Organizational chart
An organizational chart is a pictorial representation of a company's structure and reporting relationships. This chart can provide a great deal of information and may help organizational members understand the overall structure of the organization and its strategy. This entry describes how organizational charts are constructed, including the software that can be used to create them; what information the organizational chart provides; the benefits of making the chart available inside and outside of the organization; and the circumstances under which a chart is likely to change.
An organizational chart (often called organization chart or organigram(me) or organogram(me)) is a diagram that shows the structure of an organization and the relationships and relative ranks of its parts and positions/jobs. The term is also used for similar diagrams, for example ones showing the different elements of a field of knowledge or a group of languages. The French Encyclopedie had one of the first organizational charts of knowledge in general.
An organizational chart of a company usually shows the managers and sub-workers who make up an organization. It also shows the relationships between the organization's staff members which can be one of the following:
1. Line - direct relationship between superior and subordinate.
2. Lateral - relationship between different departments on the same hierarchical level.
3. Staff - relationship between a managerial assistant and other areas. The assistant will be able to offer advice to a line manager. However, they have no authority over the line manager actions.
Functional - relationships between specialist positions and other areas. The specialist will normally have authority to insist that a line manager implements any of their instructions.
In many large companies the organization chart can be large and incredibly complicated and is therefore sometimes dissected into smaller charts for each individual department within the organization.