The partnerships amid an agency’s formal and informal structure within a criminal justice administration system may conflict with one another if not properly managed. In cases where there are such conflicts in a partnership, the organization will be less efficient and fail to meet its intended objectives. Nonetheless, in some instances, the informal structure may fail to work well as far as meeting organizational objectives is concerned, particularly when the formal structure was inefficiently framed (Mueller, 2015). This paper discusses the steps an administrator should adopt in building a partnership between the agency’s formal and informal structure. A personal opinion will also be presented on the roles that informal structure leaders have in building good relationships.
Administrators should first understand that informal structures can be used to complement the formal one. Informal organizations are founded on common tastes, situations, language, cultural or religious backgrounds, and among others. Personal perspectives, sensations, notions, and preferences of people within an organization determine these informal elements (Song, Shi, Ma, & Yang, 2015). Informal structures can be synchronized easily with formal organizations to reinforce them and make them more effective. Several things that cannot be attained through formal structures can be attained through informal structures so that goals and objectives of the organization are entirely met.
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Leaders have an obligation to know how to harmonize both formal and informal structures, utilizing the best elements of each framework. The leader should be flexible enough to determine the elements of the informal structure that can be made formal (Song et al., 2015). For instance, using the formal structure to influence adjustments that come up from the day-to-day engagements of the informal structure of the organization. Therefore, the leader is careful to choose the best approaches and elements that can be implemented in a formal framework to make the organization more effective.
The criminal justice system has some aspect of formal structure. Some of these formal structures are designed out in organizational charts, for example in the American criminal justice system. Nonetheless, the leader can ensure that they benefit from the informal structures by establishing friendship groups. The workers can form friendship groups through the help of the leader so that they can make better decisions for the organization (Song et al., 2015). Whenever leaders nurture such informal groups in a formal setup and model them into a formal framework, the staff members can be increasingly motivated to commit to the objectives of the organization.
The leaders should understand that through informal structure they can execute better plans and go forward more prudently. The leaders have a role to use informal structures to unite and integrate the efforts of works maximally by incorporating these elements in formal structures of the organization. According to Mueller (2015), leaders can engage the workers in a way that they receive a sense of security and fit in the organization fully. The leaders could also facilitate the role of group members so that they achieve their specific individual objectives. As such, this will lead to an excellent influence with higher productivity as well as job satisfaction for the workers. Increased job satisfaction trigger more devotion and productivity of the workers involved. This is emphasized especially in the psychological satisfaction that members experience. Another aspect is that leaders can use informal structures to model communication among employees that happens very fast. Through instilling a proper framework of communication, an informal structure acts a safety valve for the emotional challenges and disturbances of the employees of the organization as they have a better avenue to share their feelings.
In conclusion, informal structures naturally spring up in most organization that is based on the daily occurrences and interactions between people in an organization. However much an organization can be formal, the elements of an informal structure can always be identified in the system. The leaders have an obligation to harmonize the elements of formal and informal structures for much effectiveness in the organization. By building better relationships through creating workable friendship groups, better decisions can be made for the organization.
References
Mueller, J. (2015). Formal and informal practices of knowledge sharing between project teams and enacted cultural characteristics. Project Management Journal , 46 (1), 53-68.
Song, X., Shi, W., Ma, Y., & Yang, C. (2015). Impact of informal networks on opinion dynamics in hierarchically formal organization. Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications , 436 , 916-924.
