Mintzberg (1983) describes that the organization consists of several parts that represent forces that must be taken into consideration when designing the organization. The five parts of an organizational structure are presented below.
1. Strategic apex: Represents senior strategic management level, which ensures that the mission is served in an effective way, but also manages requirements of entities that have power over the organization, like the government for instance.
2. Middle line: Management layer between strategic apex and operating core.
3. Technostructure: Making use of analytical techniques to make the work of others more effective. More specifically, this layer utilizes standardization to coordinating the work of others in the organization.
4. Support staff: Provides indirect services to the operating core. For example, legal but also IT staff could be part of this apex. The support staff does not directly contribute towards the primary processes of the organization and hence is not directly involved with the delivery of services and products of the operating core.
5. Operating core: The employees that perform the basic work of producing products and services.