Exam 13: Designing Organizational Structures

When work activities are too complex to standardize through extensive training for employees,companies need to coordinate work effort through precise job descriptions.

A wider span of control is possible where:

Diversified Technologies,Inc.(DTI)makes four types of products,each type to be sold to different types of clients.For example,one product is sold exclusively to automobile repair shops,whereas another is used mainly in hospitals.Customer expectations and needs are surprisingly similar throughout the world.However,the company has separate marketing,product design,and manufacturing facilities in North America,Europe,Asia,and South America because,until recently,each jurisdiction had unique regulations governing the production and sales of these products.However,several governments have begun the process of deregulating the products that DTI designs and manufactures,and trade agreements have opened several markets to foreign-made products.Which form of departmentalization might be best for DTI if deregulation and trade agreements occur?

As organizations grow older,they tend to:

An entrepreneur employs 20 people in a simple structure.However,the company will likely employ over 200 people in production,sales,engineering and administration within a few years due to the growing success of the company's new products.The entrepreneur likes the simple structure and wants to avoid other forms of departmentalization.Explain to the entrepreneur why his company would be more effective through other forms of departmentalization as it grows larger.

Generally,a narrow span of control is necessary where employees perform highly interdependent work with others.

Two technological contingencies that influence the best type of organizational structure to chose are:

The idea that an organization interacts with its environment (rather than being totally determined by it)is summed up in the phrase:

A software design team performs work that has high variety and low analyzability.This team would work best with which of the following organizational structure characteristics?

An organization that wants to compete through innovation should:

Companies are more likely to form network structures when:

Departmentalization does all of the following EXCEPT:

Tall hierarchies tend to encourage employee empowerment and engagement because they focus power around employees rather than managers.

An organizational chart mainly illustrates which type of coordinating mechanism?

All organizational structures have the following two fundamental requirements:

Which of the following is NOT a feature of team-based organizations?

As organizations grow,which of the following does NOT typically occur?

Organizations that follow a cost leadership strategy should apply an organic organizational structure.

One problem with the team-based organizational structure is that employees may experience more stress due to ambiguity of their roles.

Divisional structures may be formed around products,geography,or functional specializations.