Exam 9: Designing Adaptive Organizations

Describe the virtual organization. Explain how the virtual organization could theoretically prove to be a more formidable competitor than any of the other types of organization in a highly complex, dynamic business environment.

Identify the five traditional approaches to organizational structure. Which one is best for a company to use? Explain your answer.

Define standardization and how is this concept is relevant to the degree of organizational centralization?

Functional departmentalization can be most accurately defined as:

An organic organization is characterized by broadly defined jobs and responsibility; loosely defined, frequently changing roles; and decentralized authority and horizontal communication based on task knowledge.

Senora is the CEO of a new company called BSL Corp. She has instructed the managers to use the traditional approach to create the organization's structure. What should the managers at BSL Corp. do?

Which of the following statements about matrix departmentalization is true?

Using reciprocal interdependence, work must be performed in succession because one group or job's outputs become the inputs for the next group or job.

Under product departmentalization, it is easier for top managers to assess work-unit performance.

Identify a true statement about functional departmentalization.

A virtual organization is part of a network in which many companies share skills, costs, capabilities, markets, and customers with each other.

Senora is the CEO of a new company called BSL Corp. She has instructed the managers to use the traditional approach to create the organization's structure. What should the managers at BSL Corp. do?

Define the concept of authority and list the four dimensions which have traditionally been characterized in organizations.

Departmentalization is a method of organizing work and workers into separate units responsible for particular business functions or areas of expertise.

_____ can be best defined as a method of subdividing work and workers into separate organizational units that are responsible for completing particular tasks.

While organizational structure emphasizes the activities through which work is done in the organization, organizational process emphasizes jobs and their authority relationships.

Matrix departmentalization is a hybrid structure in which two or more forms of departmentalization, such as the product and functional forms are used together.

Explain what is meant by the term departmentalization. List the five traditional approaches to departmentalization.

Functional departmentalization can be most accurately defined as:

One of the advantages of a virtual organization is the fact that it allows member companies to share costs.