Chapter 15 - Organizational Structure Flashcards
An _____________ formally dictates how jobs and tasks are divided and coordinated between individuals and groups within the company.
organizational structure
An _____________ is a drawing that represents every job in the organization and the formal reporting relationships between those jobs.
organizational chart
the way in which tasks in an organization are divided into separate jobs.
Work specialization
The ____________ within an organization essentially answers the question “Who reports to whom?”
chain of command
A manager’s _____________ represents how many employees they are responsible for in the organization.
span of control
___________ reflects where decisions are formally made in organizations.
Centralization
A company is high in _____________ when there are many specific rules and procedures used to standardize behaviors and decisions.
formalization
______________ are efficient, rigid, predictable, and standardized organizations that thrive in stable environments. These are typified by a structure that relies on high levels of formalization, a rigid and hierarchical chain of command, high degrees of work specialization, centralization of decision making, and narrow spans of control.
Mechanistic organizations
In contrast, ______________ are flexible, adaptive, outward-focused organizations that thrive in dynamic environments. These are typified by a structure that relies on low levels of formalization, weak or multiple chains of command, low levels of work specialization, and wide spans of control.
organic organizations
____________ is the process of creating, selecting, or changing the structure of an organization.
Organizational design
An organization’s _______________ consists of its customers, competitors, suppliers, distributors, and other factors external to the firm, all of which have an impact on organizational design.
business environment
A _____________ describes an organization’s objectives and goals and how it tries to capitalize on its assets to make money.
company strategy
An organization’s ___________ is the method by which it transforms inputs into outputs.
technology
there is a significant relationship between ___________ , or the total number of employees, and structure.
company size
___________ are perhaps the most common form of organizational design, primarily because there are more small organizations than large ones.
Simple structures
A ____________ is a flat organization with one person as the central decision-making figure; it is not large enough to have a high degree of formalization and will have only very basic differences in work specialization.
simple structure
A _______________ is an organizational form that exhibits many of the facets of the mechanistic organization. These are designed for efficiency and rely on high levels of work specialization, formalization, centralization of authority, rigid and well-defined chains of command, and relatively narrow spans of control.
bureaucratic structure
A _____________ groups employees by the functions they perform for the organization.
functional structure
In contrast to functional structures, ________________ are bureaucratic organizational forms in which employees are grouped into divisions around products, geographic regions, or clients. Each of these divisions operates relatively autonomously from the others and has its own functional groups.
multi-divisional structures
______________ group business units around different products that the company produces. Each of those divisions becomes responsible for manufacturing, marketing, and doing research and development for the products in its own division.
Product structures
______________ are generally based around the different locations where the company does business. The functions required to serve a business are placed under a manager who is in charge of a specific location.
Geographic structures
When organizations have a very large number of customers or groups of customers that all act in a similar way, they might organize their businesses around serving those customers.
Client structure
___________ are more complex designs that try to take advantage of two types of structures at the same time.
Matrix structures
The process of changing an organization’s structure is called
restructuring
