ch 3 Flashcards
What is an organisation?
An organisation is a tool/ instrument to realize something.
An organisation is a consciously coordinated social entity ( two or more persons) with a relatively identifiable boundary, which functions on a relatively continuous basis to achieve a common goal or set of goals.
What is organisation structure?
Organisation structure is the degree of complexity, formalisation and centralisation in an organisation.
What is organisation design?
Organisation design is the construction and change of an organisations structure.
What is organisation theory?
Organisation theory is discipline that studies the structure and design of organisations.
What is organisation behaviour?
A field of study that investigates the impact of individuals and small group factors on employee performance and attitudes.
EFFICIENCY VS FLEXIBILITY
Efficiency is achieved by using resources to a maximum/absence of slack.
Flexibility /adaptation can only be achieved by an organisation having a surplus of slack.
List different approaches to measuring effectiveness
Goal attainment
Systems approach
The Strategic Constituencies approach:
The Balanced scorecard approach:
Goal attainment approach:
When an organisations effectiveness is judged on in terms of whether it attained to goals.
What an organisation states officially are its goals and what the actual goals of the organisation often differ.
Official goals tend to be influenced strongly by standards of social desire.
The systems approach:
Evaluating an organisations success by its ability to acquire inputs, process the inputs, channel the outputs and maintain stability and balance.
This means that the organisation can maintain itself through a repetitive cycle of activities.
The systems approach focuses on the means necessary for the organisations survival.
Implied by this approach, organisations are made up of inter-related sub parts.
This approach highlights that management should maintain good relations with the constituencies that have the power to disrupt the stability of the organisation.
application of systems approach
We look at at the sampling criteria that systems advocates deem relevant.
How do the managers measure these criteria?
Also taking into account the end goal.
Some Factors of systems approach:
Ability to ensure continuous receipt of inputs.
Distribution of outputs.
Flexibility of response to environmental changes.
The efficiency in transforming inputs to outputs.
Clarity of internal communications.
Conflict in groups.
Rates of innovation.
Concept of added value:
The cycle of turning inputs into products for the market should leave the organisation with a surplus of cash more then what is required to maintain the system in its repetitive cycle, this surplus is called the Value added.
Issues with systems approach:
How to measure e.g rates of innovation.
It focus is on the means necessary to achieve effectiveness rather than the organisational effectiveness itself.
Value to managers:
Less inclined to look for immediate results. Continuous improvement
systems approach is useful when organisations goals are vague or undefined.
The Strategic Constituencies approach:
An organisations effectiveness is determined by how successfully it satisfies the demands of those constituencies in its environment from which it requires support for its continued existence.
It is assumed that managers pursue a set of goals, which will respond to the demands of the constituents.
The constituents are always changing.
Must identify the expectations of the constituents.
The Strategic constituency approach would conclude by comparing the various expectations, for expectations which are incompatible, common ground must be determined and , assigning relative weights to the various constituencies and formulating a preference ordering of these various goals for the organisation as a whole.
This preference order represents the relative power of the various strategic constituencies.
Issues with constituent approach:
Constituents are constantly changing.
Because the environment is constantly changing what is important to an organisation changes.
What constitutes as a Strategic Constituent? Who decides? Different departments see differently.
Identifying the expectations of the constituent.
The Balanced scorecard approach:
Diagram pg 92-93
The balanced scorecard approach seeks to balance the various demands on the organisation with its capabilities.
What perspectives do the balanced scorecard approach take into account
Financial perspective
Innovative perspective
Customer perspective
internal perspective
results of balanced scorecard approach
Formalises the way in which goals are determined.
Brings together in a single report all the important areas to the organisation.
Senior managers are forced to look at the areas as a whole , the are compelled to evaluate whether solving problems in one area would cause issues in another. e.g. short term vs long term goals.
Puts into perspective the use of financial measures.
Problems with balanced scorecard approach
Limited if whats been chosen to be measured doesn’t matter
Values of balanced scorecard approach
The balance scorecard is an attempt to identify what is important to the organisation and develop appropriate measures of these.
It brings together in a single report the different elements of a companies competitive agenda.
Guards against sub-optimisation.
Allows a wide range of managers to nominate what they believe is important.
When is balanced scorecard useful
the organisation is complex and is operating in a demanding environment
When is strategic constituencies useful
constituents have a powerful influence on an organisation and the organisation must respond to demands
When is systems approach useful
a clear connection exists between inputs and outputs
When is goal attainment useful
goals are clear, time bound and measurable
What 4 different types of perspective are there
Normative
Authority
Variety
Detailed
Normative perspective
In philosophy, normative statements make claims about how things should or ought to be, how to value them, which things are good or bad, and which actions are right or wrong.
Analyzing normative behavior can be done by comparing the prescription to the description/ what ought to be done versus what is being done. which actions are desirable?
and does the author show bias.
