Exam 8: Structuring Organizations for Todays Challenges

The is the system of relationships that develop spontaneously as employees meet and form power centers.

Outsourcing has become commonplace, particularly when organizations want to focus on core competencies.

Because top managers supervise the firm's most talented workers, they generally have a broader span of control than middle or first line managers.

In an inverted organization, the job of management is to:

At Dilly-Dally Sportswear Store a manager needs to be called to the front of the store and sign-off on every return that a cashier performs. The CEO continues this policy because he wants every manager to "look those customers right in the eye" and "stake their job on taking those items back." Clearly, Dilly-Daly empowers its employees to make decisions at their jobs.

It is strategically not sensible for a firm to consider asking suppliers and customers to join a cross-functional self-managed team that is testing iterations of future products.

Correctly structuring a business organization allows managers to avoid delegating responsibility and authority to employees.

Most companies are no longer self-sufficient or self-contained.

When employees are self-managed, a company can implement a wider span of control.

Fayol's principle of the division of labor says that functions should be divided into areas of specialization such as production, marketing, and finance.

Which of the following describes an environment in which data is instantly available via the Internet to organizational partners?

A flat organizational structure is designed to be more responsive to the needs of management.

Weber was critical of bureaucrats because he felt they undermined the efficiency of the organization.

Eileen works in the human resources department of a corporation with several hundred employees. Her main function is to advise and assist managers in other departments, such as marketing and production, when they make staffing decisions. Eileen's position would be classified as a(n) position.

To better organize his landscaping business, Frank divides each job into several parts. One part is excavation and removal of old landscaping, the next part is design, followed by purchasing, and the last part is installation of new plants. If he assigns a different employee to each part, this action would be an example of departmentalization.

Cross-functional teams consist of employees from different departments who work together on a long-term basis.

Independence Electronics prides itself as a world-class producer of components used in CD and DVD players. The outstanding performance of the production department indicates that this activity is one of the firm's:

The functions that a company can perform as well as or better than anyone else in the world are known as that firm's optimized capabilities.

All organizations have two organizational systems:

To avoid losing that small company feel, fast growing companies try to maintain a flat organization structure.