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.
