Functions such as marketing, research and development, production and operations, quality control, accounting and auditing, distribution and sales, personnel management are all specialist sub-systems of the whole. Each involves its own body of knowledge, methods and working practices (formal and informal).
Traditionally the argument is that with concentration of expertise, certain efficiency gains can be secured if specialist groups provide services to other systems (we can identify internal and external client-server relationships). But there there are also potential losses arising from specialist demarciation and "departmentalism". The client becomes dependent on the technical specialist and their ability to respond. Modern approaches to organisational design seek alternatives to the problems of functional and hierarchical structures.
