Exam 12: Decision Rights: the Level of Empowerment

Plain Truth Adverting employs KPR,a large accounting firm,to audit its books each year.This involves considerable expense for the advertising firm,since its sales account managers are very independent and each maintains his separate record-keeping systems.Should the CEO at Plain Truth cancel the audit and rely on a brief year-end summary from each sales account manager? Why or why not?

Kevin Freeman is the head of a team developing plastic knee replacements.His research team has discovered an improved materials -handling procedure that reduces contamination of the product during assembly.The issue for the company after the discovery is:

In his seminar on Organizational Economics,Professor Chang always uses study teams for presentation of outside research materials.He has found that three students per team tend to work well.Walking into a new class,he finds that registration has allowed 60 students to sign up.He decides to increase the team size from 3 to 8 students.What problems can he expect to deal with during the semester?

If D represents the level of decentralization of corporate decision making,and A and C are positive constants,then Benefits = B × D and Costs = A × D + C × D².The optimal level of decentralization occurs where the:

What are some of the demerits of decentralization?

The issue with centralized versus decentralized decision making is that:

Bob is given the right to make all the important decisions in an organization.This is an example of:

If an employee makes a point of meeting his manager every morning to detail the positive outcomes of the work done the previous day,this is an example of:

Decision management is made up of:

Jobs have at least two important dimensions that include:

We say that a firm is vertically integrated if:

What are some of the important questions regarding the assignment of decision rights in an organizational hierarchy?

One of the benefits associated with employee buy-in is that:

Centralized decision making is most commonly found in:

Which of the following is not a benefit of decentralization of corporate decision making?

What are influence costs,and why do they inhibit efficient organizational design?

Which of the following is an example of excessive influencing activities?

If decision makers do not bear the major wealth effects of their decisions,then:

In addition to other factors,the increased use of technology and the reduced costs of information transfer from local office to corporate headquarters has:

If D represents the level of decentralization of corporate decision making,and A and C are positive constants,then Benefits = B × D and Costs = A × D + C × D².The optimal level of decentralization occurs where: