CONTINGENTIAL FACTORS AND STRUCTURAL FORMS

The Effective Structure of Organizations

Contingency Factors

Basic Structural Forms

New Structural Forms

When implementing a structure migration strategy, the members of the management body must observe both structures, the Formal (the one that is required on paper) and the Informal (the one that operates in practice).


The Formal Structure can present various classifications, from bureaucratic to meritocratic structures, with different degrees of formality.

The Matrix Structure (Transversal)


The origin of the matrix structure is linked to the project organizations.


Main Advantages:

  • It allows to gather several experts in a team.
  • Its use demands and provides greater flexibility for the organization.
  • Allows you to assign resources to the most important projects.
  • Helps to mitigate conflicts between the objectives generated.
  • Members tend to be more motivated.
  • Serves for managerial development.
  • It contributes to increasing the involvement and commitment of the team members.
  • Avoid sclerosis and organizational rigidity of management teams and their members.

Implications: The double flow of the process, Approach oriented to process and not to function, Vertical functional structure, They have to operate intensively.

Transformation proccess


1. Alignment: Why have some work approaches been very successful in some cases and impalpable, if not disappointing, in others?


2. Integration: Entering an operation under a matrix structure implies a drastic and sometimes violent change.


3. Synchronization: In engineering language, the synchronization phase is equivalent to (the fine-tuning) of the processes, their inhabitants and their operation.
4. Collaboration: It is the current organizational language, the term (collaboration) has a new meaning, which goes beyond simple will.

Types of Organizational Structures


  1. Simple Structure
  2. The Machine Bureaucracy
  3. The Professional Bureaucracy
  4. The Divisional Form
  5. The Adhocracy

The contingency or leadership effectiveness model. It was developed by Fiedler (1967).


He developed the so-called least precise partner scale (CMA) to identify leadership styles.


He argues that the CMA scale indicates whether a leader has a task-focused style or a relationship-focused style.

People with a low CMA level, that is, those who describe the least appreciated co-worker in negative terms, are believed to be primarily concerned with their task success, that is, they are (task-focused).

The validity of the CMA scale aside, Fiedler's contingency model has received broad research support


This fact implies that the effectiveness of the organization can be increased if leaders and situations are properly matched.

Of the conditions necessary for the existence of material forms, such as houses, machines, trees, or animal life, structure is more important.


Without important structure, the material forms cannot be guaranteed and if the form is not guaranteed, none can be realized. (Engel, 2001).

The only function of the structure is not to resist and distribute loads, since in modern architecture the dimensions of the structure have a significant effect on the appearance of the building's elevation, the basic structural decisions are therefore also aesthetic decisions.

A structure cannot be designed without knowing something about the support requirements of the building and without an appreciation of the mechanical limitations of the structure.


Styles have dominated architectural design for much of history.

See table

  • Selection of the Structural System according to the Form and Space.


  • Structural Forms

Classification of Structural Systems


  • Systems whose main elements work under simple traction or understanding,
  • Systems whose elements work in bending, cutting and compression,
  • Systems whose elements are in a state of surface tension. (Engel, 2001).

Structural Project Phase


  • Definition of the Criteria
  • Model development
  • Structural System Project
  • Structural Calculation
  • Construction Planning.

A process scheme of the structural project is indicated below:


  1. Criteria - Definition of the specific structural criteria of the project.
  2. Models - Development of the models corresponding to the possible solutions of structural systems.
  3. Structural System - Design of the basic geometry of the structural system.
  4. Structure - Calculation of the structure and its elements.
  5. Construction - Organization of construction and its execution (Engel, 2001).