Sunday, September 21, 2008

Organizational Structure - Multidisciplinary or Interdisciplinary?

In my opinion, overall, the Girl Scouts Arizona Cactus Pine Council operates in a more interdisciplinary than multidisciplinary manner. The organization is divided into teams rather than departments and these teams are organized like a matrix rather than a hierarchy in that no team is viewed as more essential to the success and functioning of the company and the teams all rely on each other in some way. The teams are as follows, the Executive Services Response Team (ESRT) whose focus is organizational leadership, the Public Identity Response Team (PIRT) who is responsible for handing all matters related to the public identity of the Girl Scout establishment, the Volunteer Services Response Team (VSRT) who organize the many volunteers that contribute time to the company, the Area Teams who work to retain and increase Girl Scout membership and the Direct Services Response Team (DSRT) who are responsible for programming and which is the team that I am a part of. These teams work individually of each other to achieve yearly and team goals and this can be seen as multidisciplinary because they all provide a variety of different services but work within the same organization. However, these teams cannot exist or function without each other. They all contribute to the general mission of the girl scouts and draw on each other's skills, knowledge and experience. For instance, the DSRT could not develop, coordinate and facilitate programs for the organization if the Area teams did not work to recruit and retain girl scouts. In this way the teams are all connected in a very important way to each other and this link supports an interdisciplinary framework.

2 comments:

BIS401 Dr. Hirshorn said...

I felt that you did a nice job addressing your organizational structure and trying it to the interdisciplinary concepts learned in 301.

BIS401 Dr. Hirshorn said...

Sorry for the typo, I meant to say "tying."