Exam 8: Structuring Organizations for Todays Challenges

Line organizations follow Fayol's traditional management rules.

As a response to a rapidly changing marketplace, Idea Electronics found it necessary to reorganize, including a significant downsize of its middle management. This action will likely result in .

Which of the following statements would best summarize Max Weber's views on the role of workers in an organization?

In order to improve services to customers, Northwest Electric, a regional monopoly recently rated their company's processes and products against the results achieved by the world's best at similar processes and products. Northwest Electric has adopted a policy of international standardization.

Kate holds a middle management position with a large corporation. She prefers to involve her subordinates in decision-making. She also favors allowing workers a fair amount of flexibility in how they do their jobs. Kitty's approach to management exemplifies the principles first popularized by Max Weber.

Recent changes in the organizational structure of businesses are intended to facilitate management of the firm.

In today's business environment, the trend is to decrease the span of control.

As depicted in the Reaching Beyond our Borders, box, "General Electric Looks for More Profits", in order to compete globally, corporate strategy should not try to match the performance of competitors.

Line organizations often experience the problem of employees reporting to more than one boss.

Companies benefit today by inter-firm cooperation. One of the ways they cooperate is through networking. Another way is by seeking technological knowledge and learning new processes from other firms that usually fall outside of their respective industries. We call this:

Matrix organizational structures were first developed in:

Organizing a business begins with:

The virtual corporation does all its business online with partners considered a permanent part of the network.

Which of the following is considered to be an advantage of functional departmentalization?

Greenwave Garden Centers is a national chain of discount gardening stores. The top management at Greenwave realizes that different regions of the United States have very different climates and soil conditions, so they give regional managers a great deal of freedom to decide exactly what types of plants, fertilizers, and other items to stock and how to best market these products. Greenwave is an example of a organization.

For an inverted organization to be effective, it requires:

The very best organizations have cultures that emphasize service to others, especially customers.

Line-and-staff organizations work well in organizations with:

In a(n) organization, decision-making authority is concentrated at the top level of management.

Successful managers will find the balance between promoting the informal organization and maintaining a formalized structure, as well.