Meaning

Organising is the process that turns a plan into action. Without it, even the best-laid plans remain ideas on paper. The textbook uses a familiar example to bring this to life.

Think about the school fete — the one everyone enjoys. What happens behind the scenes to make it happen? The entire activity is broken into smaller task groups, each handling a specific area: the food committee, the decoration committee, the ticketing committee, and so on. All these groups work under the overall supervision of the event in-charge. Relationships are established among the groups so that they coordinate smoothly and everyone is clear about how their group contributes to the event as a whole.

Everything described above — dividing work, forming groups, assigning responsibility, and linking them together — is part of the organising function.

In more formal terms, organising can be defined as a process that initiates implementation of plans by clarifying jobs and working relationships and effectively deploying resources for attainment of identified and desired results (goals).

Key points to remember:

• Organising is a process, not a one-time event. It involves a sequence of steps.
• It coordinates human efforts — people working together, not at cross-purposes.
• It assembles resources — both physical (materials, money, machines) and human (skills, labour).
• It integrates these two into a unified whole — so that the organisation works as one system, not as isolated parts.
• The ultimate purpose is to achieve specified objectives — the goals set during planning.
• It initiates implementation of plans — planning decides what to do; organising makes it happen.
• It does this by clarifying jobs (who does what) and working relationships (who reports to whom, who coordinates with whom).
• It effectively deploys resources — putting the right resources in the right place at the right time.

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Formal Definitions of Organising …