The good design principles and tests - Specialization, co-ordination, and unit boundaries

7 important questions on The good design principles and tests - Specialization, co-ordination, and unit boundaries

What are the consequences of creating units?

Development of specialist skills, and coordination challenges

Unit boundaries should be defined to achieve the most important benefits from specialization (f.e. customer/product/functional). Skills and resources develop around responsibilities. Name 2 examples:

-Smith: an org. with 10 employees could make 10 times as many pins as 10 individuals on their own (aansluitpunten?)
-Boston consulting group: 1) Cost of producing an item is relative, 2) group responsibilities that will insure the development of specialist skills that are important for the organization's success.

Units should be defined so that the activities that most need to be coordinated fall within unit boundaries. Name 4 reasons why coordination within a unit is better than across:

1 By paying attention to overall objectives of the unit, overlooking opportunities for coordination and alignment within the units is less likely
2 Managers in charge have authority to insist on coordination (promise promotion, develop team-spirit)
3 Attention is given to one unit, more time to monitor coordination issues
4 One manager can make speedily and effectively decisions
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A problem of broadly defined business is that they may prevent the sub-units from developing skills or making decisions that would be optimal for their own activities. Name the solution for this problem: 

The solution is to give attention to 'autonomy needs' associated with specialization and the 'difficult links' associated with coordination.

What's the objective of the specialization and coordination principle?

How to group responsibilities into units and what links to be established (autonomy needs, and difficult link management)

When there is insufficient decentralization, and a unit needs to be managed in a different way than the larger organization it has 'autonomy needs': it needs to be protected from possible contamination (besmetting) and needs freedom to make its own dicisions. Which 3 reasons for autonomy are there according to G&C?

1 The Critical Success Factors (CSF) are different from the rest of the organization
2 Task-incompatibility: specialized only in one task
3 Preference of customers: product/service must be distinguishable

The specialist culture test (do any specialist cultures, units with cultures that need to be different from sister units and the layers above, have sufficient protection from the influence of the dominant culture?) identifies the autonomy needs. What does the test involve?

1. Listing all units with cultures that need to be different from the dominant culture.
2. Assessing whether the specialist culture is in danger of being dominated
3. Adding to or chaning the design so as to provice more protection where needed
4. Deciding whether any of the risks to the exposed specialist cultures are knock-out factors.
>> Purpose is to identify parts that need more independence than the design currently allows.

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