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Chapter 11 - Organizational Structure
Questions for Discussion
1. Explain each traditional organizational structure.
A simple organization is a structure in which there is an owner and a few employees and
where the arrangement of tasks, responsibilities, and communication is highly informal and
.
2. Select a company you have worked for or research one in the business press that uses one
of these traditional structures. How well suited is the structure to the needs and strategy of the
organization? What seems to work well, and what doesn’t?
3. What organizations do you think are most likely to use product-team structures? Why?
A firm that needs to be highly customer responsive would benefit from the product-team
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whole or part.
Chapter 11 - Organizational Structure
4. Identify an organization that operated like a twentieth-century organization but has now
adopted a structure that manifests twenty-first-century characteristics. Explain how you see or
detect the differences.
General Electric is one organization that used to operate with a twentieth-century approach,
focusing on its products and on innovation of those products, but having more of an internal
5. How would you use one or more of the ways to improve traditional structures to improve the
company you last worked in? Explain what might result.
Student responses will vary depending on the last organizations they worked in. Still, every
6. What organization are you familiar with that you would consider the most agile, virtual
organization? Why?
Student responses will vary based on personal experience and familiarity with today’s
7. What situation have you personally seen outsourcing benefit?
8. What “boundary” would you first eliminate or change in an organization you are familiar
with? Explain what you would do to eliminate it or change it and how that should make
it more effective.
Student responses will vary based upon the organization they are familiar with. They would
9. What would be the advantages of a corporate lattice type organization? Are there
disadvantages? How is it similar or different from the “grapevine” notion?
horizontal, and diagonal directions.
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whole or part.
Chapter 11 - Organizational Structure
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whole or part.
