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8.1 Why is it important for managers to align a company’s vision and strategies
with its organizational culture and structure?
To implement a particular strategy, managers must determine the right kind of
8.2 How do I find out about an organization’s “social glue,” its normal way of
doing business?
You would first need to understand the organization’s culture. Is it clan,
adhocracy, market or hierarchy based? In order to understand the culture more
8.3 What can be done to an organization’s culture to increase its economic
performance?
There are a dozen ways to change an organization’s culture to increase its
economic performance. These include formal statements; slogans and sayings;
8.4 How are for-profit, nonprofit, and mutual-benefit organizations structured?
CHALLENGE: MAJOR QUESTIONS
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Organizations are structured via horizontal and vertical methods. The vertical
hierarchy of authority means who reports to whom (chain of command), and the
8.5 When I join an organization, what seven elements should I look for?
8.6 How would one describe the three types of organizational design?
First, traditional designs tend to favor structures that rely on a vertical management
hierarchy, with clear departmental boundaries and reporting arrangements. These
8.7 What factors affect the design of an organization’s structure?
Three factors that should be considered when determining the best organizational
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1. Using the competing values framework as a point of reference, how would you
describe the current organizational culture at IDEO? Provide examples to
support your conclusions.
IDEO seems to have a clan culture, which has an internal focus and values
flexibility. For example, leaders at IDEO prove their conviction by giving and
2. What type of culture is desired by Tim Brown to meet his goals? Does the
company have this type of culture? Discuss.
It is quite obvious that Tim Brown desires a clan culture. It is internally focused
3. Which of the 12 ways to embed organizational culture has IDEO used to create
its current culture? Provide examples to support your conclusions.
IDEO surely utilizes role modeling, training and coaching, and measurable and
controllable activities. When it comes to role modeling, training and coaching,
4. Does Tim Brown want to create more of a mechanistic or organic organization?
Explain the rationale for his preference.
MANAGEMENT IN ACTION: IDEO’s Culture Reinforces
Helping Behavior
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Tim Brown wants a more organic organization. In an organic organization,
5. What is the most important lesson from this case? Discuss.
It is important to see that when a firm produces the best work possible for clients,
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.
Is Apple’s Culture Going Too Far?
Stealing, better known as shortage (or shrinkage) in the retail industry, is a big problem
for this economic sector. While people steal from their employers for many reasons,
this challenge involves a practice that Apple has used to reduce theft.
Two former Apple retail store employees sued the company claiming that “they were
owed up to $1,500 in annual overtime, waiting each workday to have a manager check
SOLVING THE CHALLENGE
What would you do if you were an executive at Apple?
1. Continue to fight the lawsuit because it is a class action suit that could cost a lot
of money.
Fighting the lawsuit will cost a lot as well. Not just the money that is needed to
2. Fight this lawsuit, but change the policy in the future. I want the company to be
more clannish and adhocracy, and this policy is contrary to these cultural types.
Fighting the lawsuit will continue to build up public resentment and cost the
LEGAL/ETHICAL CHALLENGE
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3. Settle the lawsuit. Yes, it will cost money, but the company is sitting on a
stockpile of cash. This action will also show goodwill while reinforcing aspects of
Apple’s clan culture.
Apple should settle the lawsuit. It has the means to pay for this, and wasting the
time of employees, including many hourly employees, when you are making
4. Invent other options.
Apple can change its policy whereas employees clock-out after they have been
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.
Group Exercise #1: Designing an Organization
Objectives
• To experiment with designing and operating an organization.
Introduction1
An organization is a system of consciously coordinated activities of two or more people.
There are four characteristics common to all organizations (hierarchy of authority,
Instructions
In this exercise, students form organizations and compete with other organizations. The
success of each organization depends on the group’s objectives, planning, organization
structure, workflow and quality control.
1. Break students into groups of 6. Each group should nominate an observer. The
2. Give the groups the following assignment:
Group assignments: Your company manufactures words into meaningful sentences.
Your company is highly competitive as there is great demand for quality sentences.
Your company therefore focuses on competing in two areas: volume and quality.
The Rules:
• A letter in the word can be used more than once in a sentence, (see the example
above) but only once in a word.
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• A generated word can only be used once in the same sentence. For example,
you cannot say: “Al was way, way, way.”
3. The word is: hollandaise (feel free to use your own word-it might also be fun to
assign each group a different word).
4. Give the groups 15 minutes to plan their organizational structures and practice
making words.
5. Once planning time is complete, give the group 20 minutes to generate as many
Questions for Discussion
1. What was effective within each organization?
2. How did the winning group design its organization?
3. What was the winning group’s strategy?
4. What has this exercise taught you about the effectiveness of organizations?
Source:
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Group Exercise #2: Establishing Organizational Culture and Structure
Objectives
• To learn more about organizational structures.
Introduction
Instructions
Break into groups of five or six people. Your first task is to start your own organization.
Your organization can be anything from a baseball team to a car company to a bank.
Once you have determined what type of organization your group wants to create, the
group needs to establish the organizational values that will underlie your organization’s
culture. Once the values are established, we want you to propose two different
organizational structures. Begin by examining the types of organizational structures
covered in the text. Your first organizational chart should represent your proposed
structure at the beginning of your organization’s inception. The second organization
chart should represent the structure of your organization once it has 300 or more
employees.
Questions for Discussion
1. What are your organization’s values? Explain why they were chosen.
2. Map your organization’s values using the competing values framework presented
in your textbook. What type of culture have you created?
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T
Whole Foods Market
Teaching Objective: To illustrate the organizational culture of a major U.S. company
that has influenced an entire industry
Summary: By offering fresh, natural, and organic foods, Whole Foods Market grew
Questions:
1. Which type of organizational culture would you say is dominant at Whole Foods
Market?
Answer: Whole Foods exhibits a clan culture, which emphasizes concern for
employees. A family-type organization, it strives for job satisfaction to encourage
2. How does Whole Foods exhibit its culture at each of the three levels of
organizational culture?
Answer:
• Observable artifacts: Whole Foods builds energy-efficient stores, calls
employees “team members,” displays photos and information about local
3. Which perspective to enhancing economic performance does Whole Foods CEO
Mackey express? Will this perspective enable the company to meet its challenges?
VIDEO CASE
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Answer: Mackey expresses the fit perspective. His company aligns its culture,
Additional videos directly related to the textbook can be found in the Connect
Instructor’s Manual.
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Students may complete the ““Work–Life Balance” Manager’s Hot Seat exercises in
Connect for this chapter.
I. Introduction
Many organizations recognize the need for work-life balance. This scenario
II. Learning Objectives
1) To recognize the need and importance for employees to balance work and
III. Scenario Description
Overview: Samantha Peters, Technical Director at Quantum Gaming, a video–
game company, is conducting a scheduling meeting where she must ask
employees to put in a serious amount of extra hours to meet a valued customer’s
Profile:
• Samantha Peters—Technical Director, Quantum Gaming—has been a
Technical Director at Quantum Gaming for 12 years, managing a creative
force of 40 people.
MANAGER’S HOT SEAT
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• Miranda Cortez—Animator, Quantum Gaming—started working in the team
two years ago after returning from unpaid maternity leave. Before that she
Back History: Company culture at Quantum Gaming is falling apart. The
employees feel overextended on a regular basis. In the past seven months,
there have been no fewer than three projects which have pushed the team
beyond capacity:
▪ The Back-to-School educational-games project ran over schedule due
to “miscommunication” with the client; Quantum Gaming had failed to
meet spec requirements. The fall-out from this situation included
Recently, four employees have quit. Among them, Linda Kramer and
Doug Courtier cited stress, exhaustion, and “pathetic recompense” as the
key reasons. Mat Parsons checked into rehab for a substance abuse
problem after breaking down at the end of the multi-player online games
project. Chronic insomnia and a state of hypertension had forced him
over the edge.
Scene Set-up:
Peters arranges a 10am meeting with one of her teams to discuss working
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changes include an overhaul of the design look and a reworking of the
character’s special features.
In the meeting, the talking points will be:
• The number of extra hours needed to meet the team’s deadline two
weeks from now—Peters will request they work evenings/early
mornings and over the weekend.
Scene Location: Conference room at Quantum Gaming.
The Meeting—Summary:
Samantha begins the meeting by telling her team that they are going to
have work extra hard the next two weeks to finish some last minute
changes that Arcadian is demanding. The team is immediately outraged
Afterthoughts—Summary:
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Samantha recognizes that she has a disgruntled staff and that they have
just cause for their concerns. She believes the meeting was somewhat of
IV. Discussion Questions
Leaning Objective #1: To recognize the need and importance for workers to
balance work and family/life.
Why is it important for Quantum Gaming workers to ask for a balance between
work demands and their life? Why is it a smart move on the part of Quantum
Gaming to help workers strike this balance?
Student discussion will vary based on students’ own lives and experiences.
Leaning Objective #2: To analyze the influences of corporate culture.
What is the corporate culture of Quantum Gaming based on the meeting? Is this
a place where you would like to work? Why or why not?
Corporate culture is a set of values, attitudes, and philosophies, and it varies
from one organization to the next. For Quantum Gaming, the organization clearly
values their bottom line more than the mental well-being of their employees. If it
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probably wouldn’t enjoy the working conditions at Quantum Gaming, some will
thrive it in.
Leaning Objective #3: To identify effective approaches for delivering
negative news?
How effective was Samantha’s approach in delivering the negative news?
One effective approach for delivering negative news is to describe the situation,
before she even announces it.