Ajeevika Case

COMPANY HIERARCHY

Each organization follows a specific company structure, i.e. it follows a specific reporting relationships between the employees. Among the different types of structure present in the industry, Ajeevika follows the flat hierarchy structure. Though it does have titles, it still functions as a flatter hierarchy in comparison to the similar organizations in the industry. Although Ajeevika doesn’t believe in providing official titles to its employess, it still follows a five level architecture.

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The highest authority is of the directors and co-founders. At second level there are program managers such as IT head and HR head. The third level comprises of executives. At fourth level are the senior associates and at fifth level the junior associates. This structure has been greatly beneficial to Ajeevika since due to this structure, the company has thrived on the inputs and suggestions of all the employees instead of having executives take the decisions wherein the employees would have had no say. However, caution should be taken because if not implemented correctly, this structure can actually backfire, resulting in mistrust and anger from the employees.  

BASIC DESIGN DIMENSIONS

For Ajeevika, the structural dimensions include the following:

1. Formalization: The degree to which employee’s role is defined by a formal documentation is very low for this organization.

1. Centralization: Centralization is low for Ajeevika, since decision-making is done not just by authority but is a cumulative effort of employees as well as managers.

1. Specialization: The degree to which organizational tasks are subdivided into separate jobs is quite low in Ajeevika which can be related to the formalization.87y

1. Standardization: The work activities are done in a routinely manner however, they involve a large amount of flexibility and adaptability depending on the situation.

1. Complexity: There are huge number of activities taking place in Ajeevika at a time which often involve huge overlapping of the tasks leading to higher complexity.

1. Hierarchy of authority: As mentioned earlier, Ajeevika follows a horizontal differentiation.

As Ajeevika is low on formalization, centralization, specialization and standardization, and it also has a very short vertical differentiation, this organization is somewhat adhocratic in nature.  

Following flat or horizontal organizational structure has its own merits. For Ajeevika, adopting flat organization structure proved to be cost efficient. This is so as the need for having many managers is cut back which automatically implies that there are less wages that management needs to pay. Another added advantage of this structure is that the organization Ajeevika has a very clear communication system. This is so because the smaller the level of authority figures in an organization, more effective is the communication. The input which they take directly from the employees lead to more transparency and less behind the curtain schemes and operations.