What Are The Advantages And Disadvantages Of Functional Departmentalization?

Before looking at the advantages and disadvantages of functional departmentalisation it is always useful to define what it is. Functional departmentalisation is said to be when a company or business group together and everyone who has the same skills or qualifications are put in charge of certain tasks. This is normally down to the boss believing they are the right people for the job due to their previous experience in that field. Therefore the first advantage of using functional departmentalisation can be that by grouping together all the people who have the appropriate expertise, you will create highly skilled specialists.

Another advantage of this approach would be that the communication between the members of the group would be very strong as they would be said to be on the same wave-length due to having similar skills and experience in common. A third advantage could be that due to everyone in the group being a valued member, understanding exactly what to do straight away, the company would save both time and money by avoiding having any staff that may struggle to get to grips with the project.

One disadvantage for such an approach would be that if the staff are only concentrating on a narrow section of work then they will only ever be qualified for these type of projects. They are seen to never develop or gain wider knowledge or skills. Another disadvantage is that the specialist groups can become very divided from the wider workforce. This can force a breakdown in communication if the other side of the workers don't understand what the specialist group might be trying to explain.

The act of dividing activities and designating them into different work groups is called departmentalization. An advantage to departmentalization is basically that practice makes perfect. If one department specializes in one task, the good or service provided by that department is usually of an excellent quality. A disadvantage is that this is not cost effective to companies. Should the demand for a particular good or service diminish, those within a specified department must be retrained to perform another function.