Organization Design 2nd Edition Nicolay Worren - Solutions

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3 If you were part of a consulting team assigned to improve the operations of each organization, what recommendations would you make?You will be analyzing the technology used in three different restaurants: McDonald’s, a popular national chain of your choice, and a typical local non-chain
2 From the preceding data, determine if the structure and other characteristics fit the technology.You will be analyzing the technology used in three different restaurants: McDonald’s, a popular national chain of your choice, and a typical local non-chain restaurant. Your instructor will tell you
1 Is the technology used the best one for each restaurant, considering its goals and environment?You will be analyzing the technology used in three different restaurants: McDonald’s, a popular national chain of your choice, and a typical local non-chain restaurant. Your instructor will tell you
11 Describe the sociotechnical systems model. Why might some managers oppose a sociotechnical systems approach?
10 To what extent does the development of new technologies simplify and routinize the jobs of employees?How can new technology lead to job enlargement?Discuss.
9 In which quadrant of Perrow’s framework would a mass-production technology be placed? Where would small-batch and continuous process technologies be placed? Why? Would Perrow’s framework lead to the same recommendation about organic versus mechanistic structures that Woodward made?
8 A top executive claimed that top-level management is a craft technology because the work contains intangibles, such as handling personnel, interpreting the environment and coping with unusual situations that have to be learned through experience. If this is true, is it appropriate to teach
7 In what primary ways does the design of service firms typically differ from that of product firms?Why?
6 Mass customization of products has become a common approach in manufacturing organizations.Discuss ways in which mass customization can be applied to service firms as well.
5 What is a service technology? Are different types of service technologies likely to be associated with different structures? Explain.
4 How do flexible manufacturing and lean manufacturing differ from other manufacturing technologies?Why are these new approaches needed in today’s environment?
3 Describe Woodward’s classification of organizational technologies. Explain why each of the three technology groups is related differently to organization structure and management processes.
2 Explain Thompson’s levels of interdependence. Identify an example of each level of interdependence in the university or college setting. What kinds of coordination mechanisms should an administration develop to handle each level of interdependence?
1 Where would your university or college department be located on Perrow’s technology framework? Look for the underlying variety and analyzability characteristics when making your assessment. Would a department devoted exclusively to teaching be put in a different quadrant from a department
4 How can an international business start to develop an employee development strategy that sustains creativity and competitive advantage in the volatile business environment of today?
3 Discuss the importance of having effective environmental scanning with your employee development team and identify improvements that could be introduced to more effectively support the talent management decisions taken by your organization.
2 Choose a global company discussed in this chapter and analyze the global employee development practices that could be adopted by the company. Consider their potential impact on future corporate performance.
1 Highlight the main stages of employee and talent development undertaken by your organization and examine the business and human resource management challenges experienced at each stage of development.
3 How can building strong foundations of a new organizational development strategy encourage international creativity and innovation?This case does not focus on the technical aspects of international business theory, but rather focuses on up-to-date initiatives, innovation and practical
2 Why are the levers of globalization so important to understand, influence and manage the implementation of a strategic talent management programme?This case does not focus on the technical aspects of international business theory, but rather focuses on up-to-date initiatives, innovation and
1 Why should companies attempt to inhabit a world of great creative business opportunity?This case does not focus on the technical aspects of international business theory, but rather focuses on up-to-date initiatives, innovation and practical perspectives.Thus, the main focus is on the examination
2 What are the advantages and disadvantages of using films to understand another culture?As a group, watch a film made in another country from your own (or, alternately, go to the cinema when a foreign film is shown). Take notes as you watch, looking for similarities and differences in cultural
1 What were the key differences you observed in the film’s culture versus your own?As a group, watch a film made in another country from your own (or, alternately, go to the cinema when a foreign film is shown). Take notes as you watch, looking for similarities and differences in cultural norms
14 Find three different consumer products, such as a shirt, a toy and a shoe. Try to find out the following information for each product, as shown in the table. To find this information, use websites, articles on the company from various business newspapers and magazines, and the labels on the
13 What are global value chains, and why are they a useful way of looking at production organization today? What might be some options managers could consider if they wanted their corporation to secure a greater proportion of the created value in a value chain?
12 What are the potential benefits and dangers to a company of offshoring some of its production? What steps would a company’s managers need to take in order to determine whether it should offshore, and what aspects of its business process it should offshore?
11 What strategies can companies from emerging economies with limited domestic markets take in order to succeed in the global economy?
10 What does it mean to say that the transnational model is based on a philosophy of interdependence?
9 Do you believe it is possible for a global company to achieve simultaneously the goals of global efficiency and integration, national responsiveness and flexibility, and worldwide learning and knowledge sharing?Discuss.
8 Traditional values in Mexico appear to support high power distance and a low tolerance for uncertainty.What would you predict about a company that opens a division in Mexico and tries to implement global teams characterized by shared power and authority and the lack of formal guidelines, rules
7 Name some of the elements that contribute to greater complexity for international organizations.How do organizations address this complexity? Do you think these elements apply to an online company such as eBay? Discuss.
6 When would an organization consider using a matrix structure? How does the global matrix differ from the domestic matrix structure described in Chapter 4?
5 What are some of the primary reasons a company decides to expand internationally? Identify a company in the news that has recently built a new overseas facility. Which of the three motivations for global expansion described in the chapter do you think best explains the company’s decision?
4 Why is knowledge sharing so important to a global organization?
3 Why would a company want to join a strategic alliance rather than go it alone in international operations?What do you see as the potential advantages and disadvantages of international alliances?
2 Name some companies that you think could succeed today with a globalization strategy and explain why you selected those companies. How does the globalization strategy differ from a multidomestic strategy?
1 Under what conditions should a company consider adopting a global geographic structure as opposed to a global product structure?
2 This chapter presents four distinctive perspectives on interorganizational relationships – the resource-dependence perspective, the collaborative-network perspective, the population-ecology perspective and the institutional perspective. How would each perspective help you to make sense of the
1 Increasingly managers are faced with challenges far too complex for an organization to resolve singlehandedly. In the case of under-nutrition there are issues related to hunger, issues related to poverty and issues related to climate change, among others. The partners who collaborated on
5 The instructor will lead a discussion on the exercise addressing the following questions:a Which groups had the most trust? How did that influence behaviour?b Which groups shared more information? Why?c How are trust and disclosure important in negotiations?
4 The observers will report the solutions reached. The groups will describe the decision-making process used.
3 Role-play: Instructor announces, ‘I am Mr/Ms Cardoza, the owner of the remaining Ugli oranges. My fruit export firm is based in South America. My country does not have diplomatic relations with your country, although we do have strong trade relations’.The groups will spend about 10 minutes
2 Roland and Jones will read only their own roles, but the observer will read both.
1 Form groups of three members. One person will be Dr Roland, one person will be Dr Jones and the third person will be an observer.
3 Give an example in which a fad did not work as expected. Explain the reason why it did not work.
2 Why do you think the fads were adopted? To what extent were the fads adopted to truly improve productivity and morale versus a concern to appear current in its management techniques compared to the competition?
1 How were these fads used in organizations? Use real examples from your readings.
10 How do mimetic forces differ from normative forces? Give an example of each.
9 How does a concern for legitimacy result in organizations becoming more similar over time?
8 Do you believe that legitimacy really motivates a large, powerful organization such as Walmart?
7 Explain how the process of variation, selection and retention might explain innovations that take place within an organization.
6 The population-ecology perspective argues that it is desirable to have new organizations emerging and old organizations dying as the environment changes. Do you agree? Why would European countries pass laws to sustain traditional organizations and inhibit the emergence of new ones?
5 Discuss how the adversarial versus partnership orientations work among students in class. Is there a sense of competition for grades? Is it possible to develop a partnership orientation in which your work depends on others?
4 Many senior managers today were trained under assumptions of adversarial relationships with other companies. Assuming this to be the case, what are some of the implications and how might these be addressed in the light of the theories presented in this chapter?
3 Assume you are the manager of a small firm that is dependent on a large computer manufacturing customer. Put yourself in the position of the small firm and describe what actions you would take to survive and succeed.
2 How do you feel about the prospect of becoming a manager and having to manage a set of relationships with other companies? Discuss.
1 The concept of business ecosystems implies that organizations are more interdependent than ever before. From personal experience, do you agree? Explain.
Why is it valuable to invest time in clarifying the mission or mandate of a sub-unit as part of a design process?
What are the key elements of mission statements according to Haeckel (1999)?
How can potential conflicts (coupling)between functional requirements be identified?
What different types of interdependencies exist according to Thompson (1967)?
How may these interdependencies be represented in a design structure matrix (DSM)?
How may interdependencies between different tasks or roles be identified?
Why are interdependencies sometimes neglected?
How can one ensure that the formal structure of an organization(or a sub-unit)is aligned with the work process interdependencies?
A large organization has a rule that every department should consist of at least
employees.Two departments, HR and Finance, have only
employees each. Consequently, management decides to merge the two departments into one, even though they have little in common and are responsible for different work processes. Where would you place this department in the diagram shown in Figure 5.14?
A firm produces only two products that are highly interrelated technically.The firm has been growing steadily and now has several hundred employees.The CEO believes that as a medium sized firm, it should have a divisional structure.Hence the CEO decides to split the units responsible for
What considerations are important when determining the size of units?
Try to obtain an organization chart for a fairly large firm or governmental organization(e.g., by accessing its internet site).What is its main function?What grouping criteria have been used to define the units? Have consistent criteria been used at the same level, and at different levels
Managers must sometimes choose between a grouping that optimizes work flow and a grouping that optimizes resource utilization or that provides economies of scale. Is it possible to develop a formal, quantitative methodology that could support managers in making such trade-offs?
Several metrics have been proposed for assessing the degree of modularity(sub-unit independence)of a system represented in a DSM (see e.g., Hölttä-Otto et al., 2012). However, so far, we lack a scale-independent metric that can be used to characterize systems of varying sizes and complexity.How
Algorithms have been developed to cluster DSM data and reduce coordination costs (e.g., Yu et al., 2007). However, they rely on assumptions and we lack empirical data about the actual coordination costs related to optimal versus sub-optimal grouping.How can we estimate coordination costs? What
How do you evaluate the criticality and uncertainty of an interdependency?
What are the key characteristics of the five types of interdependencies described in this chapter?
What may managers do to ensure that the members of their sub-units are aware of, and effectively manage, interdependencies toward other units?
Select a sub-unit that you are familiar with (e.g., a team in the company where you work, a university department, etc.). Interview a member of the unit and use the questions above to identify the key interdependencies between this unit and other units within the same organization.Draw a diagram to
From the business press or your personal experience, select a case where a company is attempting to resolve a performance problem involving one of its sub-units and its relations to other units within the organization(or toward external constituents).Can you think of alternative ways of resolving
To what extent could the consideration of current and potential interdependencies sensitize sub-unit managers or employees to uncertain interdependencies and improve the ability to predict interdependencies that may affect them in the future?
How could interdependency misalignment be operationalized and measured?
What are the performance implications of interdependency misalignment?
Thompson (1967) assumed that interdependencies were strongly linked to work processes, yet in many settings, one may be able to alter the work processes in order to change the degree of interdependency.What implications does this insight have for Thompson’s framework?
In general, how can one map the structure of a design that stakeholders perceive as excessively complex?
Why do responsibility overlaps emerge in many large organizations?
How can horizontal customer-supplier roles be consistently defined?
How can you reduce the number of interdependencies between individuals or teams?
What options are available when one wants to simplify an organization where functional requirements for different sub-units(i.e., business goals) are in conflict?
Why are different interdependency types (or dimensions), such as governance versus resources interdependencies), sometimes misaligned?
What would be an appropriate research methodology to verify that the categorization of issues proposed in this chapter is representative, or alternative, identify an improved conceptualization?
How could one more systematically test out, and further improve, the proposed interventions aimed at reducing complexity(i.e., the design propositions)?
How does organization design differ from the traditional conception of organization theory?
What does the concept of hierarchical decomposition entail?
What is the relationship between strategy and organizational structure?
What are some key assumptions in the information processing view of organization design?
How do organization design choices influence organizational effectiveness?
What are the characteristics of (good) architecture that suggest how we can design more effective organizations?
What are the five “layers” of design parameters?
How would you formulate the key functional requirements for a university, or a hospital? What would be the design parameters?
The chapter reviews the advantages of the axiomatic design approach. What may be some limitations of this approach?

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Organization Design 2nd Edition Nicolay Worren - Solutions

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