Organizational Design
Midterm Exam
Course Introduction
Organizational Design explores the principles, models, and processes involved in shaping effective organizational structures to support strategic objectives. The course covers topics such as division of labor, authority and control, coordination mechanisms, and the alignment of organizational structure with culture and environment. Students will analyze different organizational forms including functional, divisional, matrix, and network designs while examining how technology, globalization, and innovation impact the design and adaptability of contemporary organizations. Through case studies and practical applications, participants will learn to diagnose structural challenges and propose solutions to optimize performance and achieve organizational goals.
Recommended Textbook
Organization Theory and Design 2nd canadian Edition by Richard L. Daft
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13 Chapters
984 Verified Questions
984 Flashcards
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Chapter 1: Organizations and Organizational Theory
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Sample Questions
Q1) The amount of written documentation in the organization is called formalization.
A)True
B)False
Answer: True
Q2) The underlying set of key values, beliefs, understandings, and norms shared by employees is referred to as an organization's culture.
A)True
B)False
Answer: True
Q3) According to the textbook, why do organizations exist?
A) to bring in a profit
B) to develop advanced manufacturing and information technologies
C) to challenge diversity, ethics, and the motivation and coordination of employees
D) to facilitate innovation
Answer: D
Q4) Define an open system. Describe and illustrate the open system in action.
Answer: An open system must interact with its environment to survive. It cannot seal itself off. Individuals, Earth, and Air Canada are all examples of open systems.
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Chapter 2: Strategy, Organizational Design, and Effectiveness
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which of the following best explains Porter's differentiation strategy?
A) Differentiation strategies address whether the market scope is broad or narrow.
B) Differentiation can be broken down into low-cost or broad-scope categories.
C) An airline using the differentiation strategy would be likely to offer travellers refreshments at a reasonable price rather than serve free meals.
D) The statement by Starbucks's international president that "We're not in the business of filling bellies, we're in the business of filling souls" is indicative of a differentiation strategy.
Answer: D
Q2) What kind of strategy is concerned primarily with stability rather than taking risks or seeking new opportunities for innovation and growth?
A) focused
B) low-cost leadership
C) differentiation
D) intensive
Answer: B
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Chapter 3: Fundamentals of Organizational Structure
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Sample Questions
Q1) A strength of the divisional structure compared to the functional structure is that the former tends to decentralize decision making.
A)True
B)False
Answer: True
Q2) Horizontal linkages are used to coordinate activities between the top and bottom of an organization and are designed primarily for control of the organization, whereas vertical linkages refer to the amount of communication and coordinate across organizational departments.
A)True
B)False
Answer: False
Q3) A full-time integrator such as a project manager has the various functional managers-finance, engineering, marketing-reporting to him or her.
A)True
B)False
Answer: False
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Page 5
Chapter 4: The External Environment
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Sample Questions
Q1) Often, decision makers do NOT have sufficient information about environmental factors so they have a difficult time predicting external change. What is this called?
A) cooptation
B) differentiation
C) uncertainty
D) integration
Q2) Which of the following examples best illustrates how various sectors can have an impact on organizations?
A) In the industry sector, labour unions are a significant force.
B) In the market sector, an increasing number of foreign-owned manufacturing plants are built in North America.
C) In the raw materials sector, steelmakers owned the beverage can market until the mid-1980s.
D) In the human resources sector, brand names are fighting it out with lower-cost store brands.
Q3) How might an economic recession affect the design of organizations?
Q4) Explain how an organization could change its domain, and why it might want to do so.
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Chapter 5: Interorganizational Relationships
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Sample Questions
Q1) Develop your own explanation/theory of why organizations today find collaboration as important as competition, and why collaborating organizations tend to take on similar characteristics. Would collaboration be enhanced just as easily between organizations that had different characteristics?
Q2) Why is the mindset in North American companies changing away from a traditional adversarial relationship with other companies?
Q3) Which statement best describes the affect on organizational survival, as a principle underlying the population ecology model?
A) Specialists are able to reallocate resources internally to adapt to a changing environment, whereas generalists are not.
B) Generalists are more competitive than specialists in the narrow area in which their domains overlap.
C) The toy company Mattel, which markets a broad range of toys, is considered a specialist.
D) New organizations have lower survival rates due to environmental factors that tend to select them out of existence more often than existing organizations.
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Chapter 6: Designing Organizations for the International Environment
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Sample Questions
Q1) Select any organization with which you are familiar-your college or university, the car dealership down the road, an organization where you work, etc. Analyze the global forces that influence the organization you selected. How should the organization respond to those global forces in order to gain international competitive advantage?
Q2) List the reasons most organizations tap only a fraction of the potential available from the cross-border transfer of knowledge.
Q3) The global geographical structure divides the world into geographical regions, with each geographical division reporting to the CEO.
A)True
B)False
Q4) Refer to Case 6.0. Identify the strategy in the textbook that Ford appears to be adopting. Describe advantages and disadvantages of that strategy for Ford. Why do you think CEO Trotman moved to that strategy?
Q5) Building a global presence expands an organization's scale of operations, enabling it to realize economies of scale.
A)True
B)False
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Page 8
Chapter 7: Manufacturing and Service Technologies
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Sample Questions
Q1) Woodward's classification of technology (into three clusters of organizational technologies) was based on a scale. What did that scale measure?
A) the number of employees in the span of control
B) the interdependence of tasks
C) the technological complexity of the organization's technical core
D) the variety and analyzability of tasks within each department
Q2) Service technologies are considered to be labour- and knowledge-intensive, while manufacturing technologies tend to be capital-asset-intensive.
A)True
B)False
Q3) What is a flexible manufacturing system (FMS)? Describe the three subcomponents of flexible manufacturing.
Q4) Refer to Case 7.0. Classify Toyz in the organizational framework for manufacturing technology. Explain. Then make recommendations to management for an appropriate structural response based on that analysis.
Q5) Engineering technologies tend to be low in analyzability and high in variety.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 8: Information Technology and Control
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Sample Questions
Q1) Today, most companies with intranets have moved their management information systems, executive information systems, and so forth over to the intranet so they can easily be accessed by anyone who needs them.
A)True
B)False
Q2) Which of the following best describes the formal routines, reports, and procedures that use information to maintain or alter patterns in organization activities?
A) feedback control model
B) management control system
C) discipline policies
D) executive information system
Q3) Which of the following are typically based on software that can convert large amounts of complex data into pertinent information and provide that information to top managers in a timely fashion?
A) decision support systems
B) executive information systems
C) information reporting systems.
D) TPS
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10
Chapter 9: Organization Size, Life Cycle, and Decline
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Sample Questions
Q1) Discuss how an organization can help smooth the downsizing process and ease tensions for employees who leave and employees who remain.
Q2) In the collectivity stage, departments are established along with a hierarchy of authority, job assignments, and a beginning division of labour.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Discuss each stage of the life cycle.
Q4) At which stage in the life cycle of a newly established hierarchy do departments emerge and get established, along with the beginnings of division of labour?
A) entrepreneurial
B) formalization
C) collectivity
D) elaboration
Q5) The manager of an established small manufacturing plant said, "We can't compete with large organizations, because they have the advantage of economies of scale." Use arguments from the chapter to discuss his position, explaining any factors that might tend to counter it. How should he manage in order to take advantage of the firm's small size?
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Chapter 10: Organizational Culture and Ethical Values
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Sample Questions
Q1) Culture strength refers to there being a low number of different subcultures within the culture as a whole.
A)True
B)False
Q2) Which term refers to a situation in which the relationship between a manager and followers is based on shared, strongly internalized beliefs that are advocated and acted upon by the manager?
A) mission culture
B) values-based leadership
C) clan culture
D) servant leadership
Q3) Which of the following is at play when behaviour is governed by a set of moral principles and values?
A) the rule of law
B) ethics
C) a mission environment
D) a vision statement
Q4) How do external stakeholders influence ethical decision making in an organization?
Q5) Discuss culture strength and organizational subcultures.
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Chapter 11: Innovation and Change
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which of the following best describes how venture teams differ from other divisions within an organization?
A) They may increase commitment, but they stifle creativity.
B) They are often given a separate location and facilities.
C) They are like a large company within a small company.
D) They are most effective when used in a mechanistic organization.
Q2) The four types of change are independent of each other, or in other words, a change in one has no effect on another.
A)True
B)False
Q3) The manager of R&D for PlasticWare, a kitchen products company, said that only 10 percent of its new products ever make a profit. He said that the industry average is 15 percent, but one company in the industry has a success rate of 90 percent. What advice would you give PlasticWare concerning organizational structure?
Q4) At one point in the research of new product development, a question to be answered is "Why are some products more successful than others?" What answers have been found to this question?
Q5) What is a venture team?
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Chapter 12: Decision-Making Processes
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which of the following is recognized as a constraint and tradeoff during nonprogrammed decision making?
A) personal constraints
B) environmental constraints
C) rationality constraints
D) operational constraints
Q2) A decision interrupt occurs when an organization must cycle back through a previous decision and try something new.
A)True
B)False
Q3) What does the garbage can model show?
A) how poor inputs into decision making result in poor decisions
B) how decisions can be made in mechanistic organizations
C) four streams of events that influence decision making
D) decision making in a stable environment
Q4) Problemistic search means that managers look around in the extended environment until they find the perfect solution to eventually resolve a problem.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 13: Conflict, Power, and Politics
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which of the following is a vertical source of power?
A) control of limited resources
B) network centrality
C) formal authority
D) manipulation
Q2) Which statement best distinguishes power from authority?
A) Power is vested in people.
B) Power can be exercised upward, downward, and horizontally.
C) Power flows down the vertical hierarchy.
D) Power is more narrow in scope than authority.
Q3) Political activity is effective only when goals and needs are made explicit so the organization can respond.
A)True
B)False
Q4) "She who has the gold makes the rules" refers to control of financial resources as a strategic contingency that influences horizontal power among departments.
A)True
B)False
Q5) Describe the steps of a win-win strategy and a win-lose strategy.
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