CHAPTER 8

Question 1

Organization Structure

Answer 1

A framework that enables managers to divide responsibilities, ensure employee accountability, and distribute decision-making authority.

Question 2

Organization Chart

Answer 2

A diagram that shows how employees and tasks are grouped and where the lines of communication and authority flow.

Question 3

Core Competencies

Answer 3

Activities that a company considers central and vital to its business.

Question 4

Work Specialization

Answer 4

Specialization in or responsibility for some portion of an organization’s overall work tasks; also called division of labor.

Question 5

Chain of Command

Answer 5

A pathway for the flow of authority from one management level to the next.

Question 6

Span of Management

Answer 6

The number of people under one manager’s control; also known as span of control.

Question 7

Centralization

Answer 7

Concentration of decision-making authority at the top of an organization.

Question 8

Decentralization

Answer 8

Delegation of decision-making authority to employees in lower-level positions.

Question 9

Agile Organization

Answer 9

A company whose structure, policies, and capabilities allow employees to respond quickly to customer needs and changes in the business environment.

Question 10

Departmentalization

Answer 10

Grouping people within an organization according to function, division, matrix, or network.

Question 11

Functional Structure

Answer 11

Grouping workers according to their similar skills, resource use, and expertise.

Question 12

Divisional Structure

Answer 12

Grouping departments according to similarities in product, process, customer, or geography.

Question 13

Matrix Structure

Answer 13

A structure in which employees are assigned to both a functional group and a project team (thus using functional and divisional patterns simultaneously).

Question 14

Network Stucture

Answer 14

A structure that coordinates resources inside and outside the company to form a cohesive whole.

Question 15

Team

Answer 15

A unit of two or more people who share a mission and collective responsibility as they work together to achieve a goal.

Question 16

Problem-Solving Team

Answer 16

A team that meets to find ways to improve quality, efficiency, and the work environment.

Question 17

Self-Managed Team

Answer 17

A team in which members are responsible for an entire process or operation.

Question 18

Functional Team

Answer 18

A team whose members come from a single functional department and that is based on the organization’s vertical structure.

Question 19

Cross-Functional Team

Answer 19

A team that draws together employees from different functional areas.

Question 20

Task Force

Answer 20

A team of people from several departments who are temporarily brought together to address a specific issue.

Question 21

Committee

Answer 21

A team that may become a permanent part of the organization and is designed to deal with regularly recurring tasks.

Question 22

Virtual Team

Answer 22

A team that uses communication technology to bring together geographically distant employees to achieve goals.

Question 23

Groupthink

Answer 23

Uniformity of thought that occurs when peer pressures cause individual team members to withhold contrary or unpopular opinions.

Question 24

Hidden Agenda

Answer 24

Private, counterproductive motives in a team setting, such as a desire to take control of the group, to undermine someone else on the team, or to pursue an incompatible goal.

Question 25

Norms

Answer 25

Informal standards of conduct that guide team behavior.

Question 26

Unstructured Organization

Answer 26

An organization that doesn’t have a conventional structure but instead assembles talent as needed from the open market; the virtual and networked organizational concepts taken to the extreme.

Question 27

Taskbot

Answer 27

A software agent that can be assigned to complete a variety of tasks within an app or business system.

Question 28

Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

Answer 28

A software capability that
does for knowledge work what mechanical robots do for manufacturing and other physical processes.