When people divide work among themselves, they require coordinating

mechanisms to ensure that everyone works in concert

Most flexible form of communication; sharing information on mutual tasks and forming common mental

models to synchronize work activities

Expected to communicate and share information

Responsible for coordinating a work process by encouraging employees in each work unit to share information and informally coordinate work activities

Organizing employees from several departments into temporary teams; forming a cross-functional project team of people from these specialized departments to work simultaneously

Legitimate power assigned to individuals then use power to direct work processes and allocate resources

Optimal coordinating mechanism for large organizations

Quality and consistency of products and services improved by standardizing work activities through job descriptions and procedures

Ensure individuals and work units have clearly defined goals and output measures

When work activities are too complex to standardize through processes or goals, companies often coordinate work effort by extensively training employees or hiring people

Number of people directly reporting to the next level in the

hierarchy; interconnected with organizational size

Exists when very few people report directly to a manager,

Necessary when employees perform novel or complex tasks

Exists when a manager has many direct reports and when employees perform

routine jobs

Number of authority levels in a particular organization; follows the lines of authority and status vertically through the organization

Degree to which organizations standardize behavior through rules, procedures, formal training, and related mechanisms

Which of the following are the consequences of cutting out too much middle management?

Long chain of command; many authority levels and a narrow span of control

Have higher overhead costs and senior managers often receive lower-quality and less

timely information from the external environment

More common and ideal when task is routine or repetitive and requires a large number of

workers who need minimal supervision

Formally defined roles for their members, are very rule driven, and are stable and resistant to

change

Structures are characterized by less- formalized work role and procedures, flexible and adaptable, without the rigid status hierarchy characteristic of more traditional structures

Fewer employees than the traditional structures, and nontraditional structures may also occur as a small organization

Workers have broadly defined jobs; know a great deal about the product or goals of the organization and tend to possess a variety of work-related skills

Divides the organization into departments based on the functions or tasks performed

Based on types of products or customers; each division may perform the same range of functions, but those functions only serve the goals of the particular division; almost as if it were a separate organization

Workers become overly focused on their area of specialization may breed interdepartmental rivalry and conflict

Duplication of areas of expertise, because each division contains its own departments

Degree to which decision-making authority is concentrated at the top of the organizational hierarchy

Process of taking the decision-making power out of the hands of the top level and distributing some of it to lower levels

A narrow span of control and high degree of formalization and centralization.

Operate with a wide span of control, decentralized decision making, and little formalization; tasks are fluid, adjusting to new situations and organizational needs

Mechanistic structures operate better in ─── environments, whereas organic structures work better in ─── environments

Employees are unable to coordinate effectively with each other, resulting in errors and gross inefficiencies; start-up companies often face this problem

Employ only a few people and typically offer only one distinct product or service, minimal hierarchy, usually just employees reporting to the owners

Organizes employees around specific knowledge or other resource; provides more economies of scale and increases employee identity with the specialization or profession

Groups employees around geographic areas, outputs (products or services), or clients

Employees organized around several projects, each with its own autonomous team; built around self-directed teams that complete an entire piece of work

Employees are assigned to a cross-functional team responsible for a specific game project, yet they also belong to a permanent functional unit

Design and build a product or serve a client through an alliance of several organizations; collaborative structure typically consists of several satellite organizations beehived around a hub or core firm.

These have a high rate of change, leading to novel

situations and a lack of identifiable patterns; organic structures

This is characterized by regular cycles of activity and

steady changes in supply and demand for inputs and outputs.

The more ─── the environment, the more decentralized the

organization should become

More efficient when the environment is predictable

Organizations located in diverse environments have a greater variety of

products or services, clients, and region

Has only one client, product, and geographic

area

Firms located in a ─── environment face resource scarcity and more competition in the marketplace; typically, dynamic

The more diverse an environment, the more the firm needs to be in a ───

What structure is more preferred in hostile environments?

In extremely hostile, organizations tend to

temporarily ─── so that decisions can be made more quickly

Technological contingency; the number of exceptions to

standard procedure that tends to occur

The predictability or difficulty of the required work; the less analyzable the work, the more it requires experts with sufficient discretion to address the work challenges

Who proposed one of the earliest contingency models of organizational

structure?

Required a span of control that was moderate in size, with about 20 to 30 workers reporting to a supervisor, and a short chain of command

Required a large span of control (40–50 workers per supervisor) and a fairly long chain of command, with several levels in the organizational hierarchy

Manufacturing required a small span of control and a very long chain of command

Looked at the relationship between technology and structure in all types of organizations

Developed a contingency model of organizational structure that looks at how structure must adapt to fit changing environmental conditions

Analyzable work tasks with few exception

Analyzable tasks with many exception

Uses technology that is unanalyzable, with no discrete

steps, and has few exception

No clearly defined steps to follow, yet there are many unique problems to be solved

Complexity of the organizational structure; the number of units, the various orientations and philosophies of the managers, and the goals and interests of the organization’s members

Amount and quality of collaboration among the various units of the organization