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Flat and tall organisational structure

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Flat and Tall organisations

When an organisation has many levels of authority or hierarchy it is called a tall organisation. When there are few levels it is called a flat organisation.


This can be seen in figure 2 below.

hierarchy_tf

Figure 2 Tall and flat hierarchies

One way of cutting costs is to reduce the numbers of staff. This can be achieved by removing a layer of authority or management in an organisation. In a school for instance, this might entail removing heads of faculties and delegating their responsibilities to heads of departments. This process is referred to as delayering. This is, of course, just another term for getting rid of people!