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Organizational Structure and Dynamics, Study Guides, Projects, Research of Organization Behaviour

Virginia State University (VSU)Organization Behaviour

A comprehensive overview of key aspects of organizational structure and dynamics. It covers fundamental characteristics of organizations, including their role in bringing together resources to achieve goals, producing goods and services, facilitating innovation, and adapting to a changing environment. The document explores organizational structures, the role of the organizational environment, and strategies for managing uncertainty. It also discusses international structures, ethical considerations, and the dynamics of organizational change and innovation.

Typology: Study Guides, Projects, Research

2023/2024

Available from 08/03/2024

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Organizations Behaviors Exam Study Guide Review
1.Organizations are:: 1. social entities that
2.are goal oriented
3.are designed as deliberately structured and coordinated activity
systems
4.are linked to the external environment
2. Organizations are credited with:: 1. bringing together resources to
achieve desired goals and outcomes
2.producing goods and services
3.facilitating innovation
4.harnessing modern manufacturing, service and information
technologies
5.adapting to and influencing a changing environment
6.creating value
7.accommodating ongoing challenges of diversity ethics and the
motivation and coordination of employees
3.Closed system: Focus exclusively upon the organization.
Organizations are self-contained, effectively sealed off from the
outside world
4.Open system: Pays attention to the open boundary between the
organization and the environment. Organizations are conceived as
consumers of resources and export of resources. Organizations are
impelled to adapt or attempt to control a changing environment
5.Five parts of an organization: Top management, middle management,
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Organizations Behaviors Exam Study Guide Review

  1. Organizations are:: 1. social entities that 2.are goal oriented 3.are designed as deliberately structured and coordinated activity systems 4.are linked to the external environment
  2. Organizations are credited with:: 1. bringing together resources to achieve desired goals and outcomes 2.producing goods and services 3.facilitating innovation 4.harnessing modern manufacturing, service and information technologies 5.adapting to and influencing a changing environment 6.creating value
  3. accommodating ongoing challenges of diversity ethics and the motivation and coordination of employees
  4. Closed system: Focus exclusively upon the organization. Organizations are self-contained, effectively sealed off from the outside world
  5. Open system: Pays attention to the open boundary between the organization and the environment. Organizations are conceived as consumers of resources and export of resources. Organizations are impelled to adapt or attempt to control a changing environment
  6. Five parts of an organization: Top management, middle management,

technical core, technical support staff and administrative support staff. Technical support staff = R&D and administrative = HR. Core = the basic work of the organization

  1. Structural dimensions: Provide labels distinguish some key, internal character- istics of an organization. 1.formalization - reliance upon written documentation
  2. specialization - the degree to which organizational tasks are subdivided into seperate jobs
  3. Hierarchy of authority - who report to whom and the span of control for each manager. 4.Centralization - the hierarchy level that has the authority to make a decision 5.Professionalism - describe the level of formal education and training of employees
  4. Personnel ratios - refer to the deployment of people of various functions and department.
  5. Contextual dimensions: characterize the whole organization, including its size, technology, environment, and goals. Dimensions: 1.size 2.organizational technology 3.enivronment 4.goals and stratergy 5.culture
  6. Efficiency: The amount of resources used to achieve the organizations

system for the organization that is frequently preoccupied with engendering legitimacy.

  1. Stratergy: a plan for interacting with the competitive environment to achieve organizational goals. Stratergies define how we reach the goal.
  2. Porter's Competitive Strategies: 1. Differentiation - organizations attempt to distinguish their products or services. Targets customers that are indifferent to the price. Pros: reduced rivalry, fight of threat of substitute products. Cons: requires a number of costly activites (R&D, Marketing)
  3. Low cost leadership: pursues strong market share by emphasizing low cost compared to competitors.
  4. focus - the organization concentrates on a specific market or buyer group. It produces either a low cost or differentiation within a narrowly defined market.
  5. Miles and Snow's Strategy Typology: Managers should seek to formulate strategy that matches the demands of the external environment. Strategies:
  6. Prospector - innovate, take risks, seek out new opportunities and grow. Suits a dynamic growing environment where creativity is more important than efficiency.
  1. Defender - concerned with stability or even retrenchment. Holds on to current customers but do not innovate nor grow. Internal efficiency and control to produce reliable, high quality products for existing customers. Suits declining industries or stable environment.
  2. Analyzer - maintain a stable business while innovating on the side- line. Midway between the prospector and defender. Some products will be targeted toward stable, low innovation environments where a strategy to keep current customers is used. Other products are targeted toward new, more dynamic enivronments. 4.reactor - not really a strategy. Responds to environmental threats and opportuni- ties after hand.
  3. Blue Ocean Strategy: divides markets into red and blue oceans. Blue markets have not been exploited and therefore you make the competition irrelevant
  4. Start-up strategy: Influential factors for the success of a start up: 1.start 2.engineering 3.commitment 4.bureaucracy 5.autocracy
  5. the goal approach: measures progress toward attainment of output goals, if the organization achieves its output goals
  6. Resource-based approach: directed to the input side of the

into depart- ments and of departments into total organization. 3.organization structure includes the design of systems to ensure effective commu- nication, coordination and integration of efforts across departments.

  1. Linkage: the extent of communication and coordination among organizational elements.
  2. Vertical Linkages: used to coordinate activities between the top and bottom of an organization and are designed primarily for control of the organization. The first vertical device is the hierarchy the next is the use of rules and plans.
  • Hierarchy referral - if a problem arises that employees can't solve, they go to the next level of hierarcy.
  • rules and plans - rules provide a standard information source enabling employees to be coordinated without actually communicating their managers. A plan also provides standing information, ex budget
  • vertical information systems - periodic reports, written information and computer based communications. Makes communication und down more efficient.
  1. Horizontal Linkages: the amount of communication and coordination horizon- tally across organizational departments.
  • Information systems - enables departments to exchange information about prob- lems, opportunities, activities or decision.
  • Direct contact - could be ex create a special liaison role
  • task force - temporary committee composed of representatives from each organi- zational unit affected by a problem.
  • Full-time integrator - responsible for coordinating several departments or integrat- ing internal departments.
  • Teams - permanent task forces are often used with a full-time integrator.
  1. departmental grouping: established to provide efficiency and predictability to operations.
  2. Functional Grouping: places together employees who perform similar func- tions or work processes or who bring similar knowledge and skills
  3. Divisional Grouping: people are organized according to what the organization produces
  4. multi-focused grouping: a grouping in which the organization embraces two or more structural grouping alternatives simultaneously, often called matrix or hybrid
  5. horizontal grouping: a grouping in which employees are organized around core work processes, the end-to-end work, information, and material flows that provide value directly to customers
  6. virtual network grouping: the organization is a loosely connected cluster of seperate components, departments are connected electronically.
  7. functional structure: activities are grouped together by common

Weaknesses:

  • eliminates economies of scale
  • poor coordination among product lines
  • eliminates in depth-competence
  • makes integration and standardization across product lines difficult.
  1. geographical structure: A lot like divisional structure, same strenghts and weaknesses. Each geographic units includes all functions required to produce in that region. Employees may identify with regional goals rather than overall corporate vision.
  2. matrix structure: Gives equal emphasis and attention to product ad function or product and geography. Enables two objective to be pursued simultaneously. Function and product managers have the same authority. Conditions:
  3. pressure exists to share scarce resources across product lines. Organization is often medium sized with a moderate number of product lines. 2.environmental pressure exists for two or more critical outputs, ex in depth knowl- edge and frequent new products 3.environmental domain of the organization is both complex and uncertain. Serving to managers can be confusing, as a consequence functional matrix and product matrix have evolved.

Strengths:

  • Necessary coordination to meet dual demands from customers
  • Flexible sharing of human resources across products
  • Suited to complex decisions and frequent changes in unstable environment.
  • Opportunity for both functional and product skills development
  • best in medium sized organizations with multiple products. Weaknesses:
  • dual authority
  • participants need good interpersonal skills and extensive training
  • time consuming, frequent meetings needed and conflict resolution sessions
  • will not work unless participants understand it and adopt collegial relationships
  • requires great effort to maintain powerbalance
  1. horizontal structure: organizes employees around core processes. Minimizes the vertical hierarchy and removes obstacles between departments. Have self-di- rected independent teams. Process owners have responsibilities for each core process in its entirety. Created around cross-functional core processes rather than tasks, functions or geography. Team members cross trained to perform one aonthers jobs and the combined skills are sufficient to complete a major task.
  • reduces administrative overhead costs. Weaknesses:
  • managers do not have hand-on control over many activities and employees
  • requires a great deal of time to manage relationships and potential conflicts with contract partners
  • risk of failure if a partner fails
  • weak employee loyalty and corporate culture
  • can be replaced by contract services
  1. Hybrid structure: combines characteristics of various approaches tailored to specific strategic needs
  2. Structural alignment: Finding the right balance between vertical control and horizontal coordination. Vertical control - associated with goals of efficiency and stability Horizontal coordination - associated with learning innovation and flexibility
  3. symptoms of structural deficiency: 1. Decision making is delayed or lacking quality 2.Organization does not respond innovatively to a changing environment 3.Employee performance declines, goals are not met 4.Too much conflict
  4. Organizational environment: all elements existing outside the boundary of the organization that have the potential to affect all or parts of the organization
  1. Domain: an organizations domain is the chosen environmental field of action
  2. Sectors: the environment compromises several sectors or subdivisions of the external environment that contains similar elements
  3. Task Environment: - industry sector
  • raw materials sector
  • market sector
  • HR sector
  • international environment sector
  1. General Environment: do not have a direct impact on the daily operations of a firm but influence it indirectly
  • government sector
  • sociocultural sector
  • economic conditions
  • technology sector
  • financial resources sector
  1. Framework for assessing environmental uncertainty: - in the simple stable environment, uncertainty is low.
  • In the complex, stable environment represents somewhat greater uncertainty. elements have to be scanned, analyzed and acted upon. The elements are stable
  • In the simple, unstable environment, faces greater uncertainty. Rapid changes creates uncertainty for managers. Few elements but they are hard to predict.

from impor- tant sectors are made part of an organization. Interlocking directorates is a formal link that occurs when a member of a board of directions of one company sits on the board for another company.

  1. executive recruitment - exchanging executives establish linkages with external organizations. 5.advertising and public relations
  2. Controlling the environmental domain: 1.change of domain - acquisition and divestment are two techniques 2.political activity, regulations - influence government legislation and regulation 3.Trade associations - influence the environment by join several organizations with shared interest 4.Illegitimate activites - not legally correct
  3. Motivation for global expansion:: 1. economies of scale
  4. economies of scope - scope refers to the number of variety of products and services a company offers as well as the number and variety of regions, countries and market it serves. Provides marketing power and synergy. 3.low-cost production forces - possbility to obtain resources at a lower cost
  5. Four stages of international evolution: 1. Domestically stage - Domestically oriented. Managers may want to consider initial foreign involvement. Market potential is limited ti home markeds as export

2.International stage - export is taken seriously and begins to operate multidomas- tically. International division have replaced export department

  1. Multinational stage - company hade extensive experience in an number of inter- national markets and has established marketing, manufactoring or R&D facilities in several foreign countries. 4.Global stage - the company transcends any single country. Truly global companies no longer have a single home country and are referred as stateless corporation.
  2. Multidomestic: competitive issues in each country are independent of other countries; the company deals with each country individually
  3. Consortia: Groups of independent companies that join together to share skills, resources, costs, and access to one another's markets
  4. Coherent global stratergy: provide synergy among worldwide operations for the purpose of achieving common organizational goals.
  5. Globalization strategy: product design and advertising are standardized throughout the world. Thos reap economy of scale
  6. multidomestic strategy: competition in each country is handled independently competition in other countries
  7. Model to fit organization structure to international advantages: Horizontal: forces for local responsiveness Vertical: forces for global integration Low, Low -
  • Assets and resources are dispersed worldwide into highly specialized operations that are linked together through interdependent relationships.
  • Structure are flexible and ever-changing
  • subsidary managers initiate strategic innovations that become strategy for the corporation as a whole
  • Unification and coordination are achieved primarily through corporate culture rather than formal structures. The transnational is in many way a horizontal structure
  1. Dragon multinationals: Companies who start in the international market. They seek profit from external resources through:
  2. Linkage - building partnerships and joint ventures to permit access to larger markets. 2.Leverage - entails building on global linkages to access necessary knowledge and financial resources for expansion 3.Learning - improve business understanding and practice through applying knowl- edge gained from linkage and leverage.
  3. Core Technology: the work process that is directly related to the organization's mission
  4. Non-core technology: a department work process that is important to the organization but is not directly related to its primary mission.
  5. Woodward: Technological complexity represents the extent of mechanization of the manufacturing process.

Group 1 - small batch and unit production. Job shop operations that manufacture and assemble small orders to meet specific needs. Relies on human operator. Organic Group 2 - Large-batch and massproduction- Characterized by long production runs of standardized parts. Mechanistic in type. Group 3 - continuous-process production. Entire process is mechanized. Organic ex chemical plants

  1. Flexible Manufacturing System (FMS): Enables large factories to deliver a wide range of custom-made products at a low cost. Consists of CAD, CAM and integrated information network.
  2. lean manufacturing: An operation that strives to achieve the highest possible productivity and total quality, cost effectively, by eliminating unnecessary steps in the production process and continually striving for improvement. Uses highly trained employees, the core is not the technology but the human.
  3. co-creation: a masscustomization where the customers are integrated in the process
  4. Non-Core Departmental Technology: Variety - number of exceptions in the work, called task variety. Refers to the frequency of unexpected and new events. Analyzability - when the process of transforming inputs to the department into outputs for other departments are analyzable, the work