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1.
II. Organizational Designs and Employee Behavior
A. We opened this chapter by implying that an organization’s structure can have significant
effects on its members.
1. A review of the evidence leads to a pretty clear conclusion: you can’t generalize!
2. Not everyone prefers the freedom and flexibility of organic structures.
3. Different factors stand out in different structures as well.
satisfaction.
b. In more personal, individually adaptive organic organizations, employees value
interpersonal justice more.
ambiguity minimized—that is, in mechanistic structures.
5. So, any discussion of the effect of organizational design on employee behavior has to
address individual differences.
centralization.
1. The evidence generally indicates that work specialization contributes to higher
diseconomies of doing repetitive and narrow tasks overtake the economies of
specialization.
decline more quickly than in the past.
2. There is still a segment of the workforce that prefers the routine and repetitiveness of
highly specialized jobs.
job satisfaction.
b. The question, of course, is whether they represent 2 percent of the workforce or
52 percent.
personal growth and diversity.
3. It is probably safe to say no evidence supports a relationship between span of control
and employee satisfaction or performance.
quickly available at all times.
c. Consistent with several of the contingency theories of leadership discussed in
the number of employees supervised increases.
4. We find fairly strong evidence linking centralization and job satisfaction.
frustratingly ambiguous.
randomly.
personal characteristics.
2. Job candidates who prefer predictability are likely to seek out and take employment
an organic structure.
3. Thus, the effect of structure on employee behavior is undoubtedly reduced when the
selection process facilitates proper matching of individual characteristics with
organizational characteristics.
countries.
2. So consider cultural differences along with individual differences when predicting
III. Summary and Implications for Managers
A. The theme of this chapter is that an organization’s internal structure contributes to
explaining and predicting behavior.
clarifies concerns such as “What am I supposed to do?” “How am I supposed to do
it?” “To whom do I report?” and “To whom do I go if I have a problem?” shapes their
below:
1. Specialization can make operations more efficient, but remember that excessive
specialization can create dissatisfaction and reduced motivation.
autonomy.
3. Balance the advantages of virtual and boundaryless organizations against the potential
pitfalls before adding flexible workplace options.
4. Downsize your organization to realize major cost savings, and focus the company
significant negative impact on employee affect.
5. Consider the scarcity, dynamism, and complexity of the environment, and balance the
organic and mechanistic elements when designing an organizational structure.
Career OBjectives
What Structure Should I Choose?
This exercise contributes to:
Learning Objective: Identify seven elements of an organization’s structure
Learning Outcome: Discuss the factors that influence decisions about organizational structure
AACSB: Diverse and multicultural work environments; Reflective thinking
I’m running a small but growing business and need help figuring out how to keep people flexible
as we expand. What advice can you give me about designing job structures that will help
combine my success today with growth for tomorrow? —Anika
Dear Anika:
A surprising number of small businesses fail right at the point where they begin to grow. There
are many reasons, including financing deficits and competitors that copy their clever ideas.
However, a frequent problem is that the structure the company began with is simply not right for
a larger firm.
There are ways to meet the challenge. Start by looking at individual jobs and their
responsibilities. Make a list for each job. When job roles and responsibilities aren’t defined, you
do pick up a great deal of flexibility, assigning employees to tasks exactly when needed.
Unfortunately, this flexibility also means it’s hard to determine which skills are available, or to
identify gaps between planned strategy and available human resources.
Second, you may want to now define roles based on broad sets of competencies that span
multiple levels of organizational functioning. In this strategic competency model, job roles and
incentives are defined based on a clear structure. Here are the steps:
• Look at the top level and think about the future. In the competency model, you should use the
mission statement and overall organizational strategies to evaluate your organization’s future
needs.
• Once you’ve identified the organization’s future needs, figure out a smart way to assign
responsibilities to individuals. You’ll obviously need some specialization, but at the same time,
consider general skills that will be useful for both growth and long-term sustainability.
• As your business grows, identify applicants with the potential to meet future needs, and develop
employee incentives to encourage broad skills profiles. You’ll want to structure your plan so
employees increase in competency as they move up the organization chart.
The most important thing to remember is that you aren’t creating a job structure just for today—
make sure it’s ready to grow and change with your business.
Grow well!
Sources: G. W. Stevens, “A Critical Review of the Science and Practice of Competency Modeling,” Human Resource Development Review 12
(March 2013): 86–107; P. Capelli and J. R. Keller, “Talent Management: Conceptual Approaches and Practical Challenges,” Annual Review of
Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior 1 (March 2014): 305–31; and C. Fernández-Aráoz, “21st Century Talent Spotting,”
Harvard Business Review, June 2014, https://hbr.org/2014/06/21st-century-talent-spotting.
An Ethical Choice
Flexible Structures, Deskless Workplaces
This exercise contributes to:
Learning Objective: Show why managers want to create boundaryless organizations
Learning Outcome: Discuss the factors that influence decisions about organizational structure
AACSB: Ethical understanding and reasoning; Reflective thinking
Once upon a time, students fresh from business schools couldn’t wait for that first cubicle to call
home, mid-level managers aspired to an office of their own, and executives coveted the corner
office. These days, the walls are coming down. As organization structures change, so do their
physical environments. Many organizations have been trying to make the physical environment
reflect the organization structures they adopt.
At online retailer Zappos, not even the CEO wants an office, and all 1,500 employees are
organizational structure:
• Where will confidential discussions take place? In some contemporary workplace designs, ad
hoc conference rooms address the need for separate gatherings. This may not be optimal if the
walls are made of glass, if employees will feel stigmatized when called into a meeting room, or if
they become reluctant to approach human resources staff with issues because of privacy
concerns.
private by encouraging ear buds to create a sound barrier between working employees.
• How can you assure your clients of confidentiality? Even walled, soundproof rooms for virtual
or live meetings may not provide the desired level of security for clients who need to know their
business will stay on a need-to-know basis.
confusion.
Sources: S. Henn, “‘Serendipitous Interaction’ Key to Tech Firm’s Workplace Design,” NPR, March 13, 2013,
www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/03/13/174195695/serendipitous-interaction-key-to-tech-firmsworkplace-design; H. El Nasser, “What
Office? Laptops Are Workspace,” USA Today, June 6, 2012, 1B–2B; R. W. Huppke, “Thinking Outside the Cubicle,” Chicago Tribune, October
29, 2012, 2–1, 2–3; “Inside the New Deskless Office,” Forbes, July 16, 2012, 34; and E. Maltby, “My Space Is Our Space,” The Wall Street
Journal, May 21, 2012, R9.
Class Exercise
1. Pair the students for a role-playing exercise.
The Marketing Support Administrator is one of 15 employees across the company that
must be released.
Teaching Notes
This exercise is applicable to face-to-face classes or synchronous online classes such as
(http://docplayer.net/19442732-Effective-use-of-collaboration-tools-for-online-learning-jennifer-pontano-ke-anna-sk
ipwith-drexel-university-e-learning-2-0-conference-march-2011.html) for more information.
MyLab Management
Personal Inventory Assessments
Organizational Structure Assessment
MyLab Management
Try It!
Organizational Structure
If your instructor has assigned this activity, go to www.pearson.com/mylab/management to
complete the video exercise.
MyLab Management
Watch It!
ZipCar: Organizational Structure
complete the video exercise.
Myth or Science?
“Employees Can Work Just as Well from Home”
This exercise contributes to:
Learning Objective: Analyze the behavioral implications of different organizational designs
AACSB: Reflective thinking
This statement is true, but not unequivocally. Employees who work from home even part of the
time report they are happier and, as we saw in Chapter 3, happier employees are likely to be
more productive than their dissatisfied counterparts. From an organization’s perspective,
companies are realizing gains of 5 to 7 extra work hours a week for each employee working from
Although we can all think of jobs that may never be conducive to working from home (such as
many in the service industry), not all positions that could be based from home should be.
Research indicates the success of a work-from-home position depends on the job’s structure even
more than on its tasks. The amount of interdependence needed between employees within a team
others, but it is perhaps the reason that Yahoo!, Best Buy, and other corporations are reining their
employees back into the office.
The success of a work-from-home program depends on the individual, the job, and the culture of
the organization. Work from home can be satisfying for employees and efficient for
Class Exercise
1. Divide the class into groups of three to five students each.
2. Have the teams prepare a presentation on the importance of face-to-face interaction in the
workplace and the benefits of teamwork. See for example Bloomberg’s “Why Won’t
Yahoo! Let Employees Work From Home?”
-from-home.
3. Ask the teams to present their findings and ask the remainder of the class to discuss the
reasons that a firm might consider bringing employees that had been home-based back to
the office.
Teaching Notes
(http://docplayer.net/19442732-Effective-use-of-collaboration-tools-for-online-learning-jennifer-pontano-ke-anna-sk
ipwith-drexel-university-e-learning-2-0-conference-march-2011.html) for more information.
Point/Counterpoint
Open-Air Offices Inspire Creativity and Enhance Productivity
This exercise contributes to:
AACSB: Reflective thinking
Point
Eric Prum, co-founder of W&P Design in Brooklyn, NY, and the rest of his 12 coworkers share a
single room on the 4th floor of an open-air, converted warehouse. Although it can occasionally
be noisy, the layout has led to some very productive brainstorming sessions. In fact, their latest
Ray.
Aside from cost-minimization, the logic of the open-air office is that it is meant to tear down the
physical barriers between people in the workplace. The functional communication among
employees is maximized when these barriers are removed. Starting with the organization’s
functional goals in mind, an open-air workplace can be tailored so that it accomplishes these
open-air plans can reduce the amount of time spent in meetings.
Counterpoint
“Our new, modern Tribeca office was beautifully airy, and yet remarkably oppressive. Nothing
was private. On the first day, I took my seat at the table assigned to our creative department,
workplace to accommodate their level of privacy, space needs, flexibility, and to give them a
sense of autonomy in an open-office. This “action office” became mass produced and limited in
size, quality, and customizability, leading to what we would now call the modern-day cubicle.
Studies on the open-air office and “confinement” cubicles of modern offices paint a dismal
(POE) database from UC Berkeley. They found a clear disparity between satisfaction in
open-offices vs. private offices (with drastically more satisfaction with the latter). Interestingly,
they found that ease of interaction (a goal of open-office plans) was no greater in open-offices
than in private offices.
to Create an Empowering Environment at the Workplace,” Business Today, March 12, 2017, 100–6; M. Konnikova, “The Open-Office Trap,” The
New Yorker, January 7, 2014, http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-open-office-trap; P. Rosenberg and K. Campbell, “An Open
Office Experiment That Actually Worked,” Harvard Business Review, October 3, 2014; R. Saunderson, “Learning in an Open Office
Environment,” Training, January 1, 2016, 134–5; D. Ward, “Beyond the Open Office,” HR Magazine, April 1, 2015, 30–5; and M. D. Zalesny
Academy of Management Journal 30, no. 2 (1987): 240–59.
Class Exercise
1. Create debate teams of three to five students each, with half the teams in your class
assigned the Point position and the other half the Counterpoint position.
2. Ask the students to prepare to defend the position represented in the exercise, with the
regardless of the position prepared.
Teaching Notes
This exercise is applicable to face-to-face classes or synchronous online classes such as
BlackBoard 9.1, Breeze, WIMBA, and Second Life Virtual Classrooms. See
(http://www.wimba.com/solutions/higher-education/wimba_classroom_for_higher_education),
(http://go.secondlife.com/landing/education/) and
(http://docplayer.net/19442732-Effective-use-of-collaboration-tools-for-online-learning-jennifer-pontano-ke-anna-sk
ipwith-drexel-university-e-learning-2-0-conference-march-2011.html) for more information.
