Organizing

As management teams devise plans for new organizations to engage in they need to take on resources to help them achieve their goals. The only way to know what resources the company needs is by utilizing the organization management function. Planning and organization functions go in hand in hand. In this paper we will look at the organization function and examine how it is used by management to help attain overall goals. We will also look at how the United States Army uses the organization function to maintain its operational readiness by maintaining their physical assets and personnel.

So before we can begin to discuss organizing we must first know what organizing is. The encyclopedia states that organizing is "the management function that usually follows after planning, and it involves the assignment of tasks, the grouping of tasks into departments and the assignment of authority and allocation of resources across the organization" (Organizing, 2005). It is in this phase that management teams need to identify new jobs and responsibilities, gather and assign resources and recruit perspective employees who are highly skilled to the company. While in the organizing function management arranges the monetary, physical, and informational needs as well as the human and other needed resources to reach the company's goals which were set in the planning phase. The main focus of the organization function for the management team is the coordination, delegation of tasks and responsibility, and control of assigned duties which will set the pace of operations within the company. Also the flow of information that will be needed within a company is set during organizing.

Since we have an idea what the organizing function is we can now look at how the military employs this function by demonstrating recruitment and how it is not only a physical asset, but a human resource. The organization function is possibly one of the most important to the United States military due to the physical size of the service. It is only through organization that the military can divide the responsibilities to lower command groups who can focus on that one assigned duty. A good example of this focus is how the Army recruits new perspective soldiers, and retains veteran soldier service to keep manpower up to operational readiness. It is the role of the Army Personnel Command and the Army Recruiting Command to keep jobs within the army filled with soldiers. First we will look at how the Army recruits new soldiers. While in high school many students are given the opportunity to take the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, also known as the ASVAB. This exam tests the aptitude of prospective recruits to help recruiters find a career path, which the Army calls a Military Occupation Specialty, or MOS, that would be best suited for him or her. Once the recruiter knows each individual recruits ASVAB score, he/she can then review the current MOS's that are available to the recruits and also the MOS's that are needed based on a list which is complied by the Personnel Command. This list is created when all the major command groups within the Army send in their MOS requirements to sustain operational readiness. Once the recruit selects his MOS he then is shipped out to Basic Training and later on his MOS school. It is during school when PERSCOM decides where the new soldier will be stationed at by looking at what major command is in more dire need of that certain MOS. Once the soldier reports to the major command he is then assigned to a lower command where he will be assigned to a unit that is in need of that MOS. Another way that the Army sustains its manpower is by retaining veteran soldiers. The Army recruiting command also deals with soldiers that are currently serving in the Army. There is a bigger push to retain these soldiers in the military then trying to recruit new ones. The recruiters still go by the PERSCOM list of needed MOS's but they have additional information on the list which new recruits rarely get that makes retaining current soldiers easier. The additional information that is provided allows a soldier to stay in his current MOS but gives him a choice to transfer to a new duty station that is in need of his MOS. If the soldier does not want to stay in his MOS he then is given a list of needed MOS's within the Army that he can transfer. As with new soldiers entering the service the veteran soldier that chooses to change MOS's is not given the opportunity to choose his duty station, he falls in the needs of the Army category which allows PERSCOM to send him anywhere in the world where a major command needs his MOS. It is through the organization of the major