Organizational Structure: Influencing Factors and Impact on a Firm

The influence of certain factors on organizational structure has been in researchers’ focus for years, together with their impact on the overall organizational efficiency. Many of these factors are from the environment where traditional view commonly divided into internal and external factors. This paper presents the findings of a study to evaluate the influencing factors and impact on organizational structure of a sample of firms located in Hanoi, Vietnam. Structured questionnaires were administered with respect to these factors. The variables studied were identified from among the factors considered in contingency theory and by incorporating elements of the strategic choice approach. After grouping the variables into two factors (related to external and internal respectively), the results revealed three groups of firms according to how they regarded the impact of these factors on organizational structures. In those groups that consider the variables of internal factors to be modifiers of structure the organizational structures are of the “complex classical” type, whereas simple forms predominate in the group that believes these variables do not modify their structure.