Organizational Structure

Question 1

What is organizational design?

Answer 1

This is a process in which managers develop or change their organization’s structure. This is a process that involves making decisions about how specialized jobs should be allocated, the rules to guide employee’s behavior and at what levels decisions are to be made.

Question 2

How does Mechanistic organization differ from organic organization?

Answer 2

Mechanistic organization or bureaucracy was the natural result of combining the 6 elements of structure, whereas, organic organization is a loose structure that can rapidly change as needs require.

Question 3

What are flat organizational structures?

Answer 3

Flat organizational structures are common in decentralized organizations, have fewer layers of management, communication and wide spans of control.

Question 3

What are tall organization structures?

Answer 3

Tall organizational structures are common in centralized areas, have multiple layers of management, slower communication and narrower spans of control.

Question 4

List the 6 elements of structure.

Answer 4

Work specialization, unity of command, span of control, departmentalization, authority and responsibility, and centralization vs decentralization.

Question 5

What is work specialization?

Answer 5

A job is broken down into a number of steps and each is completed by a separate individual.

Question 6

This command is the continuous line of authority that extends from upper organizational levels to the lowest and clarifies who reports to whom.

Answer 6

Chain of Command

Question 7

This command states that each employee is held accountable to only one supervisor.

Answer 7

Unity of Command

Question 8

Another name for Span of Control

Answer 8

Span of management

Question 9

Define Span of Control

Answer 9

This refers to the number of employees that a manager is able to efficiently and effectively direct, or the number of employees reporting to a single supervisor.

Question 10

Define authority.

Answer 10

This refers to the rights inherent in a managerial position to give orders and expect the orders to be obeyed.

Question 11

Define responsibility

Answer 11

Is the duty to perform an assigned task or activity.

Question 12

What are the 2 forms of authority?

Answer 12

Line authority and staff authority

Question 13

Define line authority

Answer 13

It is an employer-employee authority relationship that extends from top to bottom. They can make decision without consulting anyone.

Question 14

What is staff authority?

Answer 14

Staff authority functions to support, assist, advice and generally reduce some of their informational burden.

Question 15

What is power?

Answer 15

This refers to an individual’s capacity to influence decisions.

Question 16

What is functional structure?

Answer 16

It is the traditional way of organizing because it divides the work into specialist areas. It is composed of all the departments that an organization requires to produce goods and services

Question 17

Advantages of the functional structure.

Answer 17

Supervision is easier, specialized skills are brought to areas in which they are most needed and it encourages co-operation within a function with the achievement of scale, people with common skills are placed into common units.

Question 18

Disadvantages of functional structure.

Answer 18

It is difficult to reach decisions quickly, managers in different functions find it difficult to co-ordinate and communicate with one another, members in each function may feel isolated from other departments therefore they work in an ununified way, and functional managers become so preoccupied with supervising and trying to achieve department goals that they neglect the organizational goals.

Question 19

3 forms of divisional structure

Answer 19

Divisional Structure, Market structure and Geographic structure