Professional Practices

Chap 2: Functional Units

of an Organization
Mr Inam ul haq
Department of Computer Science, Islamia College Peshawar
Organizing an Organization
 No matter what the size of an organization it can only function effectively if
it has some kind of structure.
 This kind of arrangement is called division interms of functional units.
 The following are the typical functional units of an organization.
 Production
 Quality Control
 Sales and Marketing
 Finance and administration
 Research and development
 Lets check out one by one

CS302: Professional Practices Instructor: Inam ul haq

Functional Units of an Organization
 Production r the activities that directly contribute to creating the products or
services that the company sells.
 Quality management are the quality activities necessary to ensure that
quality of the products and services produced is maintained at the agreed
level.
 sales is concerned directly with selling the product, while marketing is
concerned with establishing the environment in which the product is sold
(e.g. through advertising)
 finance and administration : every company needs to pay its bills, to look
after its funds, to pay its employees and so on and it is usual to include within
this function central services such as data processing and the legal
department
 how can the company do better the things that it already does and what
other things might it profitably be doing? That’s R&D

CS302: Professional Practices Instructor: Inam ul haq

Functional Units of an Organization
 Production:
 A uni provides education interms of degree and vocational courses
 A factory produces tangible(that can be touched) products e.g. phones, pampers,
TV, fans and so on.
 Quality Management
 Apple is famous for durable,premium products only possible because of quality
control at various levels.
 Sales office of a pharma company will handle distribution of medicine across
states and countries while marketing here wud make sure enough doctors
know about this medicine to prescribe it in the first place
 Finance and admin make sure smooth operations. Tesla is example where
company survives on debt , cuts costs by laying of ppl , generates thin profits.
A clever financial plan ensures such good operation

CS302: Professional Practices Instructor: Inam ul haq

Geographical Organization
 In an organization which operates over a large geographical area, there are
some tasks which are best organized on a geographical basis. If more than one
country and then sales and marketing country to country basis. Pepsi Pakistan
ad vs pepsi india ad?
 Cultural differences compel different strategies. Just like marketing admin
style can vary from country to country.
 Even product can vary from country to country. Pepsi can sell alcohol in USA
but cant in Pakistan. Roche can sell a medicine expensive in USA , same drug
in Pakistan is sold cheap. WHY? Coz we cant afford to pay.
 Even within single country geography varies. UBL bank has separate admin
system for each Punjab, Sindh , KPK , balochistan .

CS302: Professional Practices Instructor: Inam ul haq

Organization by Product
 Where an organization produces several different types of product or
services, it may be desirable to use a top-level structure based on this
division. Iphone division , MAC division. MS Office division, Windows group.
 Fee based services r ones where a set of employees provide support e.g.
maintaining an existing software. Product development means to invest in a
product which starts earning later.
 In above case we want to separate these units.

CS302: Professional Practices Instructor: Inam ul haq

Decentralized vs Centralized
 Decisions taken at executive level or at ground level?
 Some decision like pay, direction of company can be centralized
 Other decisions like how to implement a product can be left at ground level.
Why? To make it quick and efficient. Talking with high management consumes
lot of time and energy.
 Managers who have good autonomy at ground level are well motivated. But
sometimes duplication can occurs.

CS302: Professional Practices Instructor: Inam ul haq