Whilst useful organisation charts are limited in what they show and many other sources of information need to be probed in order to inform our understanding of a business's structure and organisational relationships. It has to be defined and implemented. As the business changes so the structural mappings of the organisation need to be up-dated. Indeed many businesses today are searching for new soultations which avoid rigidities in business practice that they perceive arise from functional specialisation. They want more flexible structures.
Every organisation has a structure and form eg hierarchical, tall, flat, mechanistic, organismic.
Organsational structure is not just a chart - it is the complete embodiment of organisational groupings, hierarchies, delegation of tasks and definition of priorities. The chart is a formal representation of the organisation's structure but informal processes also must be reckoned with. Changes pursued by the formal organsation may be blocked by informal organisation action and resistence. Organisational policies and plans are structural things - the processes of arriving at these policies, plans and procedures are structural too. Processes include management communicaitons, meetings, techniques used, organisational culture and all aspects of the psychology of organisational life.