, including a discussion of models and theories of designing organizations. We argue that experimentation of what is and what might be is the link between science and design for a science of organizational design (Burton and Obel 2011 ). We may address the issue of designing organizations by invoking new research methods and new ways of imagining possibilities. However, we should also employ our current knowledge to design new organizations for new conditions. The use of experimentation based on our current knowledge is the way to move forward. This is the only way we can generalize existing knowledge to help design organizations for the future.

The paper will also present a methodology perspective of the science of organization design. We will discuss what we have learned from the science of organization design. Building upon Simon’s book The Sciences of the Artificial (Simon 1996 ) and related notions, we develop a science of organizational design where the basic organizational design question is how to create a fit between structure and coordination. Structure is to break a big purpose or problem into smaller problems and units. The result is a set of tasks that have to be performed. The coordination is managing these smaller problems, units, and tasks into a whole so that they fit together to achieve an overall purpose. Finally, we discuss questions, which the science of organization design should address in future research.

Science and organizational design

By science, we mean knowledge and understanding about the world through observation of what is, and experimentation of “what is” and “what might be.” Design focuses on imagination and creation of what might be to achieve a purpose, moving toward “what should be” (Burton and Obel 2011 : 467).

Organizational theory provides the theoretical underpinnings for organizational design. Organization theory describes and explains for our understanding how the world works; in complement, organization design builds on this to understand how the world could possibly work. Organization theory is a positive science to explain and understand the structure, behavior, and effectiveness of an organization—what is; organizational design is a normative science to recommend what might be designs for increased effectiveness and efficiency.

According to Simon ( 1996 ), an organization is an artifact that must be created in concept before it is created in reality. Romme ( 2003 : 558), building upon Simon, argues that the “idea of a design involves inquiry into systems that do not yet exist—either complete new systems or new states of existing systems.” Organizational design is thus prescribing how an organization should be structured in order to function effectively and efficiently. Organization design is a systematic approach to aligning structures, processes, leadership, culture, people, practices, and metrics to enable organizations to achieve their mission and strategy. The basic premise is that there is no one best way of organizing and that different organizations are not equally effective or efficient (Galbraith 1973 ). This introduces the concept of contingency thinking, where the organization should be designed to fit the particular circumstance, which may be new and not experienced before.

How can we create information or knowledge about something that does not yet exist? We need knowledge-based experimentation and observation. Observation is an “as is” experiment or natural experiment where the researcher describes the “what is” situation and variations among variables that are manipulated by others or nature. Experimentation involves manipulation of variables to understand the effects.

We need to experiment to generalize from one study to another. We want to understand cause and effect in the science of organizational design through experimental manipulation of factors. There are a number of methodologies: simulation, laboratory studies, field studies, ethnographies, and large data analyses, among others (Scandura and Williams 2000 ). All utilize experimentation and observation to investigate and to understand the world of what is, as well as to explore the world of what might be.

Simulation modeling provides a powerful methodology for advancing theory and research on complex behaviors and systems (Harrison et al. 2007 ). The modeling requires current knowledge, and the simulations allow experimentation with models of new designs with full control of the setup (Burton and Obel 1995 ). Laboratory experiments introduce human behavior and require less formal modeling. Much of the power, beauty, and pleasure of models comes from inventing and elaborating models for exploring their implications in new domains (Lave and March 1975 ). This is the basis for the experimentation of what might be in a way that the results can be generalized. Many experiments are done in the real world (Puranam and Håkonsson 2015 ; Burton et al. 2017 ), but they may not be easily generalized. A triangulation approach using observation, simulation, and laboratory experiments will drive the knowledge and science of organization design forward (Burton and Obel 2011 ).

The challenge for the science of organization design is to create predictive models of future organizational designs. Prototyping new organizational designs could happen either through simulations or in the lab—with new proposed organizational arrangements being tested for unanticipated consequences before being implemented (Puranam 2012 ). Levitt ( 2012 ) states that “organizational chemistry” (goal conflict, institutional differences, etc.) and “organizational biology” (individual learning, organizational learning, evolution and regeneration of networks of organizations) will eventually yield robust and accurate enough agent-based modeling, analysis, and validation so that simulation of these phenomena will become useful to managers. This is supported by Puranam ( 2012 ) who states that we need models “which goes well beyond providing general advice to prototyping new organizational designs.”

In an analysis of novelty in forms of organizing, Puranam et al. ( 2014 ) argue that a new form is one that embodies new solutions to the basic problems of organizing—the division of labor and the integration of effort—in contrast to the solutions used by existing organizations.

An organization is a social unit of people that is structured and managed to meet a need or to pursue collective goals. All organizations have a management structure that determines relationships between the different activities and the members and subdivides and assigns roles, responsibilities, and authority to carry out different tasks. The activities must then be coordinated (Burton and Obel 2004 ) to obtain the collective goals. Structure and coordination are thus the fundamental choices in organizational design.

Structure includes the assignment of tasks to individuals or subunits, the apportionment of resources to these units, the designation of customers and markets to units, and generally the breakdown of the larger problem for smaller units. Coordination is bringing the units together through communications, IT, leadership, culture, incentives, routines and procedures, and generally what we call management (Van de Ven et al. 1976 ; Burton et al. 2015 ).

The structure and coordination choices are not independent. Once a structure is chosen, the coordination choices are limited in order to achieve a good fit. Further, coordination requires much more information processing than finding the structure, and designing the coordination has a different time perspective than designing the structure. The structure issue is a decision problem or analytical problem, while coordination is a management issue. Coordination is done in real time, as it must be done when activities are under way. But, the coordination mechanism is a design problem.

Within the framework of structure and coordination, organizational design boils down to who does what when, or how to allocate tasks, resources, customers, etc. to each of the small problems and how to coordinate these small units and tasks. This gives the framework within which experimentation should be done. However, experimentation also requires a theoretical framework with which the experimentation should be done to allow the required ability to generalize. One such framework is the information-processing paradigm.

Information processing and design

Information processing is work in modern organizations: “Who talks to whom about what, who makes which decisions based upon what information” (Marschak and Radner 1972 ). Simon ( 1967 : 1) is more succinct: Organizational design “is to investigate the information flows that are essential for accomplishing the organization’s objectives, then examine what these information patterns imply for organization structure.” A basic theory of organization design is balancing the information-processing capacity of the organization with the information-processing demand (Galbraith 1973 , 1974 ). Underlying the theory is the assumption that “the greater the task uncertainty, the greater information-processing demands by decision makers” (Galbraith 1973 , 1974 ). Further, the more interdependency between the sub-tasks, the more information-processing capacity is needed. Uncertainty and interdependency create the need for information processing in an organization.

Uncertainty has been defined as an incomplete description of the world (Arrow 1974 ), unpredictability, or perhaps more precisely as Knightian uncertainty where the probability distribution is not well defined. Further, uncertainty has included complexity or the number of variables in the environmental space (Ashby 1956 ; Burton and Obel 2004 ). Both the organization’s environment and its tasks can be uncertain. The management of environmental and organizational uncertainty requires the coordination of the organization’s tasks (Galbraith 1973 ).

Interdependency can be defined as the correlation among the variables in the environmental space or task space. Simon ( 1996 ) examines interdependencies as the degree of divisibility or decomposability using a matrix representation of the connections. The more connected or dense the matrix, the more interdependent the tasks; and the sparser the matrix entries, the less connected and the more divisible the tasks. The tasks’ interdependence may arise out the problem to be solved. It may however also be due to the particular task design, e.g., due to availability of different types of individuals to solve the task. Further, the decomposability of the matrix may be due to the basic organizational setup. Burton and Obel ( 1984 , chapter 2) show how different matrices with different degrees of decomposability arise out of different organizational structures. The interdependency determines whom in the organization talks to whom about what and when.

To balance the information-processing demand and capacity, Galbraith ( 1973 , 1974 ) offers two different organizational design strategies: reduce the need for information by creating semi-independent units (structure), or increase the information capacity with greater communications, either hierarchical or lateral (coordination). The information-processing perspective has to be seen in the particular context, e.g. digitalization, which changes both the information-processing demand and the ability to create capacity (Haußmann et al. 2012 ).

Tushman and Nadler ( 1978 ) and Burton and Obel ( 2004 ) argue that the concepts of uncertainty and information processing can be used to integrate the diverse organization design and structure literatures. They suggest a contingency approach based on the information-processing paradigm to design a feasible set of structural alternatives from which the organization can choose (Tushman and Nadler 1978 ; Burton and Obel 1995 , 2004 ). Further, the information-processing paradigm is a general theory and rather robust to changes in circumstances, and it will allow us to say something about what might be designs from knowledge about what is. The information-processing paradigm also provides basis on which generalizable experimentation and observation can be done. Information-processing thinking can capture many theoretical issues, such as bounded rationality (Van Zandt 1999 ), learning (Shiffrin and Schneider 1977 ), and cognition (Klahr and Kotovsky 2013 ).

A contingency view of organization design

Simon ( 1947 : 293) writes:

The division of labor is quite as important in organizing decision making as in organizing production. From the information-processing point of view, division of labor means factoring the total system of decisions that need to be made into relatively independent subsystems, each one of which can be designed with only minimal concern for its interactions with the others. The division is necessary because the processors that are available to organizations, whether humans or computers, are very limited in their processing capacity in comparison with the magnitude of the decision problems that organizations face.

How should the big task be structured or partitioned, and what resources should be allocated to the particular task? For example, deciding between a functional and divisional structure is choosing the basis for breaking up the big task. Then you must choose how many departments or divisions you would like to have. For the divisional structure, you can choose to allocate private customers to one division and corporate customers to another, or you can base your divisions on types of products. Concurrent with the structure, you have made a choice of how to coordinate. Coordination mechanisms require information, communications, cooperation, decisions, rules, routines, trust, incentives, and leadership, among others.

Thompson ( 1967 ) analyzes the organization in terms of uncertainty and technology or work flows of pooled, sequential, and reciprocal relations. Miles and Snow ( 1978 ) analyze the design problem in terms of structure and process and develop a typology of four organizational prototypes based on a particular choice of strategy. Lawrence and Lorsch ( 1967 ) use the concept’s differentiation and integration, which are similar to structure and coordination, and develop a contingency theory based on the particular type of environment. These approaches are single-contingency theories.

Using the information-processing concept, Burton and Obel ( 2004 ) developed the multi-contingency theory of organizational design and further developed these concepts in Burton et al. ( 2015 ). This view says that an organization’s design should be chosen based on the particular context and further that the description of the context should be multi-dimensional, including both structural and human components. Structural components of organizational design include goals, strategy, and structure and tasks. Human components include leadership, work processes, and people. Coordination includes control systems, decision systems, information systems, and incentive mechanisms.

In the multi-contingency theory, the relationships between structural, human, and coordination components are represented as a series of interconnected design rules. Design rules are “what should be” relationships (Burton et al. 2002 ). They incorporate both feasibility of “what might be” and desirability for the organization. The development of design rules has originally been related to simple design rules focusing on one or a limited set of contingencies, such as Lawrence and Lorsch ( 1967 ) on the relationship between environment and organizational design, or Woodward ( 1965 ) on technology and organizational design. These design rules were based on observation of what is. Later, these simple design rules have been combined into a set of more complex design rules (Burton and Obel 2004 ).

Design rules can be based upon “what is,” using the logic that what has been successful in the past in somewhat similar conditions is likely to work for the future—even applied in circumstances going beyond what has been observed. Design rules can also be developed based on the theory of balancing the information-processing capacity with information-processing demand. Further experimentation using simulations, laboratory studies, and empirical research are the basis for design rules (Burton and Obel 2013 ).

Experimentation and the science of organization design

Experimentation and simulation can be the basis for theory development (Davis et al. 2007 ). An experiment is a test, trial, or tentative procedure—an act or operation for the purpose of discovering something unknown or of testing a principle or supposition. Experiments provide insight into cause and effect by demonstrating what outcome occurs when a particular factor is manipulated. Empirical studies evaluate what is, while simulation and experimentation can help in finding what might be and what should be.

Experimentation requires a theoretical basis and an experimental setup, and models can be of the organization system or of the agents in the system. Models of the system include system dynamic models (Lomi et al. 1997 ; Klaas 2004 ) as well as mathematical programming models (Burton and Obel 1984 ). Agent-based modeling is a relational, bottom-up understanding of organizations as ongoing processes arising out of individual and group decisions (Rivkin and Siggelkow 2003 ). Further, it can be based on interaction between “agents.” Levitt et al. ( 1999 ) developed a model that extends and operationalizes Galbraith’s ( 1973 ) information-processing view of organizations. The model allows for simulation of the micro-level information processing, communication, and coordination behavior of participants/agents in a project organization.

Most simulations of organization design are computer-based, some are laboratory experiments with humans as the agents (Håkonsson et al. 2016 ), while others are mixed, and some agents being computer agents and others being individuals (Burton and Obel 1988 ). Models of social and economic organizations based on the interaction between agents are becoming more common (Davis et al. 2007 ; Harrison et al. 2007 ).

This stream of research has developed an integrated multi-contingency theory utilizing theory development, laboratory experiments, simulation, and empirical analysis together for deeper understanding of contingency theory for organization design—a scientific approach to organization design. The work has thus contributed to the theory of organizational design as well as the extension of triangulation as a research design. Further, a forward-looking perspective of organizational design has been argued (Burton and Obel 2011 , 2013 ).

Experimentation and design of structure: the example of the M-form hypothesis

The M-form, or multidivisional form, is widely utilized in industry. It is structured by product, customer, or country. Early on, Chandler ( 1962 ), in his study of large American corporations, described how the M-form worked and how it was efficient as adopted by General Motors and DuPont. Both corporations were able to coordinate production and customer needs more efficiently and effectively. Later, Williamson ( 1975 , p. 150) presented an economic-reasoned argument in support and formalized the M-form hypothesis:

The organization and operation of the large enterprise along the lines of the M-form favors goal pursuit and least-cost behavior more nearly associated with the neoclassical profit maximization hypothesis than does the U-form (or functional form) organizational alternative.

The M-form is structured around demands in the market, where the U-form is structured around production, sales, finance, human resources, and perhaps other specializations.

In the 80s, Burton and Obel did a series of simulation studies to investigate contingency theory concepts related to the M-form hypothesis with the purpose of developing a more elaborate set of design rules. Using parsimonious models, they conducted an experimental design to test performance consequences of various coordination mechanisms, including the budget versus pricing planning systems and different organizational information systems (Burton and Obel 1980a ). Then they investigated the M-form hypothesis (vs. U-form) for different levels of decomposable technologies (Burton and Obel 1980b , 1984 ) using the same experimental design. The results of the experiments confirmed the M-form hypothesis: The M-form is generally more efficient than the U-form, but with some conditions. Comparing the M-form and the U-form, the M-form does better for both low and high interdependency tasks, but the coordination mechanism is an important factor. The M-form allocation works very well for less interdependency and an iterative price coordination mechanism, while the U-form works well for a centralized coordination mechanism. Steer and Cable ( 1978 ) found that the U-form can be more efficient when centralized control is utilized, which is more prevalent in small firms. Size is not the main issue, but control and coordination are. For an organizational design, the choice of the structure and the coordination mechanism are not independent. The M-form design hypothesis is a contingent statement depending upon the task interdependency and the coordination mechanism, not a universal one. The experiment included two that might be alternatives. The M-form did not perform well for a less decomposable task, and the U-form did not perform well for a highly decomposable structure. We seldom observe these designs as natural experiments in the real world, and for good reason as indicated by the experiment. This experiment included both an examination of the M-form hypothesis, but also investigation of what might be design alternatives.

Further, in the M-form, a non-optimal allocation of resources to a division does not yield large opportunity losses if these resources are used well within each division, i.e., the intra-divisional coordination is done well. In the U-form, if the coordination is not done well, e.g., when the sales department and the production department do not use the same quantities, the opportunity losses are quite high. A transfer pricing mechanism can yield large losses if the price is not optimal. Stated differently as implications for organizational design, good coordination is more important than good structure or resource allocation.

In a later laboratory experiment, Burton and Obel ( 1988 ) included opportunism, which Williamson defines as self-interest seeking with guile (1975: 26). In the experiment, opportunism arises when an M-form division or U-form function manager can request non-optimal quantities from the headquarters that enhance her own divisional or functional performance at the expense of other divisions or functions and the overall firm performance.

For the U-form design alternative, the experiment found incentive schemes based on functional profit to be inefficient, while the U-form worked better for an incentive scheme based on corporate profit. The M-form alternatives were, however, both slightly better than the best U-form alternative, given the particular situation. The discussions about opportunistic behavior and different kinds of hierarchies are an ongoing debate (Foss and Weber 2016 ).

What are the implications for the M-form design hypothesis? First, individuals quickly understood that opportunism is possible, and if it was to their personal advantage to report non-optimal quantity to manipulate the prices and thus enhance their own profits at the expense of others and the firm overall. Second, individuals understood in which direction to change the quantities in their own favor. Thirdly, would they behave opportunistically? Not all did; most did, but more cheated in the U-form than in the M-form. In short, an individual will understand the opportunity to cheat; he or she will know how to cheat; and most individuals will cheat, but not all. Some are altruistic. Thus, the M-form design is less compromised than the U-form design when opportunism is invoked.

Under opportunism, the M-form performed much better than the U-form for corporate profits (Burton and Obel 1988 : 111). The opportunity losses in the U-form were more severe than in the M-form—confirming the M-form design hypothesis. Again, coordination losses were more serious than loss due to structure, which confirms that good coordination is more important than good structure.

Putting the various experiments together, the M-form design hypothesis is supported without opportunism, and it is strengthened when opportunism is present. First, the M-form is confirmed parsimoniously using minimal information-processing mechanisms. Second, when the manipulation of information is possible, the M-form hypothesis is strengthened. Resource allocation is less important than coordination under decentralization with opportunism and without opportunism. Experimentation allowed a finer grained set of design rules than the rules only developed out of economic theory and empirical observations.

Design rules are “if-then” heuristics, which guide thoughtful guidance for what might be. Burton and Obel ( 2013 ) developed design rules based upon the M-form hypotheses and the experiments above:

If the task is nearly decomposable, then the divisional or M-form is superior to the unitary or functional form (p. 226),

The degree of decomposability is primary contingency for this rule. A corollary design rule is then:

If the task in not decomposable, then coordination is the main issue and can be realized with a unitary or functional form with a centralized coordination.

A design rule, which emerges directly from the opportunism lab experiment is:

If the organization has a unitary or functional form, then a unit profit scheme should not be used.

In the experiment, this incentive scheme is very likely to yield cheating with very high opportunity losses. What are the risk implications, if coordination is not achieved as desired? The M-form suffers less opportunity loss than the unitary form. That is, less risk is incurred with the M-form than the unitary form.

If the designer is risk averse, then the M-form organization is preferred.

There are many other design rules to state and develop.

A formal rule-based multi-contingency theory of organization (Burton and Obel 2004 ) was developed based on empirical observations, the information-processing theory, and simulation and laboratory experiments. The multi-contingency theory model was tested on an empirical basis using the survey methodology, and it was shown that misfits in the model led to significant loss in performance. Not only the main effects but also the interaction effects were shown to be important (Burton et al. 2002 ). Further studies then investigated specific interaction effects between leadership, climate, and strategy (Burton et al. 2004 ; Håkonsson et al. 2008 , 2012 ). Not only are the interactions important, but there are asymmetric effects such that the misfit effects in dynamic situations are much more important than in non-dynamic situations (Håkonsson et al. 2012 ). Examining business-unit adaptation through new-product introductions in the global mobile device industry, Gaba and Joseph ( 2013 ) find that business-unit responses to poor performance lead to greater new product introductions. Taken together, these results were further expanded into a diamond model of contingency fit (Burton et al. 2011 ; Burton et al. 2015 ).

Organizational design as the science of experimentation

Van de Ven et al. ( 2013 ) state that there is much more to learn about designing organizations and institutions. We have argued that experimentation is at the heart of the organizational design challenge. Experimentation permits us to investigate both what is and what might be—the latter being the fundamental for design. Design requires the specification of both the assignment of tasks to units and individuals and the coordination of these tasks through communications, IT, leadership, culture, incentives, and management. Coordination is necessary, as the tasks are interdependent and uncertain, and the organization exists in an uncertain environment. At a fundamental level, this is the organizational design problem. However, each organization must be designed to meet specific situations and goals.

Simulation has been used to investigate many organizational design issues in what-might-be situations. Rivkin and Siggelkow ( 2003 ) investigated the conventional wisdom that firm-wide incentives and capable subordinates make top-level oversight less valuable. They further identified circumstances in which vertical hierarchies can lead to inferior long-term performance.

Their results can be stated as design rules, and one of which is:

If the competitive landscape shifts, then decentralize temporarily (Burton and Obel 2013 , p. 237).

Levinthal et al. ( 2017 ) model and simulate governance issues in multi-authority, single authority, and autonomous organizations. Lee et al. ( 2015 ) introduce computational designs and evaluations of alternative organizational structures for disaster responses to resolve the disconnections between resource demands and supplies.

Next, we outline a few challenges where we do not have well-established design rules. These challenges can be addressed through experimentation of what might be.

Collaborative communities do not have a strong hierarchy, but they do have agents or individuals who interact and follow protocols on a “commons” to achieve individual goals. Fjeldstad et al. ( 2012 ) develop an architecture of collaborative communities, but we do not have detailed design rules. Since collaborative communities are rare in the business world, we have more to learn about how to design them and make them work. We suggest that the collaborative community is a very important new organizational form for which what might be simulations hold great promise.

Platform and digital confederations of firms which are neither market nor hierarchy but use extensive contracts are becoming more common. Platform firms can be very small but have enormous reach beyond their own employees and resources. They are a nexus of formal and informal contracts—going beyond the make-buy problem. At the same time, platform-based firms can be very large, such as Amazon with some 500,000 employees. These firms are going forth as natural experiments exploring what might be and making what might have been yesterday into what is today.

How do we design temporary organizations that start up quickly and disband quickly? These are related to big construction projects as building a bridge, making a movie, or organizing the Rolling Stones World Tour. Some are informal, without structure and coordination norms but with well-defined goals of success. How are the fundamentals of task assignment and coordination realized? Does opportunism enter, and if so, how?

Entrepreneurial ventures and start-ups are not well understood from an organizational design point of view. Are they different from traditional firms in allocation and coordination? Can they thrive without a hierarchy (Burton et al. 2017 )? What is fundamental; what is new?

There is a call for agile organization today. What does this mean—quick response or adjustment to variation in the environment or technology? These are old questions, but they take on new dimensions in the digital world of today. They may require organizational designs that are quite different from traditional ones, which could and did response to variations in a slower world. Is time a critical difference here?

Conclusions

Design and experimentation are moving ahead as natural experiments that explore a portion of the “what might be” space. We are observing closely for insights and understanding. We need to go further to expand the design space and investigate the underlying mechanisms of structure and coordination through experimentation utilizing lab studies, simulations, field studies, and ethnographies, among other approaches. Romme ( 2003 : 558) stated that the “idea of a design involves inquiry into systems that do not yet exist—either complete new systems or new states of existing systems.” Experimentation is at the heart of the science of organizational design.

Without a science of organizational design, we cannot generalize and use our accumulated knowledge to be able to design effective and efficient organizations that serve their purposes well.

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Burton, R.M., Obel, B. The science of organizational design: fit between structure and coordination. J Org Design 7 , 5 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41469-018-0029-2

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Understanding Organizational Structures

Organizational structure aligns and relates parts of an organization, so it can achieve its maximum performance. The structure chosen affects an organization's success in carrying out its strategy and objectives. Leadership should understand the characteristics, benefits and limitations of various organizational structures to assist in this strategic alignment.

Overview Background Business Case Key Elements of Organizational Structures Types of Organizational Structures

Vertical structures (functional and divisional)

Matrix organizational structures, open boundary structures (hollow, modular virtual and learning).

The Impact of Growth Stages on Organizational Structure Metrics Communications and Technology Global Issues Legal Issues

This article addresses the following topics related to organizational structure:

• The case for aligning organizational structure with the enterprise's business strategy.
• Key elements of organizational structure.
• Types of organizational structures and the possible benefits and limitations of each.
• The impact of an organization's stage of development on its structure.
• Communications, technology, metrics, global and legal issues.

Organizational structure is the method by which work flows through an organization. It allows groups to work together within their individual functions to manage tasks. Traditional organizational structures tend to be more formalized—with employees grouped by function (such as finance or operations), region or product line. Less traditional structures are more loosely woven and flexible, with the ability to respond quickly to changing business environments.

Organizational structures have evolved since the 1800s. In the Industrial Revolution, individuals were organized to add parts to the manufacture of the product moving down the assembly line. Frederick Taylor's scientific management theory optimized the way tasks were performed, so workers performed only one task in the most efficient way. In the 20th century, General Motors pioneered a revolutionary organizational design in which each major division made its own cars.

Today, organizational structures are changing swiftly—from virtual organizations to other flexible structures. As companies continue to evolve and increase their global presence, future organizations may embody a fluid, free-forming organization, member ownership and an entrepreneurial approach among all members. See  Inside Day 1: How Amazon Uses Agile Team Structures and Adaptive Practices to Innovate on Behalf of Customers .

Business Case

A hallmark of a well-aligned organization is its ability to adapt and realign as needed. To ensure long-term viability, an organization must adjust its structure to fit new economic realities without diminishing core capabilities and competitive differentiation. Organizational realignment involves closing the structural gaps impeding organizational performance.

Problems created by a misaligned organizational structure

Rapid reorganization of business units, divisions or functions can lead to ineffective, misaligned organizational structures that do not support the business. Poorly conceived reorganizations may create significant problems, including the following:

• Structural gaps in roles, work processes, accountabilities and critical information flows can occur when companies eliminate middle management levels without eliminating the work, forcing employees to take on additional responsibilities.
• Diminished capacity, capability and agility issues can arise when a) lower-level employees who step in when middle management is eliminated are ill-equipped to perform the required duties and b) when higher-level executives must take on more tactical responsibilities, minimizing the value of their leadership skills.
• Disorganization and improper staffing can affect a company's cost structure, cash flow and ability to deliver goods or services. Agile organizations can rapidly deploy people to address shifting business needs. With resources cut to the bone, however, most organizations' staff members can focus only on their immediate responsibilities, leaving little time, energy or desire to work outside their current job scope. Ultimately, diminished capacity and lagging response times affect an organization's ability to remain competitive.
• Declining workforce engagement can reduce retention, decrease customer loyalty and limit organizational performance and stakeholder value.

The importance of aligning the structure with the business strategy

The key to profitable performance is the extent to which four business elements are aligned:

Leadership. The individuals responsible for developing and deploying the strategy and monitoring results.

Organization. The structure, processes and operations by which the strategy is deployed.

Jobs. The necessary roles and responsibilities.

People. The experience, skills and competencies needed to execute the strategy.

An understanding of the interdependencies of these business elements and the need for them to adapt to change quickly and strategically are essential for success in the high-performance organization. When these four elements are in sync, outstanding performance is more likely.

Achieving alignment and sustaining organizational capacity requires time and critical thinking. Organizations must identify outcomes the new structure or process is intended to produce. This typically requires recalibrating the following:

• Which work is mission-critical, can be scaled back or should be eliminated.
• Existing role requirements, while identifying necessary new or modified roles.
• Key metrics and accountabilities.
• Critical information flows.
• Decision-making authority by organization level.

See  Meeting the Challenges of Developing Collaborative Teams for Future Success.

Key Elements of Organizational Structures

Five elements create an organizational structure: job design, departmentation, delegation, span of control and chain of command. These elements comprise an organizational chart and create the organizational structure itself. "Departmentation" refers to the way an organization structures its jobs to coordinate work. "Span of control" means the number of individuals who report to a manager. "Chain of command" refers to a line of authority.

The company's strategy of managerial centralization or decentralization also influences organizational structures. "Centralization," the degree to which decision-making authority is restricted to higher levels of management, typically leads to a pyramid structure. Centralization is generally recommended when conflicting goals and strategies among operating units create a need for a uniform policy. "Decentralization," the degree to which lower levels of the hierarchy have decision-making authority, typically leads to a leaner, flatter organization. Decentralization is recommended when conflicting strategies, uncertainty or complexity require local adaptability and decision-making.

Types of Organizational Structures

Organizational structures have evolved from rigid, vertically integrated, hierarchical, autocratic structures to relatively boundary-less, empowered, networked organizations designed to respond quickly to customer needs with customized products and services.

Today, organizations are usually structured vertically, vertically and horizontally, or with open boundaries. Specific types of structures within each of these categories are the following:

• Vertical — functional and divisional.
• Vertical and horizontal — matrix.
• Boundary-less (also referred to as "open boundary")—modular, virtual and cellular.

See  What are commonly-used organization structures?

Two main types of vertical structure exist, functional and divisional. The functional structure divides work and employees by specialization. It is a hierarchical, usually vertically integrated, structure. It emphasizes standardization in organization and processes for specialized employees in relatively narrow jobs.

This traditional type of organization forms departments such as production, sales, research and development, accounting, HR, and marketing. Each department has a separate function and specializes in that area. For example, all HR professionals are part of the same function and report to a senior leader of HR. The same reporting process would be true for other functions, such as finance or operations.

In functional structures, employees report directly to managers within their functional areas who in turn report to a chief officer of the organization. Management from above must centrally coordinate the specialized departments. 

A functional organizational chart might look something like this: 

Advantages of a functional structure include the following:

• The organization develops experts in its respective areas.
• Individuals perform only tasks in which they are most proficient.
• This form is logical and easy to understand.

Disadvantages center on coordination or lack thereof:

• People are in specialized "silos" and often fail to coordinate or communicate with other departments.
• Cross-functional activity is more difficult to promote.
• The structure tends to be resistant to change.

This structure works best for organizations that remain centralized (i.e., a majority of the decision-making occurs at higher levels of the organization) because there are few shared concerns or objectives between functional areas (e.g., marketing, production, purchasing, IT). Given the centralized decision-making, the organization can take advantage of economies of scale in that there are likely centralized purchasing functions.

An appropriate management system to coordinate the departments is essential. The management system may be a special leader, like a vice president, a computer system or some other format.

Also a vertical arrangement, a divisional structure most often divides work and employees by output, although a divisional structure could be divided by another variable such as market or region. For example, a business that sells men's, women's and children's clothing through retail, e-commerce and catalog sales in the Northeast, Southeast and Southwest could be using a divisional structure in one of three ways:

• Product—men's wear, women's wear and children's clothing.
• Market—retail store, e-commerce and catalog.
• Region—Northeast, Southeast and Southwest.

A divisional organizational structure might look like this:

The advantages of this type of structure are the following:

• It provides more focus and flexibility on each division's core competency.
• It allows the divisions to focus on producing specialized products while also using knowledge gained from related divisions.
• It allows for more coordination than the functional structure.
• Decision-making authority pushed to lower levels of the organization enables faster, customized decisions.

The disadvantages of this structure include the following:

• It can result in a loss of efficiency and a duplication of effort because each division needs to acquire the same resources.
• Each division often has its own research and development, marketing, and other units that could otherwise be helping each other.
• Employees with similar technical career paths have less interaction.
• Divisions may be competing for the same customers.
• Each division often buys similar supplies in smaller quantities and may pay more per item.

This type of structure is helpful when the product base expands in quantity or complexity. But when competition among divisions becomes significant, the organization is not adapting quickly enough, or when economies of scale are lacking, the organization may require a more sophisticated matrix structure.

A matrix structure combines the functional and divisional structures to create a dual-command situation. In a matrix structure, an employee reports to two managers who are jointly responsible for the employee's performance. Typically, one manager works in an administrative function, such as finance, HR, information technology, sales or marketing, and the other works in a business unit related to a product, service, customer or geography.

A typical matrix organizational structure might look like this:

Advantages of the matrix structure include the following:

• It creates a functional and divisional partnership and focuses on the work more than on the people.
• It minimizes costs by sharing key people.
• It creates a better balance between time of completion and cost.
• It provides a better overview of a product that is manufactured in several areas or sold by various subsidiaries in different markets.

Disadvantages of matrix organizations include the following:

• Responsibilities may be unclear, thus complicating governance and control.
• Reporting to more than one manager at a time can be confusing for the employee and supervisors.
• The dual chain of command requires cooperation between two direct supervisors to determine an employee's work priorities, work assignments and performance standards.
• When the function leader and the product leader make conflicting demands on the employee, the employee's stress level increases, and performance may decrease.
• Employees spend more time in meetings and coordinating with other employees.

These disadvantages can be exacerbated if the matrix goes beyond two-dimensional (e.g., employees report to two managers) to multidimensional (e.g., employees report to three or more managers).

Matrix structures are common in heavily project-driven organizations, such as construction companies. These structures have grown out of project structures in which employees from different functions formed teams until completing a project, and then reverted to their own functions. In a matrix organization, each project manager reports directly to the vice president and the general manager. Each project is, in essence, a mini profit center, and therefore, general managers usually make business decisions.

The matrix-structured organization also provides greater visibility, stronger governance and more control in large, complex companies. It is also well suited for development of business areas and coordination of complex processes with strong dependencies.

Matrix structures pose difficult challenges for professionals charged with ensuring equity and fairness across the organization. Managers working in matrix structures should be prepared to intervene via communication and training if the structure compromises these objectives. Furthermore, leadership should monitor relationships between managers who share direct reports. These relationships between an employee's managers are crucial to the success of a matrix structure.

More recent trends in structural forms remove the traditional boundaries of an organization. Typical internal and external barriers and organizational boxes are eliminated, and all organizational units are effectively and flexibly connected. Teams replace departments, and the organization and suppliers work as closely together as parts of one company. The hierarchy is flat; status and rank are minimal. Everyone—including top management, managers and employees—participates in the decision-making process. The use of 360-degree feedback performance appraisals is common as well.

Advantages of boundary-less organizations include the following:

• Ability to leverage all employees' talents.
• Faster response to market changes.
• Enhanced cooperation and information sharing among functions, divisions and staff.

Disadvantages include the following:

• Difficulty in overcoming silos inside the organization.
• Lack of strong leadership and common vision.
• Time-consuming processes.
• The possibility of employees being adversely affected by efficiency efforts.
• The possibility of organizations abandoning change if restructuring does not improve effectiveness quickly.

Boundary-less organizational structures can be created in varied forms, including hollow, modular and virtual organizations.

Hollow organizations. Hollow structures divide work and employees by core and noncore competencies. Hollow structures are an outsourcing model in which the organization maintains its core processes internally but outsources noncore processes. Hollow structures are most effective when the industry is price competitive and choices for outsourcing exist. An example of a hollow structure is a sports organization that has its HR functions (e.g., payroll and benefits) handled by outside organizations.

Advantages of this type of structure include the following:

• Minimizing overhead.
• Enabling the organization to focus on its core product and eliminating the need to develop expertise in noncore functions.

Disadvantages include:

• Loss of control over functions that affect employees regularly.
• Restriction by certain industries (e.g., health care) on the extent of outsourcing.
• Lack of competitive outsourcing options.

Modular organizations. Modular structures differ from hollow organizations in that components of a product are outsourced. Modular structures may keep a core part of the product in-house and outsource noncore portions of the product. Networks are added or subtracted as needs change. For a modular structure to be an option, the product must be able to be broken into chunks. For example, computer manufacturer Dell buys parts from various suppliers and assembles them at one central location. Suppliers at one end and customers at the other become part of the organization; the organization shares information and innovations with all. Customization of products and services results from flexibility, creativity, teamwork and responsiveness. Business decisions are made at corporate, divisional, project and individual team member levels.

Advantages include the following:

• Minimizing the specialization and specialists needed.
• Enabling the company to outsource parts supply and coordinate the assembly of quality products.

Disadvantages include concerns about the actions of suppliers outside the control of the core management company. Risk occurs if the partner organization removes itself form the quality check on the end product or if the outsourced organization uses a second outsourced organization. Examples of supplier concerns include the following:

• Suppliers, or subcontractors, must have access to—and safeguard—most, if not all, of the core company's data and trade secrets.
• Suppliers could suddenly raise prices on or cease production of key parts.
• Knowing where one organization ends and another begins may become difficult.

Virtual organizations. A virtual organization (sometimes called a network structure) is cooperation among companies, institutions or individuals delivering a product or service under a common business understanding. Organizations form partnerships with others—often competitors—that complement each other. The collaborating units present themselves as a unified organization.

The advantages of virtual structures include the following:

• Contributions from each part of the unit.
• Elimination of physical boundaries.
• Responsiveness to a rapidly changing environment.
• Lower or nonexistent organizational overhead.
• Allows companies to be more flexible and agile.
• Give more power to all employees to collaborate, take initiative, and make decisions.
• Helps employees and stakeholders understand workflows and processes.

The disadvantages of virtual organizations include the following:

• Potential lack of trust between organizations.
• Potential lack of organizational identification among employees.
• Need for increased communication.
• Can quickly become overly complex when dealing with lots of offsite processes.
• Can make it more difficult for employees to know who has final say.

Virtual structures are collaborative and created to respond to an exceptional and often temporary marketing opportunity. An example of a virtual structure is an environmental conservancy in which multiple organizations supply a virtual organization with employees to save, for example, a historic site, possibly with the intent of economic gain for the partners.

Understanding the organizational environment is crucial in open boundary models. For example, some industries cannot outsource noncore processes due to government regulation. (For example, health insurance organizations may be unable to outsource Medicare processes). Or, in some cases, outsourcing may have to be negotiated with a union.

The key to effective boundary-less organizations is placing adaptable employees at all levels. Management must give up traditional autocratic control to coach employees toward creativity and the achievement of organizational goals. Employees must apply initiative and creativity to benefit the organization, and reward systems should recognize such employees.

Learning organizations. A learning organization is one whose design actively seeks to acquire knowledge and change behavior as a result of the newly acquired knowledge. In learning organizations, experimenting, learning new things, and reflecting on new knowledge are the norms. At the same time, there are many procedures and systems in place that facilitate learning at all organization levels.

The advantages of learning organizations include the following:

• Open communication and information sharing.
• Innovativeness
• Ability to adapt to rapid change.
• Strong organizational performance.
• Competitive advantage.

The disadvantages of learning organizations include the following:

• Power difference is ignored.
• Process of implementing will be complicated and take longer.
• Fear of employee participation in organizational decisions.
• Breaking of existing organizational rules.

The Impact of Growth Stages on Organizational Structure

Organizations typically mature in a consistent and predictable manner. As they move through various stages of growth, they must address various problems. This process creates the need for different structures, management skills and priorities.

The four stages of development in an organization's life cycle include the following:

The beginning stage of development is characterized by an inconsistent growth rate, a simple structure and informal systems. At this stage the organization is typically highly centralized. "Dotcom" companies are a good example of startup companies.

The expansion stage is evidenced by rapid, positive growth and the emergence of formal systems. Organizations at this stage typically focus on centralization with limited delegation.

Consolidation

The consolidation stage is characterized by slower growth, departmentalization, formalized systems and moderate centralization.

Diversification

The diversification stage occurs when older, larger organizations experience rapid growth, bureaucracy and decentralization.

As an organization grows or passes from one stage of development to another, carefully planned and well-conceived changes in practices and strategies may be necessary to maximize effectiveness. There are no guarantees that an organization will make it from one stage to the next. In fact, a key opportunity for leadership is to recognize indicators that suggest an organization is in a risky or unhealthy stage and to make appropriate structural adjustments.

The art of organizational design is assessing the environment's essential aspects and their meaning for the organization's future. Translating those characteristics into the right structure is critical to increasing efficiency and controlling costs. When selecting the best structure for the organization, company leaders should examine and evaluate current key structural dimensions and contextual factors. See  How do I determine which HR metrics to measure and report?

Structural dimensions

Leaders can develop an understanding of the organization's internal environment through measurement and analysis of its structural dimensions. Key dimensions, which are usually measured through a survey, include:

Specialization. The extent to which an organization's activities are divided into specialized roles.

Standardization. The degree to which an organization operates under standard rules or procedures.

Formalization. The extent to which instructions and procedures are documented.

Centralization. The degree to which leaders at the top of the management hierarchy have authority to make certain decisions.

Configuration. The shape of the organization's role structure, which includes:

• Chain of command. The number of vertical levels or layers on the organizational chart.
• Span of control. The number of direct reports per manager or the number of horizontal levels or layers on the organizational chart.

Contextual factors

A review of contextual factors will provide a better understanding of the external environment and the relationship between the internal and external environment. Some of the significant contextual factors to consider in this review include:

Origin and history. Was the organization privately founded? What changes have occurred in ownership or location?

Ownership and control. Is the organization private or public? Is control divided among a few individuals or many?

Size. How many employees does the organization have? What are its net assets? What is its market position?

Location. How many operating sites does the organization maintain?

Productsand services. What types of goods and services does the organization manufacture and provide?

Technology. Are the organization's work processes effectively integrated?

Interdependence. What is the degree to which the organization depends on customers, suppliers, trade unions or other related entities?

After examining the structural dimensions and contextual factors and developing an understanding of the connection between an organization's structure and strategy, organization leaders can consider alternative structures. They may use diagnostic models and tools to guide the design process.

Communications and Technology

The last few years have seen an unprecedented expansion and improvement of online communication. Software has pushed the boundaries of workplace communication beyond e-mail into collaborative social media platforms and innovative intranets. The decline in traditional communication methods and the dramatic increase in cyber communication has had a major impact on the workplace and is leading to restructuring.

As organizations continue to restructure to remain competitive, communications can drive the transition to an effective new organizational structure. Research suggests that companies can positively affect their credibility with employees through various organizational communication programs.

In establishing internal communication channels, leadership must be aware of the advantages and shortcomings of communication technologies and match them to the organization's needs, strategic goals and structure. Employers should also be cognizant of, and be prepared to deal with, the common communication challenges in various organizational structures. For example, communications technology has enabled organizations to create virtual workplaces and teams. In a virtual team, members from various geographical locations work together on a task, communicating via e-mail, instant messaging, teleconferencing, videoconferencing and web-based workspaces. Although virtual teams have significant advantages—most notably reduced travel costs and flexibility in staffing and work schedules—they also pose challenges. Virtual teams often find coordinating team logistics and mastering new technologies difficult. Communication is also a major challenge because of the absence of visual (body language) and verbal (intonation) clues. Research suggests that organizations can overcome these challenges through effective support and training.

Global Issues

Organizational structures often need to change as companies expand around the globe. An organization's leaders should plan carefully before opening offices in another country.

Many issues arise when an employer plans to open an international branch, hire international workers and formulate a globalized strategy. Among the questions that must be answered are:

• How do human resource legal requirements and practices vary from country to country?
• Should HR officials at headquarters do the work, or should a company open HR offices in the other country?
• Should an organization hire consultants to handle local hiring and personnel services?

Unless employers have a sound HR strategy ready before leaping into another country, they could fail.

When an organization opens international offices, HR professionals and other business leaders should be able to communicate as effectively with workers across the globe as around the corner. That can be a challenge. Having a robust intranet and using videoconferencing are alternatives to face-to-face communication.

As rapid changes in technology affect global communication, employees must be aware of linguistic, cultural, religious and social differences among colleagues and business contacts. The organization should train all employees (not just managers and CEOs who travel) in cultural literacy.

Moreover, employers should be aware that language difficulties, time‐and‐distance challenges, the absence of face‐to‐face contact, and, above all, the barriers posed by cultural differences and personal communication styles make global virtual work far more complex than local structures. These practices can enhance global virtual team relationships:

• Using online chats, video- and audioconferencing in addition to one-on-one conversations and e-mail.
• Posting profiles of team members that outline their expertise and roles in the organization.
• Being sensitive to the level of engagement team members are likely to deliver if they must meet at inconvenient hours across multiple time zones.

Legal Issues

Regardless of the type of structure, employers must ensure compliance with legal requirements in the countries where their organizations operate. Some of those requirements will be quite extensive (for example, public companies must ensure compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and most organizations must ensure compliance with the Fair Labor Standards Act and its related state laws). When organizational structures change, or if the chain of command is weak or fails to keep up-to-date with changes in the business, a company may have compliance problems because the structure has not been evaluated with regard to these laws. Imagine, for example, a restructuring that reduces the number of direct reports for an entire layer of management, which perhaps leads to those individuals no longer being exempt.

As an organization moves internationally, laws in the host countries must also be evaluated and a plan put in place for compliance before the expansion occurs. Employers must anticipate and plan for laws affecting all aspects of the employee experience, including hiring, benefits, leaves and termination.

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Article contents

Hierarchical organizational structure and leadership.

• Anna Saiti Anna Saiti Harokopio University
•  and  Theodoros Stefou Theodoros Stefou Independent Scholar
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.709
• Published online: 29 May 2020

When using the hierarchical approach, one delegates duties from the upper to the lower levels of a hierarchical structure. This system is characterized by an echelon arrangement (“a pyramid organization”), which gives the impression of a pyramid. This kind of structure is the simplest type of work distribution and is based upon the Fayol principles, namely, the unity of administration and a hierarchical scale. Certainly, this system of organizational structure (as with any system) has both advantages and disadvantages. A hierarchical approach expresses the classical view of the organizational structure and may be implemented in any kind or size of organization. If organizations are to enhance employees’ motivation and team spirit then employees’ perceptions are an important tool. Within this framework, individuals in the military and educational sector have a rather sensitive working environment, one quite different from other sectors.

Leadership is without doubt the most essential part of any organization and is key for the efficient performance and continued development of an organization. Flexible networks, open communication processes, and leaders with vision and a creative, constructive, and positive spirit favorably affect employees’ feelings and enhance innovation and fluidity. Taking into consideration that a highly hierarchical system may adversely affect incentives to exert effort as well as the efficiency of communication channels, one may consider the importance of the contribution of a leader and the development of leadership as an acute issue that has a significant impact upon staff morale and efficient performance, especially in military and educational sector.

• hierarchical structure
• organization planning
• decision-making
• military organizations
• organizational structure

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10.1 Organizational Structures and Design

• What are mechanistic versus organic organizational structures?

First, an organizational structure is a system for accomplishing and connecting the activities that occur within a work organization. People rely on structures to know what work they should do, how their work supports or relies on other employees, and how these work activities fulfill the purpose of the organization itself.

Second, organizational design is the process of setting up organizational structures to address the needs of an organization and account for the complexity involved in accomplishing business objectives.

Next, organizational change refers to the constant shifts that occur within an organizational system—for example, as people enter or leave the organization, market conditions shift, supply sources change, or adaptations are introduced in the processes for accomplishing work. Through managed change , leaders in an organization can intentionally shape how these shifts occur over time.

Finally, organizational development (OD) is the label for a field that specializes in change management. OD specialists draw on social science to guide change processes that simultaneously help a business achieve its objectives while generating well-being for employees and sustainable benefits for society. An understanding of OD practices is essential for leaders who want to maximize the potential of their organizations over a long period of time.

Together, an understanding of these concepts can help managers know how to create and direct organizations that are positioned to successfully accomplish strategic goals and objectives. 1

To understand the role of organizational structure, consider the experience of Justin, a young manager who worked for a logistics and transportation company. Their success at leading change in the United States gave their leaders the confidence that Justin could handle a challenging assignment: organize a new supply chain and distribution system for a company in Northern Europe. Almost overnight, Justin was responsible for hiring competent people, forming them into a coherent organization, training them, and establishing the needed infrastructure for sustained success in this new market.

If you were given this assignment, what would you do? How would you organize your employees? How would you help them understand the challenge of setting up a new organization and system? These are the kinds of questions that require an understanding of organizational structure, organizational design, organizational change, and organizational development.

One of the first issues Justin will need to address deals with how they will organize the system. “The decisions about the structure of an organization are all related to the concept of organizational design. There are two fundamental forms of structure to remember when designing an organization.

To address these questions, we need to be familiar with two fundamental ways of building an organization.

The formal organization is an officially defined set of relationships, responsibilities, and connections that exist across an organization. The traditional organizational chart, as illustrated in Exhibit 10.2 , is perhaps the most common way of depicting the formal organization. The typical organization has a hierarchical form with clearly defined roles and responsibilities.

When Justin sets up the formal organization, they will need to design the administrative responsibilities and communication structures that should function within an organizational system. The formal systems describe how flow of information and resources should occur within an organization. To establish the formal organization, they will identify the essential functions that need to be part of the system, and they will hire people to fill these functions. They will then need to help employees learn their functions and how these functions should relate to one another.

The informal organization is sometimes referred to as the invisible network of interpersonal relationships that shape how people actually connect with one another to carry out their activities. The informal organization is emergent, meaning that it is formed through the common conversations and relationships that often naturally occur as people interact with one another in their day-to-day relationships. It is usually complex, impossible to control, and has the potential to significantly influence an organization’s success.

As depicted in Exhibit 10.3 , the informal organization can also be mapped, but it is usually very different than the formal organization. The chart you see in this example is called a network map, because it depicts the relationships that exist between different members of a system. Some members are more central than others, and the strength of relationships may vary between any two pairs or groups of individuals. These relationships are constantly in flux, as people interact with new individuals, current relationships evolve, and the organization itself changes over time. 2

The informal organization in Justin’s design will form as people begin interacting with one another to accomplish their work. As this occurs, people will begin connecting with one another as they make sense of their new roles and relationships. Usually, the informal organization closely mirrors the formal organization, but often it is different. People quickly learn who the key influencers are within the system, and they will begin to rely on these individuals to accomplish the work of the organization. The informal organization can either help or hinder an organization’s overall success.

In sum, the formal organization explains how an organization should function, while the informal organization is how the organizational actually functions. Formal organization will come as Justin hires and assigns people to different roles. They can influence the shape of the informal organization by giving people opportunities to build relationships as they work together. Both types of structures shape the patterns of influence, administration, and leadership that may occur through an organizational system.

As we continue our discussion of structure and design, we will next examine different ways of understanding formal structure.

Types of Formal Organizational Structures

Now, Justin will need to choose and implement an administrative system for delegating duties, establishing oversight, and reporting on performance. They will do this by designing a formal structure that defines the responsibilities and accountability that correspond to specific duties throughout an organizational system. In this section, we’ll discuss the factors that any manager should consider when designing an organizational structure.

Bureaucracy

One of the most common frameworks for thinking about these issues is called the bureaucratic model . It was developed by Max Weber, a 19th-century sociologist. Weber’s central assumption was that organizations will find efficiencies when they divide the duties of labor, allow people to specialize, and create structure for coordinating their differentiated efforts, usually within a hierarchy of responsibility. He proposed five elements of bureaucracy that serve as a foundation for determining an appropriate structure: specialization, command-and-control, span of control, centralization, and formalization. 3

Specialization

The degree to which people are organized into subunits according to their expertise is referred to as specialization —for example, human resources, finance, marketing, or manufacturing. It may also include specialization within those functions. For instance, people who work in a manufacturing facility may be well-versed in every part of a manufacturing process, or they may be organized into specialty units that focus on different parts of the manufacturing process, such as procurement, material preparation, assembly, quality control, and the like.

Command-and-Control

The next element to consider is the reporting and oversight structure of the organization. Command-and-control refers to the way in which people report to one another or connect to coordinate their efforts in accomplishing the work of the organization.

Span of Control

Another question addresses the scope of the work that any one person in the organization will be accountable for, referred to as span of control . For instance, top-level leaders are usually responsible for all of the work of their subordinates, mid-level leaders are responsible for a narrower set of responsibilities, and ground-level employees usually perform very specific tasks. Each manager in a hierarchy works within the span of control of another manager at a level of the organization.

Centralization

The next element to consider is how to manage the flows of resources and information in an organization, or its centralization . A highly centralized organization concentrates resources in only one or very few locations, or only a few individuals are authorized to make decisions about the use of resources. In contrast, a diffuse organization distributes resources more broadly throughout an organizational system along with the authority to make decisions about how to use those resources.

Formalization

The last element of bureaucracy, formalization , refers to the degree of definition in the roles that exist throughout an organization. A highly formalized system (e.g., the military) has a very defined organization, a tightly structured system, in which all of the jobs, responsibilities, and accountability structures are very clearly understood. In contrast, a loosely structured system (e.g., a small, volunteer nonprofit) relies heavily on the emergent relationships of informal organization.

Mechanistic and Organic Structures

Using the principles of bureaucracy outlined above, managers like Justin have experimented with many different structures as way to shape the formal organization and potentially to capture some of the advantages of the informal organization. Generally, the application of these principles leads to some combination of the two kinds of structures that can be seen as anchors on a continuum (see Table 10.1 ).

On one end of the continuum is mechanistic bureaucratic structure . This is a strongly hierarchical form of organizing that is designed to generate a high degree of standardization and control. Mechanistic organizations are often characterized by a highly vertical organizational structure , or a “tall” structure, due to the presence of many levels of management. A mechanistic structure tends to dictate roles and procedure through strong routines and standard operating practices.

In contrast, an organic bureaucratic structure relies on the ability of people to self-organize and make decisions without much direction such that they can adapt quickly to changing circumstances. In an organic organization, it is common to see a horizontal organizational structure , in which many individuals across the whole system are empowered to make organizational decision. An organization with a horizontal structure is also known as a flat organization because it often features only a few levels of organizational hierarchy.

The principles of bureaucracy outlined earlier can be applied in different ways, depending on the context of the organization and the managers’ objectives, to create structures that have features of either mechanistic or organic structures.

For example, the degree of specialization required in an organization depends both on the complexity of the activities the organization needs to account for and on the scale of the organization. A more organic organization may encourage employees to be both specialists and generalists so that they are more aware of opportunities for innovation within a system. A mechanistic organization may emphasize a strong degree of specialization so that essential procedures or practices are carried out with consistency and predictable precision. Thus, an organization’s overall objectives drive how specialization should be viewed. For example, an organization that produces innovation needs to be more organic, while an organization that seeks reliability needs to be more mechanistic.

Similarly, the need for a strong environment of command-and-control varies by the circumstances of each organization. An organization that has a strong command-and-control system usually requires a vertical, tall organizational administrative structure. Organizations that exist in loosely defined or ambiguous environments need to distribute decision-making authority to employees, and thus will often feature a flat organizational structure.

The span of control assigned to any specific manager is commonly used to encourage either mechanistic or organic bureaucracy. Any manager’s ability to attend to responsibilities has limits; indeed, the amount of work anyone can accomplish is finite. A manager in an organic structure usually has a broad span of control, forcing her to rely more on subordinates to make decisions. A manager in a mechanistic structure usually has a narrow span of control so that they can provide more oversight. Thus, increasing span of control for a manager tends to flatten the hierarchy while narrowing span of control tends to reinforce the hierarchy.

Centralization addresses assumptions about how an organization can best achieve efficiencies in its operations. In a mechanistic structure, it is assumed that efficiencies will occur in the system if the resources and decisions flow through in a centralized way. In an organic system, it is assumed that greater efficiencies will be seen by distributing those resources and having the resources sorted by the users of the resources. Either perspective may work, depending on the circumstances.

Finally, managers also have discretion in how tightly they choose to define the formal roles and responsibilities of individuals within an organization. Managers who want to encourage organic bureaucracy will resist the idea of writing out and tightly defining roles and responsibilities. They will encourage and empower employees to self-organize and define for themselves the roles they wish to fill. In contrast, managers who wish to encourage more mechanistic bureaucracy will use tools such as standard operating procedures (SOPs) or written policies to set expectations and exercise clear controls around those expectations for employees.

When a bureaucratic structure works well, an organization achieves an appropriate balance across all of these considerations. Employees specialize in and become highly advanced in their ability to perform specific functions while also attending to broader organizational needs. They receive sufficient guidance from managers to stay aligned with overall organizational goals. The span of control given to any one manager encourages them to provide appropriate oversight while also relying on employees to do their part. The resources and decision-making necessary to accomplish the goals of the organization are efficiently managed. There is an appropriate balance between compliance with formal policy and innovative action.

Business Structures

Aside from the considerations outlined above, organizations will often set structures according to the functional needs of the organization. A functional need refers to a feature of the organization or its environment that is necessary for organizational success. A business structure is designed to address these organizational needs. There are two common examples of functional structures illustrated here.

Product structures exist where the business organizes its employees according to product lines or lines of business. For example, employees in a car company might be organized according to the model of the vehicle that they help to support or produce. Employees in a consulting firm might be organized around a particular kind of practice that they work in or support. Where a functional structure exists, employees become highly attuned to their own line of business or their own product.

Geographic structures exist where organizations are set up to deliver a range of products within a geographic area or region. Here, the business is set up based on a territory or region. Managers of a particular unit oversee all of the operations of the business for that geographical area.

In either functional structure, the manager will oversee all the activities that correspond to that function: marketing, manufacturing, delivery, client support systems, and so forth. In some ways, a functional structure is like a smaller version of the larger organization—a smaller version of the bureaucracy that exists within the larger organization.

One common weakness of a bureaucratic structure is that people can become so focused on their own part of the organization that they fail to understand or connect with broader organizational activities. In the extreme, bureaucracy separates and alienates workers from one another. These problems can occur when different parts of an organization fail to communicate effectively with one another.

Some organizations set up a matrix structure to minimize the potential for these problems. A matrix structure describes an organization that has multiple reporting lines of authority. For example, an employee who specializes in a particular product might have both the functional reporting line and a geographic reporting line. This employee has accountability in both directions. The functional responsibility has to do with her specialty as it correlates with the strategy of the company as a whole. However, her geographic accountability is to the manager who is responsible for the region or part of the organization in which she is currently working. The challenge is that an employee may be accountable to two or more managers, and this can create conflict if those managers are not aligned. The potential benefit, however, is that employees may be more inclined to pay attention to the needs of multiple parts of the business simultaneously.

Concept Check

• What is an organizational structure?
• What are different types of organizational structures?
• What is organizational design?
• What concepts should guide decisions about how to design structures?

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Organizational Structure

Organizational structure can be defined as a system for outlining management roles and responsibilities to achieve organizational goals. Organizational structure also determines the pattern of information flow within the organization. For instance, in highly hierarchical structures decisions are communicated from top to down, whereas in flat structures the power for decision making is distributed among various levels.

Organizational structure aims to provide efficiency and focus to operations. Appropriate structure should illustrate how the roles and responsibilities of each employee fit within the overall system.

Organizational structure has the following four main elements:

• Chain of command. Illustrating who reports to whom via an organizational chart.
• Defining departments . Clustering tasks, roles and responsibilities into groups and defining connections between various groups.
• Extend of control . Categorizing each and every task into departments to avoid a situation where two or more people do the same task.
• Centralization . Identifying the levels where decisions are made.

There are four main types of organizational structures – functional, divisional, flat and matrix.

Functional Structure

Functional structure is based on specialization of employees and it is the most common organizational structure. It is also referred to as bureaucratic structure and divides company into various departments such as procurement, operations, marketing , finance etc.

Divisional Structure

Divisional structure is also popular and it divides to company into various divisions on the basis of products, projects or subsidiaries.

Flat Structure

Flat structure, also referred to as horizontal structure aims to minimize the chain of command providing employees with autonomy in decision making.  This pattern is popular among startups.

Matrix Organizational Structure

Matrix structure is the most complex and accordingly, the least popular. Matrix structure assigns employees across various divisions and supervisors. Employees in such a structure may belong to more than one divisions and report to several superiors.

In this portal you can find analysis of organizational structure of major international companies.

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• Section 1. Organizational Structure: An Overview

Chapter 9 Sections

• Section 2. Creating and Gathering a Group to Guide Your Initiative
• Section 3. Developing Multisector Task Forces or Action Committees for the Initiative
• Section 4. Developing an Ongoing Board of Directors
• Section 5. Welcoming and Training New Members to a Board of Directors
• Section 6. Maintaining a Board of Directors
• Section 7. Writing Bylaws
• Section 8. Including Youth on Your Board, Commission, or Committee
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• Main Section

What is organizational structure?

Why should you develop a structure for your organization, when should you develop a structure for your organization.

By structure, we mean the framework around which the group is organized, the underpinnings which keep the coalition functioning. It's the operating manual that tells members how the organization is put together and how it works. More specifically, structure describes how members are accepted, how leadership is chosen, and how decisions are made.

• Structure gives members clear guidelines for how to proceed. A clearly-established structure gives the group a means to maintain order and resolve disagreements.
• Structure binds members together. It gives meaning and identity to the people who join the group, as well as to the group itself.
• Structure in any organization is inevitable -- an organization, by definition , implies a structure. Your group is going to have some structure whether it chooses to or not. It might as well be the structure which best matches up with what kind of organization you have, what kind of people are in it, and what you see yourself doing.

It is important to deal with structure early in the organization's development. Structural development can occur in proportion to other work the organization is doing, so that it does not crowd out that work. And it can occur in parallel with, at the same time as, your organization's growing accomplishments, so they take place in tandem, side by side. This means that you should think about structure from the beginning of your organization's life. As your group grows and changes, so should your thinking on the group's structure.

Elements of Structure

While the need for structure is clear, the best structure for a particular coalition is harder to determine. The best structure for any organization will depend upon who its members are, what the setting is, and how far the organization has come in its development.

Regardless of what type of structure your organization decides upon, three elements will always be there. They are inherent in the very idea of an organizational structure.

• Some kind of governance

Rules by which the organization operates

• A distribution of work

The first element of structure is governance - some person or group has to make the decisions within the organization.

Another important part of structure is having rules by which the organization operates. Many of these rules may be explicitly stated, while others may be implicit and unstated, though not necessarily any less powerful.

Distribution of work

Inherent in any organizational structure also is a distribution of work. The distribution can be formal or informal, temporary or enduring, but every organization will have some type of division of labor.

There are four tasks that are key to any group:

• Envisioning desired changes . The group needs someone who looks at the world in a slightly different way and believes he or she can make others look at things from the same point of view.
• Transforming the community . The group needs people who will go out and do the work that has been envisioned.
• Planning for integration . Someone needs to take the vision and figure out how to accomplish it by breaking it up into strategies and goals.
• Supporting the efforts of those working to promote change . The group needs support from the community to raise money for the organization, champion the initiative in the state legislature, and ensure that they continue working towards their vision.

Common Roles

Every group is different, and so each will have slightly different terms for the roles individuals play in their organization, but below are some common terms, along with definitions and their typical functions.

• An initial steering committee is the group of people who get things started. Often, this group will create plans for funding, and organizational and board development. It may also generate by-laws, and then dissolve. If they continue to meet after approximately the first six months, we might say they have metamorphosed into a coordinating council .
• A coordinating council (also referred to as a coordinating committee, executive committee , and executive council ), modifies broad, organization-wide objectives and strategies in response to input from individuals or committees.
• Often, one person will take the place of the coordinating council, or may serve as its head. Such a person may be known as the Executive Director, Project Coordinator, Program Director, or President . He or she sometimes has a paid position, and may coordinate, manage, inspire, supervise, and support the work of other members of the organization.
• Task forces are made up of members who work together around broad objectives. Task forces integrate the ideas set forward with the community work being done.

For example, from the director of a coalition to reduce violence in a medium-sized city: "Currently, we have three operational task forces. Members of each have an ongoing dialogue with members of the coordinating council, and also with their action committees. The oldest was formed with the goal of eliminating domestic violence about fifteen years ago, when a local woman was killed by her husband. Then, after several outbreaks of violence in the schools a few years back, our group offered to help, and a second task force sprung up around reducing youth violence. We've just started a third, with the goal of increasing gun safety. "All of it is interrelated, and all of it applies to our mission of increasing the safety of residents of South Haven, as well as that of our visitors. But each task force is contributing to that mission in vastly different ways, with different objectives, and using different strategies. 'Cause, you know, the strategies you use to stop a ninth grader from bringing a gun to school just aren't the same as the ones you use to stop a 40-year-old man on unemployment from beating his wife."

•   Action committees bring about specific changes in programs, policies, and practices in the sectors in which they work.

For example, the task force on domestic violence mentioned above has the following action committees: A government and law enforcement committee . Members include police officers, lawyers, a judge, and a state representative. Currently, they are trying to pass laws with stronger penalties for those convicted of domestic violence, especially repeat offenders. They are also training officers to be better able to spot an abusive relationship, and better able to inform a victim of his or her options. A social services committee . Members (who include representatives from most of the service agencies in town) work to assure that staff members know where to send someone for the resources he or she needs. They are also trying to increase the number of trained volunteer counselors who work at the battered women's shelter. A media committee . Members include local journalists, writers, and graphic designers. They keep the project and the issue in the public's minds as much as possible with editorials, articles and news clips of events, as well as advertisements and public service announcements.

•   Support committees are groups that help ensure that action committees or other individuals will have the resources and opportunities necessary to realize their vision. Financial and media committees are examples of committees formed to help support or facilitate your work.
• Community trustees , also known as the board of trustees or as the board of directors , provide overall support, advice, and resources to members of the action groups. They are often either people who are directly affected by the issue or have stature in the community. That way, they are able to make contacts, network with other community leaders, and generally remove or weaken barriers to meeting organizational objectives.
• Grantmakers are another part of the picture. Grantmakers exist on an international, national, state, and local level and may be private companies and foundations, or local, county, state, or federal government organizations (for example, block grants given by the city would fall into this category).
• Support organizations (not to be confused with the support committees listed above) are groups that can give your organization the technical assistance it needs.
• Partner organizations are other groups working on some of the same issues as your organization.

Although this list is pretty extensive, your organization may only use two or three of the above mentioned roles, especially at the beginning. It's not uncommon for a group to start with a steering committee, ask others to serve as board members, and then recruit volunteers who will serve as members of action committees. In this broad spectrum of possibilities, consider: Where does your organization fit in? Where do you want to be?

Examples of Structure

So how can all of these pieces be put together? Again, the form a community group takes should be based on what it does , and not the other way around. The structures given are simply meant to serve as examples that have been found to be effective for some community-based organizations; they can and should be adapted and modified for your own group's purposes.

  A relatively complex structure

Example - The Ste. Genevieve's Children's Coalition The Ste. Genevieve's Children's Coalition is a relatively large community-based group. They have a coordinating council, a media committee, and three task forces, dealing with adolescent pregnancy, immunization, and child hunger. Each of the task forces has action committees as well. For example, the adolescent pregnancy reduction task force has a schools committee that focuses on keeping teen parents in school and modifying the human sexuality curriculum. A health organizations committee focuses on increasing access and use of the youth clinic. The media committee works to keep children's issues in the news, and includes professionals from the local television stations, radio stations, newspaper, and a marketing professional. The coordinating council is composed of the executive director, her assistant, the media committee chair, and the chairs of each of the three task forces. A board of directors has been invaluable in helping keep the coalition financially viable.

In diagram form, a complex organization might look like this:

And in diagram form:

As smaller size means fewer people, these groups are usually less complex, as they have less need for a formal hierarchy and instead have governance that is consensus-based. A diagram of such a small group might look something like this, with each of the circles representing an individual member:

What type of structure should you choose?

First, decide upon the formality your organization will have. The following table, adapted from The Spirit of Coalition Building can help you make this first decision.

Organizational structure is something that is best decided upon internally, through a process of critical thinking and discussion by members of the group.

In your discussions, your answers to the following list of questions may guide your decisions.

• What is your common purpose? How broad is it? Groups with broader purposes often have more complicated structures, complete with many layers and parts, than do groups with more narrow purposes.
• Is your group advocacy oriented or service oriented? Service organizations use "top down," one-person-in-charge structure much more often than do advocacy based groups.
• Is your organization more centralized (e.g., through the work of a specific agency ) or decentralized (e.g., different neighborhoods working independently on the same problem)? A decentralized group might find a "top-down" structure inappropriate, as such a group often has several peers working together on an issue.
• How large is your organization? How large do you envision it becoming? A very small organization may wish to remain relatively informal, while a community-wide group might require a more formal structure. A related question, with similar consequences, is:
• How large is the community in which you work?
• How old is your organization? How long do you envision it lasting? A group formed to resolve a single issue might not need a formal structure at all, while an organization with long-term goals may want something more concrete, with clearer divisional responsibilities and authority.
• Is the organization entirely volunteer, or are there (or will there be) paid staff? How many? An organization with many paid staff members may find it more necessary to have people "in charge," as there are generally more rules and responsibilities for paid staff members, and thus, there must be more supervision in carrying out these roles.
• Should yours be a new organization, or part of an existing structure? Do you really need to form a new structure, or would it be better to work within existing structures? Sometimes, your goals may be better met if you are part of (or linked with) another organization.

Structure is what ensures that your organization will function smoothly and as you intended. You should think about structure early in the development of your organization, but be aware that the type that fits best may change as your organization grows.

Online Resources

How to Develop an Organization Structure , by Tara Duggan, Demand Media, is an informational article on how to develop organization structure with a short step-by-step analysis.

It's All About the Base: A Guide to Building a Grassroots Organizing Program   from Community Catalyst.

Module 2: Organizational Structure , by Pathfinder International, is a concise manual describing pros and cons, together with suggestions for how one might change the organizational structure one has.

Print Resources

Berkowitz, W., & Wolff, T. (1999). The spirit of coalition building. Washington , DC: American Public Health Association.

Unterman, I. & Davis, R. (1984). Strategic management of not-for-profit organizations: From survival to success . New York, NY: Praeger.

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• Published: 05 April 2024

A 5′ UTR language model for decoding untranslated regions of mRNA and function predictions

• Yanyi Chu 1 , 2   na1 ,
• Dan Yu 3   na1 ,
• Yupeng Li 4 ,
• Kaixuan Huang 1 ,
• Yue Shen 3 ,
• Le Cong 2 ,
• Jason Zhang 4 &
• Mengdi Wang   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-2101-9507 1  

Nature Machine Intelligence volume  6 ,  pages 449–460 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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• Computational models
• Gene expression
• Gene regulation
• Machine learning

A preprint version of the article is available at bioRxiv.

The 5′ untranslated region (UTR), a regulatory region at the beginning of a messenger RNA (mRNA) molecule, plays a crucial role in regulating the translation process and affects the protein expression level. Language models have showcased their effectiveness in decoding the functions of protein and genome sequences. Here, we introduce a language model for 5′ UTR, which we refer to as the UTR-LM. The UTR-LM is pretrained on endogenous 5′ UTRs from multiple species and is further augmented with supervised information including secondary structure and minimum free energy. We fine-tuned the UTR-LM in a variety of downstream tasks. The model outperformed the best known benchmark by up to 5% for predicting the mean ribosome loading, and by up to 8% for predicting the translation efficiency and the mRNA expression level. The model was also applied to identifying unannotated internal ribosome entry sites within the untranslated region and improved the area under the precision–recall curve from 0.37 to 0.52 compared to the best baseline. Further, we designed a library of 211 new 5′ UTRs with high predicted values of translation efficiency and evaluated them via a wet-laboratory assay. Experiment results confirmed that our top designs achieved a 32.5% increase in protein production level relative to well-established 5′ UTRs optimized for therapeutics.

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Data availability.

The datasets are available and can be downloaded at https://codeocean.com/capsule/6711822 (ref. 39 ). This link includes training data for the pretrained model as well as datasets for various downstream tasks. Detailed statistics for these datasets are provided in Supplementary Discussion A . Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

The code is freely available at https://github.com/a96123155/UTR-LM (ref. 40 ) under the GNU General Public Licence Version 3 and the implemented demo can be found at https://codeocean.com/capsule/6711822 (ref. 39 ).

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Acknowledgements

This paper is partially supported by National Science Foundation grant no. 1953686 and partially supported by RVAC Medicines.

Author information

These authors contributed equally: Yanyi Chu, Dan Yu.

Authors and Affiliations

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA

Yanyi Chu, Kaixuan Huang & Mengdi Wang

Department of Pathology, School of Medicine, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

Yanyi Chu & Le Cong

RVAC Medicines, Waltham, MA, USA

Dan Yu & Yue Shen

Zipcode Bio, Weston, MA, USA

Yupeng Li & Jason Zhang

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Contributions

Y.C. developed the UTR-LM model. D.Y. performed experimental validation. Y.L. produced in-house data. K.H. reviewed both the code and manuscript. Y.S. developed the web server. L.C. contributed to manuscript preparation. J.Z. initiated the experimental part of the project. M.W. led the entire project. All authors contributed to manuscript preparation.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mengdi Wang .

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Competing interests.

RVAC Medicines has submitted patent applications related to the designed UTR sequences. D.Y., Y.L. and Y.S. are affiliated with RVAC Medicines. J.Z. is affiliated with Zipcode Bio. Other authors have declared no conflicts of interest.

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Nature Machine Intelligence thanks Joshua W. K. Ho, and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Extended data fig. 1.

The computation flow of identifying patterns in 5′ UTR sequences based on attention scores .

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Supplementary Discussion, Figs. 1–10 and Tables 1–6.

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Chu, Y., Yu, D., Li, Y. et al. A 5′ UTR language model for decoding untranslated regions of mRNA and function predictions. Nat Mach Intell 6 , 449–460 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42256-024-00823-9

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Research team proposes a novel type of acoustic crystal with smooth, continuous changes in elastic properties

I n dim light a cat sees much better than you do, as do dogs and nocturnal animals. That's because the structure of a cat's eye has a tapetum lucidum, a mirror-like layer immediately behind the retina. Light entering the eye that is not focused by the lens onto the retina is reflected off the tapetum lucidum, where the retina gets another chance to receive the light, process it, and send impulses to the optic nerve.

Optical scientists call this a photonic crystal. For a cat it's periodic parallel rods—it contains photonic bandgaps that are used to modify the flow of light, akin to the electron bandgaps in semiconductors, which are energy regions where no electron energy states exist. These materials have changes in their index of refraction and so modify and redirect the propagation of light.

Another example is the reflective markers on the pavement of highways that glow at night from a car's headlights. Photonic crystals, like the latter, are fabricated via layers of thin films using photolithography, hole drilling, laser writing and other techniques.

Photonic crystals prohibit light of certain frequencies in the parts of the crystalline medium that the light is traveling through. As defined by science, such crystals have periodic, distinct regions each with a periodic dielectric constant.

A dielectric is an electrically insulating material, without free electrons or atoms, opposing the flow of electrons when an electric field is applied. Instead, a dielectric material polarizes when an electric field is applied, with its molecules all pointing in the same direction. Distilled water—purified water that contains no minerals—is a dielectric material, and so is glass, porcelain, dry air, paper, and many other materials. Dielectrics are used in capacitors, liquid crystal displays, and other devices.

Extending this concept, "function photonic crystals" are materials that have a smooth, continuous change in refractive index, instead of a sharp, distinct periodicity. This enables fast electronic control of a material's properties.

The same concepts exist for phononic crystals. Phonons are quantized sound waves, just as photons are quantized light waves. A phononic crystal is a solid with continuous changes in its properties, creating a bandgap for photonic energies. Artificial structures with a periodic variation of elastic parameters can manipulate the propagation of elastic waves.

Now a team led by David Röhlig at the Technische Universität Chemnitz in Germany is proposing to create function phononic crystals, with smooth and continuous changes in elastic properties instead of strict periodic variations. The research is published in the journal Europhysics Letters .

The refractive index for sound would continually change inside the propagating medium, instead of step function discontinuities. In nature such substances are responsible for the long-wave propagation of sound waves in water and bent sound waves in the lower atmosphere.

Using high-performance computer simulations, the team focused on understanding the effect of a small deviation in material properties from the typical step function discontinuity on the phononic density of energy states.

Their results were surprising: even just small deviations from the ideal step function of a material could cause large, radical changes in the phononic band structure. This would lead to the emergence of many sought-after features, such as larger phonon band gaps and multiple phononic band gaps.

Because the phononic density of states can change so quickly for only small changes in the material properties, such properties would prove useful in making, for example, phononic lens in solid materials or water, or for new devices in materials science, applied physics and engineering.

"Our findings present a novel perspective on phononic structures," said Röhlig, "offering an additional avenue to induce bandgap formation in specific geometries that lack this characteristic." Noting that the swift convergence of the density of states as the step function parameters change to be more continuous, Röhlig notes that the rapid changes would streamline potential manufacturing approaches.

"If further studies can validate our predictions experimentally, our results could find applications in microtechnology and mechatronics for the design of acousto-mechanical transducers and actuators," he said.

Even large-scale environments could be shaped, "such as arranging trees or other wooden building units, [objects] that have a known or specially designed radially continuous parameter profile regarding density and elastic properties, to enhance ambient soundproofing."

More information: David Röhlig et al, Function phononic crystals, Europhysics Letters (2024). DOI: 10.1209/0295-5075/ad1de9

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