Exam 9: Organisational Structure and Design

Trends in the past few years have centered on a ___________ span of control to reduce costs and speed decision making.

What is an advantage of a team structure?

At a company like Eldiar Furniture Manufacturing Company, workers may be assigned specific duties in order to meet the requirements of quality conscious clients. This is called _________.

A small business with low departmentalization, wide spans of control, centralized authority, and limited formalization can be said to possess a__________ structure.

Joan Woodward attempted to view organizational structure from a technological perspective.

________is the formal arrangement of jobs within an organization.

Black Gold (Scenario) Jamal Oil Corporation (JOC) began as a relatively small oil company. However, through the years it has grown to become an international corporation. -The original entrepreneurial venture consisted only of Mr. Jamal and a few employees. It was an informal organization, and everyone reported to Jamal. This is best described as a __________structure.

Functional departmentalization groups jobs by________ .

A simple structure is an organizational design that groups similar or related occupational specialties together.

When effective implementation of company strategies depends on managers having involvement and flexibility to make decisions, the company is probably more decentralized.

The traditional view was that managers could not-and should not-directly supervise more than __________subordinates.

The strength of a__________ structure is based on results of managers, but it has a weakness because duplication can occur easily within the organization.

Traditional organizational designs tend to be more mechanistic, and include ___________ .

What is a weakness of a simple structure?

The inspiration of the virtual organization structural approach is the film industry.

Custom Leather (Scenario) Lamia has been hired as a consultant for XYZ Consulting. Her first assignment is to work with one of XYZ's newest clients, Custom Leather, Inc., a manufacturer of high- end leather furniture. Custom Leather was founded over a decade ago with the idea that great looking, comfortable leather furniture could be custom made and delivered to customers in 30 days. Traditionally, retailers stock leather sofas to satisfy the desire to receive new furniture fast-limiting the choice of colors and style for the consumer. In stark contrast, Custom Leather offers 13 different styles in over 70 different colors-from rich, deep browns to bright, sunflower; sleek, silver grays and bright, ruby red-through a select group of retail outlets. Each piece is built to the customer's individual requirements and is shipped within 2- 3 weeks. However, the emergence of a new manufacturing technology has enabled a few, traditionally mass- production competitors to offer greater customization, minimizing some of Custom Leather's competitive advantage. As a result, Custom Leather is considering sweeping changes to current work processes and organizational structure. -Many of Custom Leather's 75 employees are highly skilled and experienced artisans. Many long- time employees are stockholders and all participate in the profit sharing plan. While there is division of labor, the jobs most floor employees perform are not highly standardized. Management has found that employees take great pride in their craft, and thus they require minimal formal rules and little direct supervision. These traits are most typical of a(n) ___________ organization.

An example of ___________ is when a hotel, such as Renaissance Dubai Hotel, conducts meetings with employees to gather their suggestions and ideas for implementation.

Departmentalization based on ___________groups' jobs is based on the territory or physical location.

As JOC continues to grow, a highly trained group of managers and analysts has developed at corporate headquarters. This group is highly adaptive in its structure. Members of this group do not have standardized jobs, but are empowered to handle diverse job activities and problems. This group of employees is said to have a(n) ___________ structure.

Work teams composed of individuals from various functional specialties are known as__________ teams.