THE EFFECT OF STRUCTURE ON ORGANIZATIONAL PERFORMANCE: THE CASE OF CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANIZATIONS AGENCY

Abstract

In a dynamically changing world, organizational structure of Organizations (public or private owned) has drawn attention over the past few years. This paper aimed to examine the effect of structure on organizational performance in Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia Civil Society Organizations Agency. Which has three specific objectives that were; to assess the perception level of employees and managers towards organizational structure, to investigate the level of organizational performance, and to evaluate which organizational structure dimension affect most on performance of the organization. To achieve its objective and to critically asses the available information the study has used explanatory research design and employ mixed research methodology in order to triangulate the data’s (Quantitative and Qualitative). The study used census population (128 employees) by setting two criteria’s that are employees whose educational background was above diploma level and at least have one year job experience at CSOA. And data were collected by using self-administered questionnaire and interviewing key informants. Then data was analyzed using descriptive statistics (frequency and percentage) to measure the perception level of employees’ about the structure and performance level of the organization and inferential statistics (correlation and regression) to understand the relationship between structure and performance. The findings revealed that from the six organizational structure variables; task routine and decision making change in the same direction (having a positive relationship) with organizational performance statistically significance respectively at the 0.01 level implicating a 99 degree of confidence but even if span of control was significance it has a negative relationship with organizational performance in the case of CSOA and the other variables formalization, standardization, professionalism were less significant. The key findings were obtained, the effect of the independent factors varies having decision making has the highest effect while task routine has a medium size impact on organizational performance, while span of control were found to be negatively impacting organizational performance. On the other hand, formalization, standardization and professionalism variables of organizational structure found to be having less effect on organizational performance. All the variables of organizational structure variables (professionalism, formalization, decision making, task routine, standardization, and span of control) found to be having an impact on organizational performance according to the analyzed interview data. Finally, study recommends Civil Society organizations Agency needs to focus on improving to those organizational structure variables so as to increase the organizations’ performance.