Chaptere 14 Flashcards
Open systems
Systems that take inputs from the external environment, transform some of them, and send them back into the environment as outputs.
Valuable because it sensitizes us to the need for organizations to cope with the demands of the environment on both the input side and the output side.
List the components of an external enviroment.
General economy.
• When a downturn occurs, competition for remaining customers increases, and organizations might postpone needed capital improvements.
Customers.
Suppliers.
Competitors.
Social / political factors.
Technology.
• Refers to ways of doing things, not simply to some form of machinery.
• Adopting technology enhances organization effectiveness.
• Interest groups- Parties / organizations other than direct competitors that have some vested interest in how an organization is managed.
Simple environment
Involves relatively few factors which are fairly similar to each other.
Complex environment
Contains a large number of dissimilar factors that affect the organization.
Static environment
Components of this environment remain fairly stable overtime.
Dynamic environment
Components are in a constant state of change which is unpredictable and irregular not cyclical.
Effects:
As uncertainty increases, cause-and-effect relationships become less clear.
Makes priorities harder to agree on and stimulates political jockeying within the organization.
As environmental uncertainty increases, more information must be processed by the organization to make adequate decisions.
Organizational structure
Manner in which an organization divides its labour in specific tasks and achieves coordination among these tasks.
Labour must be divided because individuals have physical and intellectual limitations.
What are 2 basic dimensions to division of labour?
Vertical division of labour:
Concerned primarily with apportioning authority for planning and decision making.
The domain of decision making, and authority is reduced as the number of levels in the hierarchy increases.
• Managers have less authority over fewer matters.
Horizontal division of labour:
Groups the basic tasks that must be performed into jobs and then into departments, so the organization can achieve its goals.
Required workflow is the main basis for this division.
Closely tied to job design.
As organizations engage in increased horizontal division of labour they become more differentiated.
Functional departmentation
Employees with closely related skills and responsibilities are assigned to the same department.
What are the advantages to Functional departmentation?
Advantages:
• Efficiency.
• Enhanced communication within departments.
• Enhanced career ladders and training opportunities within the function.
• Performance of functional specialists easier to measure and evaluate.
What are the disadvantages to Functional departmentation?
Disadvantages:
• High degree of differentiation leading to poor coordination and slow response to organizational problems.
• Differentiation could also lead to conflict between departments leading to ignorance of needs of customers.
Product departmentation
Departments are formed on the basis of a certain product, product line, or service.
What are the advantages to Product departmentation/Geographic departmentation/ Customer departmentation?
Advantage:
• Better coordination among functional specialists who work on a particular product line.
• Flexibility.
• Product-focused-departments can be evaluated as profit centres.
• Serves customers better since they can see more easily who produced the product.
What are the disadvantages to Product departmentation/Geographic departmentation/Customer departmentation?
Disadvantages:
• Professional development may suffer without a critical mass of professional working in the same place at the same time.
• Economies of scale might be threatened and inefficiency may occur if relatively autonomous product-oriented departments are not coordinated.
Matrix departmentation
Employees remain members of a functional department while also reporting to a product or project manager.
What are the advantages to Matrix departmentation?
Advantages:
• Provides a degree of balance between the abstract demands of the product or project and the people who actually do the work, resulting in a better outcome.
• Very flexible.
• Managers need to be well-trained.
What are the disadvantages to Matrix departmentation?
Disadvantages:
• No guarantee that product or project managers will see eye to eye with many functional managers.
• Employees assigned to a product or project team in essence report to 2 managers which can result in role conflict and stress.
Geographic departmentation
Relatively self-contained units deliver an organization’s product or services in a specific geographic territory.
Shortens communication channels, allows the organization to cater to regional tastes, and gives some appearance of local control to clients and customers.
Customer departmentation
Relatively self-contained units deliver an organization’s product or service to specific customers.
Goal is to provide better service to each customer group through specialization.
Hybrid departmentation
Structure based on some mixture of functional product, geographic, or customer departmentation.
Attempts to capitalize on the strengths of various structures while avoiding the weakness of others.
What are methods of coordinating divided behaviour?
Direct supervision.
Standardization of work processes.
• Useful for routine jobs.
Standardization of outputs.
Standardization of skills.
Mutual adjustment.
• Puts most control in the hands of those actually doing the work along with skill standardization.
Liaison role- Role occupied by person who’s assigned to help achieve coordination between their department and another department.
• Not effective when coordination problems involving several departments simultaneously arise.
Task forces and teams:
• Self-managed and cross-functional teams are also effective means of achieving coordination.
Integrators- Organizational members permanently assigned to facilitate coordination between departments.
• Especially useful for dealing with conflict between departments that:
o Are highly interdependent.
o Have very diverse goals.
o Operate in a very ambiguous environment.
Integration
Process of attaining coordination across differentiated departments
List Traditional structural characteristics.
o Span of control- Number of subordinates supervised by a manager.
o Flat organization- Organization with relatively few levels in its hierarchy of authority.
Push decision-making powers downward in the organization.
Enhance vertical communication and coordination.
o Tall organization- Organization with relatively many levels in its hierarchy of authority.
o Formalization- Extent to which work roles are highly defined by an organization.
Very complex tasks dictate high formalization.
o Centralization- Extent to which decision-making power is localized in a certain part of an organization.
Dictated by:
• Information processing capacity of executives.
o Complexity- Extent to which an organization divides labour vertically, horizontally, or geographically.
o Size and structure:
Larger organizations are more formal than smaller ones.
Mechanistic structures
Characterized by tallness, specialization, centralization, and formalization.
Useful when organization’s external environment is more stable, and its technology is more routine.
