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This site is dedicated to the Romanian Non Governmental Organizations. It is part of a project of the Romanian Telework Society (SRT).

One of the goal of this project, is to promote the Information Society in Romania and  Romanian NGOs on Internet, offering free host, and listing the NGOs in a specific directory. So, if you are a representative of one of these organization, and want to have a free page of your organization at the address http://www.teleactivities.org/ngo/your_organization, please contact us.

SRT is a non-profit, non-governmental, Romanian organization. Its intention is to represent a veritable who's who of the Romanian Internet community. You should be a member, too.

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Contact Information

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General Information: office@multimedia.com.ro 

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http://www.teleactivities.org 

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An organization is a formal group of people with one or more shared goals. This topic is a broad one.

Organizations which are legal entities: government, international organization, non-governmental organization, armed forces, corporation, partnership, charity, not-for-profit corporation, cooperative, university.

The study of organizations includes a focus on optimizing [organizational structure]. According to management science, most human organizations fall roughly into four types:

• Pyramids or hierarchies
  Committees or juries
  Matrix organizations
  Ecologies

Organization studies also includes research efforts to inform the effective management of organizations, and addresses organizational culture, organizational learning and managing change as major factors affecting organizational effectiveness, beyond the basics of organizational structure.

Pyramids or Hierarchies

A hierarchy exemplifies an arrangement with a leader who leads leaders. This arrangement is often associated with bureaucracy. Hierarchies were satirised in The Peter Principle (1969), a book that introduced the term hierarchiology and the saying that "in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence".

An extremely rigid, in terms of responsibilities, type of organization is exemplified by Führerprinzip.

Committees or Juries

These consist of a group of peers who decide as a group, perhaps by voting. The difference between a jury and a committee is that the members of the committee are usually assigned to perform or lead further actions after the group comes to a decision, whereas members of a jury come to a decision. In common law countries legal juries render decisions of guilt, liability and quantify damages; juries are also used in athletic contests, book awards and similar activities. Sometimes a selection committee functions like a jury. In the middle ages juries in continental Europe were used to determine the law according to consensus amongst local notables.

Committees are often the most reliable way to make decisions. Condorcet's jury theorem proved that if the average member votes better than a roll of dice, then adding more members increases the number of majorities that can come to a correct vote (however correctness is defined). The problem is that if the average member is worse than a roll of dice, the committee's decisions grow worse, not better! Staffing is crucial.

Parliamentary procedure, such as Robert's Rules of Order, helps prevent committees from engaging in lengthy discussions without reaching decisions.

Staff Organization or Cross-functional Team

A staff helps an expert get all his work done. To this end, a "chief of staff" decides whether an assignment is routine or not. If it's routine, he assigns it to a staff member, who is a sort of junior expert. The chief of staff schedules the routine problems, and checks that they are completed.

If a problem is not routine, the chief of staff notices. He passes it to the expert, who solves the problem, and educates the staff -- converting the problem into a routine problem.

In a "cross functional team," like an executive committee, the boss has to be a non-expert, because so many kinds of expertise are required.

Matrix Organization

This organizational type assigns each worker to two bosses in two different hierarchies. One hierarchy is "functional" and assures that each type of expert in the organization is well-trained, and measured by a boss who is super-expert in the same field. The other direction is "executive" and tries to get projects completed using the experts. Projects might be organized by regions, customer types, or some other schema.

Ecologies

This organization has intense competition. Bad parts of the organization starve. Good ones get more work. Everybody is paid for what they actually do, and runs a tiny business that has to show a profit, or they are fired.

Companies who utilize this organization type reflect a rather one-sided view of what goes on in ecology. It is also the case that a natural ecosystem has a natural border - ecoregions do not in general compete with one another in any way, but are very autonomous.

The pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline talks about functioning as this type of organization in this external article (http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,3604,1294443,00.html) from The Guardian.

Chaordic" Organizations

The chaordic model of organizing human endeavors emerged in the [1990]s, based on a blending of chaos and order (hence "chaordic"), comes out of the work of Dee Hock and the creation of the VISA financial network. Blending democracy, complex system, consensus decision making, co-operation and competition, the chaordic approach attempts to encourage organizations to evolve from the increasingly nonviable hierarchical, command-and-control models.

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