Business, Unit 2- People In Business Flashcards
What is organising by function? Advantages and disadvantages?
Each functional area does one part of the work of the business.
E.g. Sales, marketing, customer service, operations, finance, human resources etc.
Ad: specialists can concentrate on their particular job.
Disad: the different departments may not work well together.
What organisational structure is mostly used by limited companies?
Function
What type of firm mostly organises by product?
Large manufacturers who make lots of different products.
What type of business is usually organised by region?
A multinational business.
What is organising by product? Advantages and disadvantages?
A product based structure splits the organisation into different sectors. e.g. 3 sectors could be toys, clothing and home furnishings.
Ad: Managers can make decisions that are relevant to each product sector.
Disad: There can be wasteful duplication of resources between sectors.
What is organising by region? Advantages and disadvantages?
The divisions may be regional or national.
Ad: spreading management between regions makes day to day control easier.
Disad: there can be wasteful duplication of resources between regions.
What is a hierarchy?
A hierarchy is a series of levels within the business, where each level has responsibility and authority over the levels below.
What is a centralised organisation? Advantages and disadvantages?
When all major decisions are made by one person or a few senoir managers at the top of the hierachy.
Ad: These senoir managers tend to have plenty of experience. Policies will be uniform throughout the business.
Disad: If all decisions need to be made by one or two people, it can slow down decision making. These can take a long time to filter down to employees. The business reacts slowly to change. Senior managers can become very powerful.
What is a decentralised organisation? Advantages and disadvantages?
The authority to make most decisions is shared out, e.g. Power might be delegated to regional managers or to more junior managers.
Ad: Employees can use expert knowledge of their sector to make decisions, whcih can be made more quickly.
Disad: Inconsistencies may start to develop between departments or regions.
What is a chain of communication, and why is having a long one a problem?
A chain of communication in a firm is the chain of people, messages travel through to get from one layer of the hierachy to another.
Long chains of communication mean messgaes can take a long time to travel up and down the hierachy. This can leave people at the top and bottom of the hierachy feeling isolated and demoralised.
Messages can get distoirted along the way.
What is a span of control and why is having a wide one a problem?
The span of control is the number of workers who report to one manager in a hierarchy.
A wide span of control leads to a manager having to communicate with a lot of employees. Messages can take a long time to pass to all people under manager’s control. Can be difficult to manage a lot of employees effectively.
What is induction training?
Induction training introduces the new employees to their workplace, usually on their first day.
They are introduced to fellow workers, told about company rules (health and safety rules), given a tour. Also maybe some inital training on how to do their job.
It should make them feel welcome and comfortable.
What is on the job training?
The most common form of training.
The person learn to do their job better by being shown how to do it, and then practising. Sometimes called internal training.
Cost effective for the employee as they continue to work while learning.
Often taught by a colleague, so bad working practises can be passed on.
What is off the job training?
When the person learns away from their workplace.
If the firm has its own training department, off the job training can be done internally.
Training that happens outside the business is called external training, e.g a course at a college.
It’s more expensive and sometimes not as directly related to the actual job.
Often higher quality as its taught by better qualified people
What is the appraisal process?
It helps managers keep track of employees’ progress and needs.
- The worker and their manager agree the worker’s performance targets for the year.
- During the year, training and other resources are provided to help the worker meet the targets.
- At the end of the year they meet again to discuss how well the targets were met.
The process then starts all over again.
