Communication through out the functional organization prior to decisions being made would help solve any setbacks or disadvantages. Often in a functional organization, decisions are made by one person at the top and informed to the lower-levels of the 'silo'. This communication comes after a decision has been made, changing work or procedures for the employees at the bottom. Without any input, this can negatively affect the employees morals and result in a lack in efficiency of work. To avoid such setback, I believe communicating down the 'silo' prior to a decision being made would help turn such a situation to an advantage. Consulting team members would engage the working team and most likely positively affect their moral. Although, in the end, the decision is made by one person, employees know their opinions were heard and that their boss cares about their input. This simple communication could rid functional organizations of many disadvantages.

This is an interesting idea. To make something like this just an advantage, you have to remove the thing that caused the disadvantage. What is the disadvantage? The disadvantage is only present when the person at the top making the choices is not worthy of trust. As @kaf43 mentioned, communication can help. If the person at the top understands the whole structure better, and knows the feelings of their team well, you can trust them to make decisions more easily for the whole team. If the person at the top is just not qualified or competent, then no amount of communication will solve this. In a case like this, removing the disadvantage means making sure someone like that is never hired or promoted to a position where they have such power and final authority.

Posted by: @mk

↑

In Functional Organization, it is both an advantage and a disadvantage that the decision is made by one person. In your opinion, what kind of arrangements can be made to turn this situation into just an advantage?

In a functional organization, if the decision is made only by one person, then something has gone wrong somewhere. This is because usually when you make an important decision, you would go to others for feedback and see how they view it. The specific situations where the decision is an advantage when one person makes it is when there is an excellent response after making the decision. For example, if the boss creates more ads online, which leads to higher income, this is a win. However, it is considered a loss if the boss creates more ads and leads to the same or fewer sales. So it isn't easy to be the boss in this situation because you can either be praised for your job or suffer consequences. 

In general; functional organization serves to remove this issue, as others have mentioned. Human beings are not as simple as a flow chart unfortunately. In order to avoid these issues of personal/competing interests; companies should implement secondary checks and balances in their doctrine. Review sessions, signed and approved  copies, master records, etc. Following the project management guidelines outlined in ISO standards will allow for some basic secondary verification. This would hopefully serve to remove or minimize bias in a team.

To expand upon what others were saying, communication is key to eliminating the possible disadvantage that comes with functional organization, but I want to highlight that this communication is more than just telling people what is going on. It is also about gaining input from the employees who will be affected by this decision. Also it is better, in my opinion, to gain insight from other employees about a certain decision that needs to be made because they can provide a new fresh perspective on the issue and possibly help contribute to a better decision or solution overall. Being a leader of a team or the "person at the top," doesn't mean that you have to come up with every decision or solution up on your own. I think it is perfectly reasonable for them to listen to the opinions of people that they work with so that they can get the widest perspective and make the most informed decision possible, which in turn will likely have more employees happier with the decision made. 

If that one single person is a more senior person in the field and has wide experience to pull from but has an open mind to suggestions from everyone else. This can preserve the single decision making that allows quick decisions to be made but having open conversation allows them to correct mistakes with input from his team.

I believe that even though there is one official person making the decisions, they still have their personal assistance from other professionals around them that are providing vital insight and advice. Out of the received replies so far, I think @kaf43 explained it in the best way, communication within the group and listening to the input of the project team could get rid of this "disadvantage" of one person making all the decisions. I also want to add that its important to consider that this one person making the decisions does risk receiving a majority of the blame if the end result is negative overall. Addtionally, I would think that any medical device company that is relatively well established would already know this even if they elect to utilize the functional organization route. 

As mentioned in the above comments, communication is important for the person making the decision to be informed on all the different aspects of the topic before they decide anything. I believe that the best way to turn this into an advantage is to form a group of advisors with subject matter experts from different departments of the company to provide the person making the decision with different viewpoints and information. This way it can be ensured that the person making the decision is well informed and aware of different perspectives relating to the topic. 

@ac825 I would like to add that an incredible amount of experience in the field may lead to a narrow-minded or tunnel-vision like approach to certain topics. I think someone can be counted on for projects that are directly in their field of expertise, but what if something sporadic deviates the project, is this person still as reliable? The disadvantage of having one person make the final decision is alleviated when that one person is able to sit down with and analyze their staffs' points of view in order to make the best decision for the company. Although they get the final say, having an open-minded human being who is able to take criticism and utilize all data given to them (by other members of the project) in order to make a final decision is crucial to the success of an organization such as this.

To see the pros in decisions made by one person is an interesting concept. In school, especially in the American standard of education, we are taught, both in the form of group projects and 20th century history lessons, that decisions made by one person lead to downfall and that it is valuable to obtain insight from all the members of a project. While I believe that every member of a team has opinions that are worth considering, oftentimes a "dictator" is necessary. To speak realistically, all of us can agree that at least fifty percent of the groups we're in act as oligarchies, with few members contributing and the rest of the members being carried. Many times, it is not because the contributing members are "bossy", but because the carried members either feel insecure of their abilities to contribute or are simply choosing not to contribute to the shared project. At times when the contributions of members are overlooked, it is up to the members to speak up for themselves in any way possible to ensure that the group dynamic does not turn dictatorial.

I think that this is not a bad idea in certain situations. For example, don't we have an executive branch in our government. It is important to make decisions fast and sometimes its just easier when one person is making it. Don't you have military officers who make a decision for a large group of people. The key to making this possible is simple. Trust, Communication, and being competent at the job. If someone has all three, then they will be fine. 

A functional organization is hierarchal structure in which employees are grouped in departments based on their specialized functions or area of expertise. In this type of organization, authority and decision making are centralized within the functional department. For medical device companies, such departments can include the research and development team, quality assurance team, regulatory affairs team, and etc. As stated above, decision are typically made by one person, the functional head, which comes with several advantages, as well as risks. To turn this centralized decision-making into a purely advantageous feature, organizations can adopt structured mechanisms that supplement the decision-maker’s authority with diverse input and accountability. For example, a cross-functional advisory committee can be established by the functional managers to provide diverse input on critical decisions. This committee will ensure the inclusion of multiple perspectives, such as technical, regulatory, and operational, without undermining the main authority that the functional manager possesses. Furthermore, a decision review process can also be implemented, where significant decisions are transparently documented and peer reviewed by employees. These processes will make each decision much more thorough without hindering the efficiency of the department. Lastly, the functional head should be equipped with effective support tools, like data-driven dashboards and risk assessment frameworks, so that the chance of making an error due to incomplete information is eliminated. Ultimately, by fostering a culture where team members feel empowered to voice concerns, functional heads can ensure their decisions are both well-informed and broadly supported, while preserving the speed and clarity of centralized decision-making.

@ag2357 , to play the devils advocate to you and @kaf43's suggestions to increase communication-what if increasing this communication within the organization leads to issues? How would increasing that communication look like? For example, would the CEO ask the operators opinions on how shift hours would look like? 

While in theory, increasing communication can be effective and very helpful, one also has to consider that the head of the organization also has other tasks to complete; they would need to integrate this time into their already constrained time in a way that makes sense. Additionally, unfortunately, its often that those in the lower rung of positions in a company don't understand or see the big picture. So their feedback will be very narrow in scope and unhelpful in helping the company move forward as a whole in a positive direction.

For example, I've had a tool maker ask me why is it that when certain individuals have asked him to complete something, it seems extremely hot and that it should've been completed yesterday, only for the tool maker to finally complete it and then it ends up sitting untouched for some time. From the tool makers perspective, this person loses credibility with him as they were blowing hot air about the importance of the task being completed. When in reality, they might not realize that the engineer who asked for the task to be completed was told by their boss to put a halt on it. Or that another component needed that was on order had been unexpectedly held up. This doesn't mean that the task the engineer needed complete was any less important, but the tool maker having the limited scope of the situation that they had, drew their own conclusions.

Communication is good. But communication should be done tactfully.