The world we live in today is constantly changing. Some factors that offer competitive advantages to certain organizations (firms and/or companies) in the past can no longer guarantee such. The reason for this is not farfetched, “the gains to be had from market protection, propriety technology, and scale economies have become steadily eroded by trade liberalization, technology transfer, and the development of flexible production technologies”.(Child J,2005.pp3-4) The world is now a global village and as such there is little or no barriers in terms of geographical location to the conduct of business. “Organization, on the other hand is an asset that each company has to develop to suit its needs and situation, and it cannot be bought off-the-shelve.”(Child J,2005. p4)

Organization of a firm refer to the manifestation of organizing which means “the process of arranging collective effort so that it achieves an outcome potentially superior to that of individuals acting or working alone”.(Child J,2005.p6) The organizational choices of a firm will determine how far it can compete in the market. A company may either chose to go the hierarchical way of layers of authority or use the horizontal way of specialization where people are organized into teams or work group with little hierarchical distinction within them. Whatever the form of organization a firm adopts, it must make sure that the overall goal is to increase productivity, and increase sales and revenue. Moreover, the company must be able to adapt whatever form of organization so that it can stand the test of time and achieve a competitive edge.

I have been working in the hospital environment for some time and the medical world is a little conservative. Many hospitals in Nigeria are owned by the government and the privately owned hospitals are usually built around the person of the Medical Director. However, a few hospitals are registered limited liability companies and as such are built to outlive the founder. In one of the privately owned hospitals where I worked in Benin City, the directors appointed an administrator after the demise of the founding medical director. The administrator was able to strengthen the existing departmental structure of the hospital, and went on to attempted to establish an hierarchical structure where all decisions will revolve round him. However, he was later forced to adopt the specialization structure due to the professional nature of the environment. The crux of the matter is that the hospital has been able to outlive the medical director and it is still going on strong.

The same cannot be said of a rival hospital where the medical director did not deem it fit to run it as a company, but as a personal property. He was actually scheming to have one of his children take over from him, but unfortunately the young man was not interested in medicine at all. The hospital therefore collapsed due to poor management from the father who seemed disenfranchised and abandoned the place in his old age. The practice simply folded up and the last I had of it was that he was trying to sell the gigantic hospital complex at a rather ridiculous price.

Reference;

Child J. (2005) Organization: Contemporary Principles and Practice. Malden M.A: Blackwell Publishing