Title: Organizational Structures
Course: Question Banks

Q: Guiseppe has been manufacturing puppets for a while, but his current crew cannot keep up with demand. Currently, each employee works on every step of the process, from cutting the wood to painting the eyes. Guiseppe’s crew can do more if each person will ________ .
- work longer hours
- become a first-class worker
- specialize in certain tasks
A: specialize in certain tasks

Q: Starbucks focuses on making coffee. By ________, they are faster, more consistent, and their production costs are lower than McDonald’s. Although they have an advantage in the coffee department, they fall well short of par in the food department.
- branding their coffee
- offering a Italian cafe experience
- specializing in making coffee
A: specializing in making coffee

Q: Valve is a software company that makes video games. Officially, all the employees report to the CEO. There are no other official managers. This means the CEO’s ________ is larger than generally recommended.
- autocracy
- portfolio
- span of control
A: span of control

Q: Homeland Security has many rules, regulations, and procedures. New employees have to learn a lot before they are ready to work alone. This is the place for someone who likes
- unstructured work
- creative work
- formalization
A: formalization

Q: As an employee, Mohammed is more comfortable when management confidently make decisions and give directions. He prefers a stable environment and enjoys working in an organization with efficient operations. He prefers an organization to have its policies, procedures, and rules written down in detail. He would fit best in a company with
- a decentralized structure
- a network structure
- a formal structure
A: a formal structure

Q: Edgar Schein, a prominent organizational psychologist, identified four key elements of an organization’s structure. Schein proposes that these elements are instrumental in defining the organization’s culture. The four elements are
- common mission, coordinated effort, specialization, and hierarchy of authority
- common value, coordination, division of labor, and scalar chain of authority
- common purpose, coordinated effort, division of labor, and hierarchy of authority
A: common purpose, coordinated effort, division of labor, and hierarchy of authority

Q: To coordinate efforts, managers must also take into account
- employees’ ambitions and aspirations
- employees’ social network
- employees’ preferences, job satisfaction, and engagement
A: employees’ preferences, job satisfaction, and engagement

Q: Nick works with a large team at a social media company. He has proposed and finished several projects which the company implemented. He has a great sense of pride in doing his job. The company has three products currently, and the sales division and marketing division are responsible for increasing product adoption. Nick works in the marketing division and often gets marketing campaign ideas from talking with the customer service division and the salespeople. He enjoys the information communication in the company. Nick works for a company with a:
- product departmentalization structure
- mechanistic structure
- functional departmentalization structure
A: functional departmentalization structure

Q: Burger King is a fast-food restaurant with locations around the world. Because of the cultural and legal differences between countries, the restaurant management uses
- a product departmentalization
- a customer departmentalization
- a geographic departmentalization
A: a geographic departmentalization

Q: Matrix organizations have a design that:
- is created in response to a changing and uncertain environment
- arises organically when the hierarchy is not well-defined
- allows product managers to have control over product-related matters, and functional department managers to have authority over policy relating to their function, such as accounting
A: allows product managers to have control over product-related matters, and functional department managers to have authority over policy relating to their function, such as accounting

Q: Departmentalization often leads to the problem of silos. Employees in different departments do not talk to each other regularly. Issues between departments go up the management chain for senior management to resolve. A ________ fixes this by giving each employee two managers with different specialties.
- functional structure
- customer structure
- matrix structure
A: matrix structure

Q: Procter & Gamble is a consumer products company. It launches many new products every year. The people who develop each new product must understand consumer tastes, distribution, manufacturing, marketing, accounting, and legal issues. P&G uses teams because the group members
- share a common function, and can work independently and synergistically
- are not rewarded for the group’s success and face independent constraints
- share a common goal with interdependent constraints that can be overcome by their synergy
A: share a common goal with interdependent constraints that can be overcome by their synergy

Q: A ________ structure tries to borrow the flexibility of a social system. The goal of this structure is to achieve rapid organizational evolution and adaptation to constantly changing external and internal environments.
- team
- modular
- network
A: network

Q: Wharton professor Jerry Wind “believe[s] that digital networks are the key differentiator, [and] enable new forms of sharing, distributed intelligence and value creation.” In his model, Uber and AirBnB are platforms for the collaborative economy and ________ organizations.
- modular
- Internet
- network
A: network

Q: Procter & Gamble has fickle customers and needs to rapidly innovate new products. It benefits from implementing
- a functional organization, where specialists can improve their skills
- a geographic organization for lower transportation and distribution costs
- a matrix organization to manage a wide variety of demographic-specific products or services
A: a matrix organization to manage a wide variety of demographic-specific products or services

Q: The Social Security Administration has a long-standing role managing the Social Security benefits required by law. Its environment is stable, and employees follow rules and rarely need to innovate. The organization uses
- matrix structure
- a network organization
- functional departmentalization
A: functional departmentalization

Q: The job characteristics model argues that ________ can lead to high-quality performance, high internal motivation, and high satisfaction.
- job titles, task identity, mastery, and purpose
- skill variety, autonomy, mastery, and purpose
- skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback
A: skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback

Q: An instructor who is free to choose the textbook, design the course content, and use any relevant materials when delivering lectures has high levels of
- feedback
- task significance
- autonomy
A: autonomy

Q: Like people, organizations change as they age and grow. Each growth stage encompasses an evolutionary phase of growth and a revolutionary phase. Dr. Greiner’s model uses five phases:
- creativity, control, delegation, coordination, and consolidation
- calculate, create, delegate, coordinate, and consolidate
- creativity, direction, delegation, coordination, and collaboration
A: creativity, direction, delegation, coordination, and collaboration

Q: After a new company has developed a customer base, management needs to build more structure into the organization. In Greiner’s model, the ________ will focus on accounting, and capital management will drive most business decisions.
- coordination phase
- control phase
- direction phase
A: direction phase

Q: Nick works with a large team at a social media company. He has proposed and finished several projects which the company funded and completed. He has a great sense of pride in doing his job. He has worked with the company for four years now but has yet to see a promotion. Nick works for a company with a:
- tall hierarchy structure
- formal structure
- flat hierarchy structure
A: flat hierarchy structure

Q: IBM’s credit department reduced 4 positions to one and shortened the processing time for credit requests. This flatter organization structure resulted in
- more standardization
- a better division of labor
- greater productivity
A: greater productivity

Q: The traditional hierarchical structure uses rules and procedures to standardize decisions. Some companies decide to trust the employees and to give them the authority to make decisions, even mistakes. This is called
- standardizing activities
- customer-friendly management
- empowering the employee
A: empowering the employee

Q: The Ritz Carlton is a luxury hotel chain. The Ritz has calculated that the lifetime value of a customer is a quarter million dollars. To keep customers happy and coming back, they
- tell employees to call a manager if they need authorization for solving customer problems
- expect employees to find a solution without additional resources
- empower employees to spend $2000 per incident to help out customers, without asking a manager
A: empower employees to spend $2000 per incident to help out customers, without asking a manager

Q: ________ include reduced workload (part time), compressed work weeks, and remote work (telework). For example, working from home can save employees 10 hours or more of commuting time each week.
- Partial layoffs
- Traditional hierarchical structures
- Flexible work arrangements
A: Flexible work arrangements

Q: Freddie Mac, a financial services company, in Virginia allows job-sharing, which means two people share a job that is normally one full-time job. Each person works part-time, 3 days per week. Freddie Mac keeps specialist skills that are hard to replace, and the two employees keep their careers on track. What is this an example of?
- a cost-saving measure for the business
- a flat organizational structure
- a flexible work arrangement
A: a flexible work arrangement