Exam 8: Structuring Organizations for Todays Challenges

Small businesses often use a line organization model.

Jesse started a successful telecommunications company that provided voicemail services to business clients in the Midwest. As the business grew, Jesse added functional departments including a marketing department and an accounting department. After a few years, he realized that employees who specialized in these areas no longer shared knowledge with each other in the same way they did when the operation was smaller. As one of Jesse's business consultants, you explain that as the company grows taller, it cannot avoid this pitfall, and he should focus on continued functional departmentalization, especially if he supports innovation and learning.

As compared to the decentralized management structure, which of the following is a disadvantage of the centralized management structure?

Julie is an attorney that works for Worldwide Food Science, Inc. that provides legal advice and assistance to the firm's managers. Julie's job with WFS, Inc. would be classified as a staff position.

The key people in a company's grapevine typically have considerable influence in the organization.

Which of the organization models follows all of Fayol's traditional management rules?

Departmentalizing by customer group has proven ineffective.

A bureaucracy is designed to be customer focused.

Bill, a financial manager at Carlyle Bank and Trust always strives to treat each subordinate with respect and fairness. Bill's treatment of employees is an example of Fayol's principle of:

Weber believed that employees should be empowered to make their own decisions.

Reorganizing in order to compete better may require a business to reassign tasks.

A bureaucratic style of organization is slow when responding to change.

Which of the following was created as a solution to the temporary nature of the matrix structure?

In a bureaucratic organization:

Fayol's principle states that each worker should report to one, and only one, boss.

means that decision-making authority is delegated to lower-level managers and employees.

Contemporary businesses are:

The purpose of Weber's and Fayol's principles was for the benefit of management, as opposed to pleasing customers.

HipHop Music Company assigns workers to departments based on similar skills. Currently, the company has a marketing department, a production department, a finance department, and a human resources department. This suggests that HipHop departmentalizes by:

The cross-functional team concept has resulted in lots of unhappy employees because less than 25% of employed workers do favor working with others.