Ch 3: Effectiveness

Question 1

Define organizational effectiveness according to Barnwell & Robbins.

Answer 1

The degree of which an organization attains its short- and long-term goals, the selection of which reflects strategic constituencies, the self-interest of the evaluator and the life stage of the organization.

Question 2

Define efficiency.

Answer 2

Using resources to their maximum.

Question 3

How do you define effectiveness according to the goal-attainment approach?

Answer 3

An organization’s effectiveness is judged in terms of whether it achieves its goals.

Question 4

How do you define effectiveness according to the system approach?

Answer 4

Evaluating an organization´s effectiveness by its ability to acquire inputs, process the inputs, channel the outputs and maintain stability and balance.
eg. ROI, sales volume, changes in working capital, average length of patient stay.

Question 5

How do you define effectiveness according to the strategic-constituencies strategy approach?

Answer 5

An organization’s 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.
Eg: shareholders (dividend), employees (working conditions), customers (price and quality), suppliers (payment, future sales), local community (safety).

Question 6

How do you define effectiveness according to the BSC approach? Mention the four perspectives included in the BSC.

Answer 6

Seeks to balance the various demands on the organization with its capabilities.
Financial, internal, customer, innovation and learning.

Question 7

Mention some assumptions and problems for the goal-attainment approach.

Answer 7

Assumptions: organizations are deliberate, rational, goal-seeking entities.
- organizations must have goals
- they must be explicit, sufficiently clear to understand, and widely known
- manageable number and reflect the company
- general consensus or agreement
measureable and a time limit
Problems:
- the goals are rarely followed upped or met in practice
- far too fuzzy to identify the organizations effectiveness
- the goals are not shared for the whole organization

Question 8

Mention some assumptions and problems for the system approach.

Answer 8

Assumptions: organizations are mechanisms which produce goods and services in repetitive cycles.
Problems:
- not all process variables are easy to measure
- hard to understand if the whole system is improving or not

Question 9

Mention some assumptions and problems for the strategic-constituencies approach.

Answer 9

Assumptions: the organization is a political arena which various interests compete for control over resources in order to satisfy environmental demands.
Problems: constituencies are hard to predict, relevance of constituencies constantly changes, internal constituencies might have different agendas, could also be quite hard to send out a universal message.

Question 10

Mention some pros and cons for the BSC approach.

Answer 10

pros:
- integration of perspectives instead of silos
- long- and short-term
- sets priorities in a complex environment
cons:
- often becomes a jungle with too many measurements
- highly subjective measurements
- cause and effects are hard to identify