All participants in the economic process (enterprises, organizations, government agencies, households, farmers, non-profit organizations, banks, Insurance companies etc.) are combined with the concept of institutional units that are the center for making independent economic decisions regarding the production, distribution and use of income, investment, lending and borrowing.

— an economic entity (person) capable of independently owning, managing and using real estate and assets, incurring obligations and participating in economic activity transactions with other persons.

That is, an institutional unit is, as it were, an integral entity, a structure, a unit that has certain economic interests and behavior, keeps records and compiles a complete set of accounts, including a balance of assets and liabilities, within which there can be any number of institutions, each of which is engaged in different types activities.

The main features of an institutional unit:

• An institutional unit owns, exchanges or transfers ownership of products or assets;
• The institutional unit is capable of making economic decisions and participating in economic activities for which it is directly responsible and accountable by law;
• The institutional unit assumes obligations and enters into contracts on its own behalf;
• The institutional unit has a set of accounts, or it would be possible and reasonable, both economically and legally, for it to draw up accounts.

Institutional units- economic entities that can own assets on their own behalf, incur liabilities, carry out economic activities and transactions with other units. They can be legal and natural persons (or groups individuals as households).

There are two types of institutional units:

• households (DH - an individual or groups of individuals);
• legal entity - an organization that owns property and is liable for its obligations with this property.

Household- This is a group of people living under one roof and leading a common budget. HH, although they do not draw up accounts and balance sheets, nevertheless have freedom in making economic decisions. Family ties do not play a decisive role. Economic integrity is important. One family can be divided into two or more households, share pots and manage separately. Of course, not all households keep household records, but this can be done if they want to function effectively.

Entity- an organization that has four characteristic features: property isolation, independent property liability, independent performance in civil circulation on its own behalf, organizational unity. They include commercial and non-profit organizations, as well as separate divisions.

When characterizing the results of economic activity, differences in accounting for the activities of residents and non-residents are important. Resident is an institutional unit (legal entity or individual) that has a center of economic interest in economic territory of this country. Non-residents- citizens who have a permanent place of residence abroad, even if they are temporarily located in the territory of this country, as well as foreign diplomatic, trade and other official representations with diplomatic privileges located in it.

Institutional sectors

Institutional units are grouped into institutional sectors (IS), which combine groups of institutional units that are homogeneous in terms of their fulfillment of the main goals of activity and functions in the economic process, economic behavior and methods of financing costs.

The following institutional sectors are included:

• non-financial enterprises and organizations (production of goods and non-financial services for profit);
• financial institutions(financial intermediation or ancillary financial activities);
• (individuals, producers and consumers of goods and services);
• serving HH (public, political, religious, etc., obtaining privileges for their members);
• public administration (ensuring the living conditions of the population and enterprises);
• "rest of the world" (foreign economic relations).

Sector non-financial enterprises includes units created for the purpose of making a profit.

Sector financial institutions consists of corporations primarily engaged in financial intermediation or ancillary financial activities.

Under the sector households I understand a small group of people living in the same dwelling and maintaining a common budget, pooling their income and property to meet their needs.

The SNA has the following sub-sectors of households:

• entrepreneurs with employees;
• self-employed without employees;
• wage-earners;
• property income recipients and .

To the sector non-profit organizations the following institutional units are included:

• trade unions and societies;
• churches and religious societies;
• charitable foundations.

Sector public institutions includes institutional units whose main functions are to provide non-market services to society and assume responsibility for the distribution of income and wealth through transfers.

Sector " the rest of the world"consists of all non-resident institutional units that enter into transactions or have other economic ties with resident units.

7. The elementary unit (“atom”) of an organization

7.2. Economic unit (business process)

Economic unit (business process). The activity of the firm as an economic process. The division of economic activity into economic units, each of which has a specific consumer. Business process definition. business process requirements. Business process boundaries. Coordination of business processes in the company. Examples of business processes.

A firm is not only a technological reality and a technological process, but also, as already noted, an economic reality, an economic entity that adheres to the principle of correlating results and costs while striving to exceed the first over the second.

If the firm is considered precisely as an economic structure, then it seems obvious that all its activities can be divided not only into technological parts, units (see 7.1), but also into economic parts, units.

In this case, we need to find out: what is considered such an economic unit, on the basis of which it is possible to build the structure of a firm as an economic organization in a different way than mentioned above (see 7.1).

Recall that any economic relationship presupposes at least the presence of two subjects - a buyer and a seller (producer and consumer), without which economic relations do not become precisely economic, and the product of labor does not take the economic form of a commodity.

Thus, a product, service must have its consumer. All this seems obvious when we consider the relationship between independent, independent, sovereign economic entities. And if we transfer this approach to the internal environment of the organization (to the intra-company hierarchy)?

In this case, the firm becomes an organization in which there are both producers and consumers of labor products and services. Moreover, this applies to all activities of the company, to the entire turnover of capital. In this regard, the question becomes unprincipled: whether or not such an activity takes the economic form of a commodity. When we talk about the intra-firm hierarchy, we leave aside another form of economic organization, which is the market.

If the firm "moves" the product of labor or service abroad, then we have "normal" producers and consumers (sellers and buyers), who can operate both within the framework of a market economic organization and within the contract system (they deal with goods as an economic form of the product of labor, services).

Summing up what has been said, we have the right to assert that there is a possibility of splitting the economic activity of the company into economic units, behind each of which there is a specific consumer both inside the company and outside it.

It is this approach that makes it possible to define a new category for our analysis, which is a business process.

So, a business process is a set of operations that, taken together, form a result that has value for the consumer. By the way, the simplest example of a business process that M. Hammer and J. Champi give in their work is the development of a new product.

Here, as we see, there are no consumers of this activity external to the firm. The consumer of the development of a new product is the production department of the company, which will create it, the marketing department of the company, which will bring this new product to the end user, the company's management itself, which, when developing a strategy, cannot but take into account the creation of new products, etc. d.

Thus, all end users of this activity are part of the intra-company hierarchy (firm). On this methodological basis, another (fundamentally different) structure of the company can be built.

In this case, the company will appear before us not as a bureaucratic organization built on the basis of technological units, both in the productive and functional areas of the company, but in the form a set of business processes, the relationship between which within the company is not subject to the principles of bureaucratic intra-company hierarchy.

Let us now clarify the definition of a business process. This is a set of various activities in which one or more types of resource are used “at the input”, and “at the output”, as a result of this activity, a product is created that is of value to the consumer. That is, the business process itself already implies the need to correlate the result and costs, becoming, because of this, precisely the economic unit of the organization.

The allocation of business processes within the firm is based on certain requirements for such economic units of the organization: 1) they can be identified and appropriate boundaries can be drawn: what belongs to the business process and what does not apply, 2) this activity (set of operations) must have the end consumer either inside the company or outside it, 3) the boundaries of the business process are not determined by technological or functional principles, they are based on the request of the consumer-client, 4) the most important figures in determining the boundaries of business processes are not engineers and technologists, but managers and economists.

The structure of a company built on the principles of business process allocation is not a vertical hierarchy. It is most likely either a more horizontal structure or a network structure. Therefore, the process of linking various business processes into a single organization is a process of coordination, reconciliation of mutual interests, and not administrative subordination.

It should be noted that issues related to business processes (definition of boundaries, principles of allocation, requirements for business processes, their coordination, etc.) will be specifically and in detail considered in connection with business process reengineering (see 8.1, 8.1.3 , 8.1.4).

Here we allow ourselves to give only examples of business processes.

Above, we have already presented the process of developing a new product as such. Let's add a possible list of business processes. They can be strategy development, and, for example, paying company bills, and issuing a loan, and market research, and logistics, and planning, and customer support, and order fulfillment, and much more.

It is hardly worth arguing that there are “typical” types of business processes. All this, in fact, is individualized for each company. The selection of business processes in a particular company (firm) is influenced by both objective factors (production capacities, manufactured products, developed market segment, approved strategy and other factors of the organization’s internal and external environment), and subjective factors (managers’ addiction to risky or low-risk decisions, managers' ideas about the company's activities, its strategy, ideology, etc.).

The design (selection) of business processes is becoming a new and independent type of managerial activity, where the rules, if they are valid, relate to the most general points and approaches. This activity takes managerial work beyond the narrow framework of a rational (in fact, engineering) approach, creating the widest scope for creative initiative and the development of non-standard managerial decisions.

The next part of the work will be devoted to considering how to move from organizational structures based on technological units to structures based on business processes.

7.2.1. A way to move from organizational structures based on technological units to organizational structures based on business processes

A way to move from organizational structures based on technological units to organizational structures based on business processes. Construction of a functional and structural model of the company (advantages and disadvantages, limits of application). Building a process-role model of the company (advantages and disadvantages, limits of application). The transition from the functional-structural model of the company to the process-role.

In this part of the work, in fact, we will be interested in the following problems: a bureaucratic organization in terms of its structure, an organization built on the basis of business processes in terms of its structure, and the transition from the first to the second.

So, bureaucratic organization. From the point of view of the structure, it is a so-called functional-structural model, which is built on the basis of the imposition of the functional model of the company (based on the movement of capital, successively passing through the phase of acquiring means of production and hiring labor, the phase of direct production and the phase of marketing finished products) on structural model of the company (based on the universal principle of the division of labor with the subsequent assignment of divided functions (operations) to structural divisions - workshops, sections, brigades, departments, services, etc.).

The functional structure of the company allows answering an extremely important question for managers - what needs to be done: Acquire means of production (what, in what quantity, at what price)? Hire labor force (whom, in what quantity, with what salary)? Engage in production (what, how much, at what cost)? To establish sales (what, in what quantity, at what price)?

It is necessary to answer these questions, and for all groups of goods produced by the company. The more of them, the more difficult it is to do it.

For example, our company produces furniture: sets for the kitchen, living room, separate tables, chairs, sofas and armchairs. It turns out six nomenclature positions and for each it is necessary to answer the questions posed above.

The structural model of the firm allows answering another extremely important question for the firm: who will do it? Having answered it, we get the structure (in fact, a bureaucratic organization, intra-company, vertical hierarchy).

In our example, we must answer the question for all goods produced by the firm. As a result, we get either a linear-functional, or divisional, or matrix structure of the company (see above).

Now we have the right to combine both models. The result is a functional and structural model of the company, which simultaneously answers the questions: what needs to be done and who will do it?

In fact, this model is based on the three documents already mentioned: “Regulations on the organizational structure of the company”, “Regulations on the division” and “Regulations on job responsibilities”.

The resulting model has both advantages and disadvantages. Actually, here we can again talk about the "pluses" and "minuses" of the bureaucratic organization (see above).

However, perhaps the main problems of such an organization are reduced to a low degree of flexibility and a high degree of hierarchy, which affects the cost of coordinating activities.

The noted shortcomings, in the end, determine the boundaries of the effective application of this model. This is a stable external environment, stable markets, a standard product with a large undifferentiated demand from consumers, a low rate of scientific and technological progress, etc.

For organizations based on economic units of business processes, the model discussed above is not suitable. A different approach is needed. He received in science the name of the process-role model.

In fact, this model can either be built from scratch, if the company is a newly created entity, or obtained from the functional-structural model of the company. To do this, you need to do the following: 1) transform the functional model of the company into a process model, 2) transform the structural model of the company into a role model, 3) superimpose the two models indicated above.

Let's take a closer look at all these steps.

It is possible to turn a functional model into a process one by replacing the set of activity functions with a set of business processes. That is, it is necessary to represent the entire business of the company in the form of a certain number of business processes (the technique of such operations, as well as a possible scheme for coordinating business processes, will be presented in 8.1.3 using the example of the American corporation Texas Instruments).

Such a replacement will expand the list of questions to which the manager can get adequate answers. This is not only what needs to be done ?, but also to whom to entrust? and when to implement? Consequently, our manager moves from the spatial sphere to the spatio-temporal sphere, i.e., his activity turns from a static into a dynamic one.

The structural model of the firm is also undergoing qualitative changes, turning into a role model. Such a transition also expands the manager's view of the managed object. In addition to answering the question - who will do it? - the manager has the opportunity to get answers to other questions: to whom to entrust? and when to implement? Thus, both company models answer almost the same questions.

This makes it possible to build more perfect organizations, devoid of the shortcomings of the functional-structural and bureaucratic models, with new properties and qualities that can significantly improve the overall efficiency of the company.

The process of transition described above from the functional-structural model of the company to the process-role based on the allocation of business processes can also be represented graphically in the form of a diagram (Scheme 2).

Scheme 2

Transition from a functional model to a process-role model

Quoted from: Bochkarev A. Denial of a business plan // Expert. 1998. No. 23. P. 28

Issues related to the definition of the structural unit of the organization and the transition from one type of such structures to others are generally considered. Therefore, it can be argued that the third question of organization theory is also resolved positively.

Now it's time to focus on the last, fourth, issue of organization theory - how the organization adapts to change. Within the framework of this problem, we will explore ways to change the structures of the organization. This will be the subject of the next section.

Previous

Institutional units

The basis of accounting in the CNS is "institutional unit" (an economic agent that carries out business operations). This economic agent (firm), owning goods and assets, has the ability to make transactions and all sorts of transactions with other agents.

Residents - these are institutional units that constantly conduct their operations on the territory of the country; it does not matter whether the resident representing the firm is a citizen of the host country or not, as well as the ownership of its assets. Residents include:

• o persons permanently residing in a given country;
• o migrant workers living in the country for more than one year;
• o government bodies, including their foreign representations;
• o firms that constantly carry out economic activity in this country, despite the fact that they may be wholly or partly owned by capital of foreign origin.

Non-residents - these are institutional units permanently located outside the country; branches or subsidiaries of residents are also considered to be such if they are permanently located and conduct their operations on the territory of a foreign state.

CNS distinguishes two main types of institutional units - individuals (households) And legal entities (enterprises ). Within the SNA, all institutional units are grouped into five groups that represent the main sectors of economic activity:

• 1) non-financial corporations - institutional units engaged in the production of goods for the market and non-financial services (firms). Non-financial corporation - the main institutional unit of the real sector;
• 2) households (house-holds) - all individuals who operate in the national economy. These are families, the main consumers of goods and services;
• 3) non-profit institutions - legal entities that provide non-market services to households and are based on the voluntary participation of individuals. Non-profit institutions - an institutional unit of the real sector;
• 4) government agencies (government agencies) - are also engaged in the production of non-market goods and services for individual or collective consumption and the redistribution of income. Government institutions - ministries, departments, including government funds (social security areas), play an important role as institutional units of the public sector of the economy;
• 5) financial corporations (financial corporations) are institutional units (banks, financial companies) that carry out financial intermediation or auxiliary Financial services. The financial corporation is the main institutional unit of the money sector.

Statistical yearbooks (Year Book) published by governments tend to reflect the presented structure economic indicators, including macroeconomic indicators (GDP, ND, etc.).

Types of macroeconomic accounts

Cash accounts, unlike NI and GDP, are stock accounts. They usually reflect the following types:

• 1) flows (flows), which characterize the results of the activities of an institutional unit (for a certain period of time). Flows are carried out through transactions, they can also be financial and non-financial;
• 2) reserves (stocks), which fix the residual value of the corresponding indicator.

Within the framework of the SNA, macroeconomic accounts are compiled. They, in turn, are divided into three groups:

• 1) current accounts reflect the value of the volume of production of goods and services, the creation of income, its distribution, redistribution and use for consumption or savings;
• 2) savings accounts reflect the purchase and sale of financial and non-financial assets and liabilities by institutional units;
• 3) balance sheets show the value of assets and liabilities at the beginning and at the end of the reporting period.

Foreign economic operations

Foreign economic transactions are, in the most general form, transactions of participants in transactions, economic agents (institutional units), which fix the ownership (full, partial) of material or financial assets or involve the provision of certain services on the basis of mutual obligations. Such operations are called internal if they are committed in a specific country; international - if they are committed by organizations (institutional units) of a number of countries.

Thus, the system of national accounts makes it possible to solve the following tasks:

• 1) control the "economic pulse" of the country; SNA allows you to measure the volume of production at a particular point in time and reveal the reasons why production is at this level;
• 2) comparing the levels of national income over a certain period of time, one can trace a long-term trend that determines the nature of economic development: growth, stable reproduction, stagnation (stagnation) or recession;
• 3) the information contained in national accounts serves as the basis for the formation and implementation of public policy aimed at improving the functioning of the economy, achieving the main tasks of the government. National accounts allow for the systematic monitoring of the economic health of a society and the determination of policies that contribute to the maintenance and improvement of that health ( the economic growth, full employment, income growth of the population, etc.).

The senior management of the corporation is responsible for long-term planning, policy development, as well as for coordinating and controlling actions throughout the organization. Surrounding this core group are a number of firms, which tend to be either independent economic units or de facto independent firms. These firms are almost completely autonomous with regard to operational decisions. They are subordinate to the main company, mainly in financial matters. They are expected to achieve their profit targets and keep costs within the limits set for the entire conglomerate by senior management. How these duties are carried out is left entirely to the discretion of the management of the relevant economic unit.

Any type of entrepreneurial activity is based on a particular form of activity, which, in turn, predetermines the corresponding forms of business. The following types of economic units have developed in the US economy

It should be noted that not all quantities affecting production in an economic unit can be quantified. So, for example, such important factors as the concentration and rationalization of production, the organization of labor, the management structure, etc., cannot always be described quantitatively. In this case, they try to take into account their influence through their impact on resources, on the structure of the production function and its parameters.

An industry is usually described as a set of enterprises, enterprises - as a set of shops or as a set of different production technologies, etc. In each of these cases, economic units are described by their production functions or cost functions. Finally, a workshop or production can be represented as a set of machines or other units on which people work. Each of these objects is usually described by its cost function. So, for example, when modeling a production site, a production unit is a machine, which is described by the time spent on performing each of the possible operations.

We emphasize that the same economic system in some cases acts as economic unit, in others - as a complex system, composed of economic units of the lower level, each of which is described by its production function or cost function. Different ways of describing the same object are associated with a difference in research goals. If we are interested in the internal properties of the object under study, we

It should be noted that here we have described the scheme of a single-level model of the economic system under study; the system was considered as a set of economic units described by production functions of various types. In fact, more complex constructions of economic units are possible, in turn, they can consist of smaller economic units, etc.

Consider the question of what information can be used to build the production functions of economic units. Production functions can be calculated on the basis of technological characteristics for a machine, car, workshop or enterprise. Usually, in this case, production functions are considered in the form (3.3), i.e. cost functions. In other cases, the basis is the processing of economic performance statistics. For example, when constructing a cost function for an industry of material production, it is often conditionally considered that the industry uses a single technological process, and then from the statistics they find the costs of raw materials attributable to this process per unit of output. Another approach to processing statistics in order to construct a production function is the well-known cybernetic black box method.

Each enterprise is a separate independent financial and economic unit involved in the business process. This process aims to build a system of economic priorities and indicators

Thus, the same economic system in some cases can be modeled as an elementary economic unit, in others it can be described as a complex system composed of more elementary economic units that describe subsystems of the original system. As already said, various ways descriptions of the same object are associated with a difference for research purposes. If the researcher is interested in the internal properties of the economic system under study, it is presented as a set of subsystems; otherwise, it is considered as a whole. Note that the description of the same object using different models is used not only in economics, for example, a spacecraft, in the case when it is necessary to describe the movement of its center of mass in outer space, is considered as a material point, in the same cases when the researcher is interested in the impact of the operation of engines on the stability of movement around the center of mass, as a complex system consisting of engines acting on each other, fuel tanks, etc.

We emphasize once again that in relations (2.2) and (2.3) the quantities y, x, and a can be multicomponent or vector. In the case when the resource vector x is multicomponent, there is a fundamental difference between output functions and cost functions. In the output function (2.2), various combinations of quantities of production resources are possible, which leads to the fact that the same volume of output can be produced, generally speaking, with different combinations of quantities of resources. In the cost function (2.3), the task of output completely determines the cost of resources. Therefore, cost functions are used when the described elementary economic unit does not have the possibility of substituting one resource for another. Release functions are used when such replacement is allowed. Note that in the economic literature, the term production function (in the narrow sense) is often used to mean the output function (2.2).

The economic mechanism is designed to guide the activity individuals and organizations to achieve public goals, thereby overcoming spontaneity, caused both by chance during natural processes, and by the presence of their own interests in production and other economic units. Mathematical models, discussed in the second part of the book, are intended to describe the production and technological level of economic systems and the choice of planning decisions and are not suitable for analyzing the phenomena that occur during the implementation of the constructed plans, since they do not describe the process of transferring plan targets to production units and the actions of production units based on plans. In addition, production and technological models themselves cannot answer the question about the quality of the information used (about the values ​​of the parameters of production functions, etc.), since the parameters of the models depend not only on the technological features of production, but also on its organization. , from the interest of production units in increasing the efficiency of production and in revealing their capabilities in the planning process. Thus, mathematical models intended for the analysis of the economic mechanism go beyond the models described earlier, and special attention should be paid to them.

Articles (2) and (3) in Table. 13.2 distinguish between the activities of a manager as a professional leader and, accordingly, a segment as an economic unit.

Microeconomics is one of the two main branches of economic theory, which studies the behavior of individual economic units (consumers and firms) and their interaction in markets, as a result of which prices are formed for factors of production and goods and services produced.

One of the fundamental concepts of the SNA is the concept of an economic transaction. An economic transaction is understood as an interaction between economic entities carried out by mutual agreement (for example, the purchase and sale of goods and services). Actions taken unilaterally by one economic unit that affect other units without their consent are not transactions and are treated in the SNA as other flows.

The need for capital consolidation is associated with the elimination of double counting in consolidated financial statements and the correct reflection of the amount of equity capital in the balance sheet of a single economic unit. Consolidated reporting is prepared from the point of view of the parent (holding, parent) company.

In this paper, in an accessible form, the most important principles for quantitative analysis of the activities of various economic units are set out on specific examples of enterprises, firms, banks and other institutions.

The reorganization is carried out in accordance with Art. 11 of the bankruptcy law. As with liquidation, the consideration of the case begins after the debtor or creditor submits an appropriate application. The main purpose of the reorganization is to keep the company as a viable economic unit. In most cases, the debtor continues to manage the affairs of the company, although it is also possible that a trustee takes responsibility for its work. One of the main conditions for rehabilitation is the provision of a temporary loan to the company. In order to give the company an incentive to work successfully, in Art. 11 of the law establishes the priority of creditors who provided the company with a loan after the application was submitted, over creditors who did it earlier. If this motive turns out to be

After the allocation of elementary economic units and the formulation of a list of material goods and labor resources that appear in the model, it is necessary to describe the flows between elementary units and the patterns of transformation of resources

Controllability is the degree of influence that a particular leader has on revenue or costs. The division of articles into controlled and uncontrolled complements the motivation and analysis. For example, as long as a distinction is made between the manager and the responsibility center as an economic unit, a skilled performer will not take on a heavy burden of responsibility.