Exam 9: Structuring Organizations for Todays Challenges

Novachek,Inc.is a large and bureaucratic firm with many layers of management and formal rules and regulations.The company is losing many of its customers to smaller and more flexible rivals and is currently struggling for survival.Joe has just been hired as Novachek's new CEO,and his most pressing concern is to turn around the struggling company.Joe's best approach to dealing with this type of organization is probably to:

Which of the following positions would be classified as a staff position?

Which of the following determines the degree of decentralization a firm might use?

The ________ an organization's structure,the ________the span of control.

Sarah has been working for a small sheet metal shop for a few weeks.Tom and Bill are the two foremen that supervise activities in the shop.Both Tom and Bill give Sarah orders from time to time,and the two sometimes give her conflicting instructions about what she should do.Sarah doesn't want to make either Tom or Bill mad,but she is confused and frustrated by these conflicting assignments.This type of situation represents a violation of Fayol's________ principle.

Weber put great trust in the creativity,skills,and pride of employees and believed that managers should act more as coaches than as bosses.

The management at Patriot Mills works hard to ensure that no one in its organization has more than one boss and all workers are treated with fairness and respect.Additionally,the firm divides the work into areas of specialization so that everyone knows to whom they should report.The management of Patriot Mills reflects the ideas and principles of:

As a new employee in a bureaucratic organization,Nancy can expect a great deal of independence and authority.

In a(n)_________ organization,there are many layers of management who set rules and regulations that everyone in the organization is expected to follow.

Some business organizations still follow the 1940s organizational theory of Max Weber.

Fayol's principle of esprit de corps says that employees should be divided into small groups that can be directed efficiently by a single manager.

Weber was a strong proponent of bureaucracy.

Bureaucratic organizations are not very responsive to customers.

Managers near the top of an organization have the broadest span of control.

The traditional technique used to departmentalize an organization is by:

Studies indicate that a manager's span of control is limited to seven employees.

A line organization in a large business often suffers from excessively long lines of communication.

Martina is an experienced manager with excellent communications skills.The workers in her area are highly skilled and are capable of doing their work with very little direct supervision.Martina's span of control is likely to be quite broad.

A tall organization structure consists of multiple levels of management.

Excite Enterprises uses an accounting firm to handle the payroll and tax functions for this firm.Using the services of another firm in this manner is an example of: