Analyzing Your Organization Structure
1) Environmental complexity is the "magnitude of the problems and opportunities in the organization's environment as evidenced by the degree of richness, interdependence, and uncertainty". The environmental richness is high when the economy is growing. Currently the economy is slowly recovering from one of the largest recessions, and the brokerage firms are slowly recovering as well. The market has been doing well and the brokerage firms are doing better as well. While the economy was suffering, the brokerage firms also got hit with different law suites for their analysts' decisions and for their inability to control the mutual fund breakpoints. It was a double hit, with the market steadily declining after the 9/11. However, since about the end of 2002, the industry has been recovering. The support staff is rehired, the training programs are opening up for new broker trainees, the office spaces are remodeled and more money is spent on advertising. Our company is too small to have a strong environmental interdependence. I do believe that we have a few outsiders that sit on our board of directors, however, due to the lack of communication in our organization, I would not be able to tell you who the people are and what benefit if any they provide to us. Uncertainty and volatility does not seem as much of a problem for my organization. Being a small company with only one management level and a total of 21 employees, it is quick to adjust to any volatility. In fact I believe that even through the recession of 2001-2002, while most brokerage firms were happy to stay even with the market, our company was outperforming all the indexes and was consistently making profits.
2) I believe our company's structure is the u ...