What Is A "Matrix Organisational Structure"?

In a matrix organisational structure, people have to report to two bosses, one being the head of the department in which they are working, and the other being the leader or coordinator of the project on which they are working.

A matrix structure of organisation helps the organisation run smoothly according to the projects that have to be completed by the employees at a given point of time. It starts from the general manager of the company at the top, and then goes down to the heads of the production, research and development and marketing departments, besides all the heads of the other departments in the organisation.

The activities of the staff working on each project are effectively coordinated by all the levels of management. This is done to ensure that the functions of a specific department are clearly defined to every member working in that department, which ensures the hassle-free running of each department. A matrix structure of an organisation is one in where there is more accountability expected from every link in the chain, as each of their duties overlap with those of their counterparts in other departments.       

A Matrix organizational structure combines the advantages of functional structure and product structure. As it groups employees by function and by product. It uses teams of employees for specific tasks or projects. There are project managers that are responsible for these teams. The members of this team are form the functional area as well as the product area.

Unlike the functional or the product  structure the project manager has complete responsibility and accountability which includes functional responsibility and product responsibility.

A Matrix organization structure is a structure where an employee reports to more than one supervisor. One being his/her direct boss while the other can be a project supervisor were the employee work for a period of time as long as the project last.

Inasmuch as this type of structure make the employee to become a good team member, it also bring about conflict and over-working.

I would welcome your thoughts on my position; I am supposed to run a team of project managers who work across the company. We just took on a second location and my boss set up a project office there with a project manager in charge who does not report to me. This site has taken 2 of my team on secondment and are recruiting two more PM's to report to them with a dotted line to me. I therefore cannot manage my resource. They say this is a matrix structure - what do you think?

BY NETSHIDZATI MUTSHINYA CONSTANCE MAKHADZI, FROM MAKUNGWI

Matrix Management is a type of organizational management in which people with similar skills are pooled for work assignments. For example, all engineers may be in one engineering department and report to an engineering manager, but these same engineers may be assigned to different projects and report to a project manager while working on that project. Therefore, each engineer may have to work under several managers to get their job done.