Lightspeed.com (Scenario)

Edwin Edwards is a team leader for Lightspeed.com, an e-business that has employees in every global time zone. Some of the factors that the team has to contend with are deadlines, strong work ethic, creativity-innovation chain, high-speed turnaround, and professionalism. As a team leader, Edwin sees team members via videoconference only a few times per year or via compressed video via Internet a few times more per year. A frustration that he is encountering himself is that he works with all of these people and does not have control over their "actual" work or the few organizational rules, regulations, and policies. Yet, due to the position he is in, he feels he gets all of their complaints. The team does not deal well when a member offers an "off-the-wall" solution to a team problem. Team members seem to have more trouble with this than any other team-conflict issue. What he likes most about leading the team is that they seem to prefer getting their objectives accomplished instead of wasting time trying to decide who should be doing what tasks.

4) If Edwin decided to remove a layer of managers and increase the span of control, he would be making a change in which of the following categories?

A) technology

B) people

C) processes

D) structure

Answer: D

Diff: 2 Type: MC Page Ref: 172

Skill: Applied

Learning Outcome: 7-4 Classify types of organizational change.

5) If Edwin decided to introduce new methods and work processes, he would be making a change in which of the following categories?

A) technology

B) people

C) strategy

D) structure

6) If Edwin decided to replace some employee work time with a new telephone menu system to improve productivity, this would be an example of ________.

A) work specialization

B) formalization

C) decentralization

D) automation

7) If Edwin wanted to change people and the quality of interpersonal work relationships, he could do so by implementing ________ programs.

A) job redesign

B) organizational development

C) interpersonal development

D) process redesign

8) Edwin decided that his employees could benefit from ________, an OD technique designed to change behaviour through unstructured group interaction.

A) process consultation

B) team building

C) intergroup development

D) sensitivity training