Co-ordination - Meaning and Significance

In every organisation, different types of work are performed by various groups and no single group can be expected to achieve the goals of the organisation as a whole. Hence, it becomes essential that the activities of different work groups and departments should be harmonised. This function of management is known as co-ordination.

It ensures unity of action among individuals, work groups and departments, and brings harmony in carrying out the different activities and functions so as to achieve the organisational goals efficiently. In other words, coordination is the orderly arrangement of individual and group efforts to provide unity of action in the pursuit of a common goal.

For example, in an organisation the purchase department buys raw materials for production, the production department produces the goods, and the marketing department procures orders and sells the products. All these departments must function in an integrated manner so that the organisational goal can be duly achieved.

Thus, coordination involves synchronisation of different activities and efforts of the various units of an organisation so that the planned objectives may be achieved with minimum conflict.

According to Brech, "Coordination is balancing and keeping together the team by ensuring suitable allocation of tasks to the various members and seeing that the tasks are performed with the harmony among the members themselves."

Significance of Co-ordination

The significance of co-ordination as a function of management mainly arises from the fact that work performed by different groups, units or departments form integral part of the total work for which an organisation is established. Without harmonised efforts or unity of action, achievement of goals in some departments may run counter to that of the other departments, or the timing of achievements may not fit in properly.

This has to be avoided and the managers have to prevent overlapping and conflict so as to achieve unity of action. With increasing size and scale of operations, the significance of coordination becomes more important. This is because of the following reasons:

  1. When there is growth in size and the volume of work, there will be more people and work groups. So there is greater possibility of people working at cross purposes as the unit and sub-unit goals may be considered more important by them than the organisational goals. Not only that, the large size may also lead problems of supervision and communication. Hence coordinating the activities in a large concern becomes a major task for the managers.

  2. Large organisations generally tend to have activities located at different places, which may not permit frequent and close interaction among people. Hence, the need for co-ordination becomes greater and it becomes a major responsibility for the managers.

  3. Growth in size of an organisation is often combined with diversification of business activities. This may be due to new unrelated products being added to the existing products. As a result, there may be more division and sub-division of activities. At the same time, there is an increase in the number of managerial levels and vertical division of responsibilities. All these make coordination more difficult as well as important.

In view of the importance of coordination in an organisation, it is sometimes called the essence of management. It is a function of managers in all departments and branches of an organisation, and applies at all the levels of management.

It ultimately helps in reconciliation of goals, total accomplishment of business objectives, maintenance of harmonious relationship between different groups and ensuring economy and efficiency in the organisation.