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Exam 9: Designing Adaptive Organizations

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Question 61

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Aleeza is managing the financial area of a special project to launch the company in Asia.Aleeza and the transportation manager disagree on how product should be moved between borders.The two are meeting with the senior project manager to resolve this issue.What type of matrix is Aleeza working within?

A) the networked matrix
B) the synergistic matrix
C) the complex matrix
D) the hierarchical matrix

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Question 62

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Narrative 9-1 A $100 million loss, plummeting advertising sales, a stock price that has fallen from an all-time high of $237 to less than $10 per share, and layoffs that cost 800 people their jobs, including the previous CEO. Welcome to Yahoo! At this once phenomenally successful company, so many basic things have gone wrong that the question is, where do you start to fix it? One key problem is the organizational structure. With just 3,200 employees, Yahoo has 44 different business units. General Electric, with 300,000 employees, has only 13. Yahoo doesn't have a direct sales unit-no one, it turns out, is responsible for cultivating customers because customer advertising dollars were being thrown at the company. Consequently, most orders took place via e-mail. Yahoo didn't have to establish relationships with customers because customers came to it. Unfortunately, this led to arrogance. A potential customer said the message was, "Buy our stuff [meaning Yahoo's advertising], and shut up." Jeff Mallett, Yahoo's former president, said, "We ran Yahoo to optimize market share. I make no apologies for that. If there was a company that didn't get it [Internet advertising], we moved on very quickly." Another problem was the overly creative, freewheeling, spontaneous company culture in which everyone, including the CEO, worked in cubicles, representing an overly informal culture with no controls. At Yahoo, employees played soccer in a large open space outside the company boardroom, even while the board was meeting. Furthermore, no one had an overall perspective of what was best for the entire company. Consequently, unit managers would beg, borrow, and steal from the network (the overall company) to help their own properties. Beyond that, ideas were pursued without having to get anyone's feedback or approval. Yahoo's chief operating officer said, "Yahoo's original mission was to grow as fast as you can and put things out there and see what works." The more serious problem, he said, was that "nobody knew what would work." Yahoo was so informal, so unfocused, and so freewheeling that no one really worried about whether the company could charge for the services it provided and make a profit. "There was a fear," said one manager, "that if all of our efforts were put into profit making, we'd starve research and development and lose our innovation." -Refer to the Narrative 9-1.Before restructuring,Yahoo was described as having an overly creative,freewheeling culture,a highly decentralized decision-making structure in which managers did what was best for their units rather than the entire company,and exhibited resistance to making a profit.Which kind of organization did the company have?

A) mechanistic
B) transformational
C) organic
D) synergistic

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Question 63

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Which type of organization is always changing in composition?

Nigel works for a high-tech company that has a dynamic working environment.Nigel's job title is technical support but he really works in all areas of operations.He rarely knows what he will be doing from day to day and enjoys the ability to make decisions to solve problems as they arise.What type or organization does Nigel work in?

John feels like he is being pulled in all directions.The project manager he reports to wants him in an all-day meeting on Tuesday.The sales manager for his regular functions wants him to meet with an important client on Tuesday.John is not sure what to do.What type of departmentalization is John working within?

As a class project,Senora is working with other classmates to create a company that would market NASCAR memorabilia.She is instructed to use the traditional approach to create the organization's structure.What should Senora do?

Elena works in a data-processing department for a large credit reporting service and is bored.She spends her days inputting an endless stream of monotonous data into much larger data bases.According to the job characteristics model,what is a primary reason for her boredom?

The most common matrix combines customer and functional forms of departmentalization.

Narrative 9-1 A $100 million loss, plummeting advertising sales, a stock price that has fallen from an all-time high of $237 to less than $10 per share, and layoffs that cost 800 people their jobs, including the previous CEO. Welcome to Yahoo! At this once phenomenally successful company, so many basic things have gone wrong that the question is, where do you start to fix it? One key problem is the organizational structure. With just 3,200 employees, Yahoo has 44 different business units. General Electric, with 300,000 employees, has only 13. Yahoo doesn't have a direct sales unit-no one, it turns out, is responsible for cultivating customers because customer advertising dollars were being thrown at the company. Consequently, most orders took place via e-mail. Yahoo didn't have to establish relationships with customers because customers came to it. Unfortunately, this led to arrogance. A potential customer said the message was, "Buy our stuff [meaning Yahoo's advertising], and shut up." Jeff Mallett, Yahoo's former president, said, "We ran Yahoo to optimize market share. I make no apologies for that. If there was a company that didn't get it [Internet advertising], we moved on very quickly." Another problem was the overly creative, freewheeling, spontaneous company culture in which everyone, including the CEO, worked in cubicles, representing an overly informal culture with no controls. At Yahoo, employees played soccer in a large open space outside the company boardroom, even while the board was meeting. Furthermore, no one had an overall perspective of what was best for the entire company. Consequently, unit managers would beg, borrow, and steal from the network (the overall company) to help their own properties. Beyond that, ideas were pursued without having to get anyone's feedback or approval. Yahoo's chief operating officer said, "Yahoo's original mission was to grow as fast as you can and put things out there and see what works." The more serious problem, he said, was that "nobody knew what would work." Yahoo was so informal, so unfocused, and so freewheeling that no one really worried about whether the company could charge for the services it provided and make a profit. "There was a fear," said one manager, "that if all of our efforts were put into profit making, we'd starve research and development and lose our innovation." -Refer to the Narrative 9-1.One cause of the precipitous drop in the value of Yahoo's stock was that too many unrelated decisions were being made by unrelated people in the company without any regard for what was best for the entire company.What would be one way to solve this problem?

Explain what is meant by authority.How can authority be centralized? How can it be decentralized? Describe the circumstances under which centralization versus decentralization would be more desirable.If you were a manager in a large company,what particular challenge might you expect to face with regard to the use of decentralization?

Marianne is working on a special project.She reports at the project manager as well as her finance manager where her full time work resides.What organizational structure is Marianne working within?

Which of the following approaches to job redesign entails more than just increasing variety in job tasks?

Hallmark has four departments: (1) Flowers and Gifts,(2) Cards and E-cards,(3) Hallmark Collectibles,and (4) Photo Albums and Scrapbooks.Which type of departmentalization does Hallmark use?

Pierre is the president of his company.He is frustrated that it is difficult to get his managers together.Decision making is slow,and it's hard to get a consensus on what new products the company should introduce.What type of departmentalization does Pierre's company have?

What is an intra-organizational process? Identify the techniques that are being used by companies today to change these processes.Evaluate the probable level of risk to a company in using each of these approaches.

What is the term for the degree to which a job gives workers the discretion,freedom,and independence to decide how and when to accomplish their jobs?

Deirdre has a well-defined job.Deirdre knows exactly what each day will be like.If she ever needs help or runs into a problem she goes to Monica,her supervisor,for guidance.What type of organization does Deirdre work in?

What is job specialization? Briefly explain its advantages and disadvantages.

What are the primary disadvantages of job specialization? How can job redesign be used to overcome these disadvantages?

A virtual organization is an organization that outsources noncore business activities to outside companies,suppliers,specialists,or consultants.