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Q: There are two major rationales for why we organize (Jones):

1. Division of labor . When there are complex tasks, organizations help chop it into smaller blocks that specialists can focus on. 2. Coordination of tasks. Organizations help to coordinate between these different tasks in order for specialists to not only fulfill their own piece, but to fulfill the pieces such that the other specialists can also contribute to it.

Q: There are two different archetypes of organizations that allow organizations to achieve certain aims (Jones):

1. Mechanistic organizational structure (manufacturing firm) - Individual specialization with clear tasks - Simple integration, mainly through hierarchy - Strong centralization of authority and control - High level of standardization - Tall hierarchy 2. Organic organizational structures (consultancy) - Joint specialization with ad hoc coordination - Complex integration, with special purpose teams - Strong decentralization as authority and control are delegated - Mutual adjustment - Flat hierarchy

Q: If people engage in collective value generation, then there are three main things that need to be accomplished:

1. Control -> Control that everyone is doing what they are supposed to do. 2. Integrate -> Integrate different components and different tasks that everyone carries out between one another. 3. Motivate -> Motivate people in order for them to actually do what they are supposed to and want to do the best they possibly can.

Q: If the six Weber’s principles of bureaucracy are fulfilled, an organization should achieve organizational objectives (controlling, integrating, and motivating). The six Weber’s principles of bureaucracy are:

1. Authority hierarchy (positions are organized in a clear chain of command hierarchy) 2. Job specializations (jobs are broken down into simple, routine and well-defined tasks) 3. Formal rules and regulations (to ensure uniformity and to guide the actions of employees) 4. Career orientation (managers are professionals rather than owners) 5. Formal selection (members are selected based on qualifications) 6. Impersonality (all rules and controls are applied uniformly, not according to personalities or personal preferences)

Q: Hierarchy of authority helps accomplish the primary three tasks.

Control (probe subordinates, direct observation, prevent freeriding) Integrate (continuous task-assignment and managing relations) Motivate (mentoring and professional development, immediate feedback and performance-based rewards)

41 important questions on Lectures + exam questions

There are two major rationales for why we organize (Jones):

1. Division of labor. When there are complex tasks, organizations help chop it into smaller blocks that specialists can focus on.
2. Coordination of tasks. Organizations help to coordinate between these different tasks in order for specialists to not only fulfill their own piece, but to fulfill the pieces such that the other specialists can also contribute to it.

An organization is a very basic concept that help convert inputs and some sort of desired output. They help creating structure a certain environment in which tasks are being completed that take raw materials into goods, for instance or skills of experts and convert them into complex services. There are primarily four different ways in which an organization can be structured (Jones). This designs the process of coordination and splitting up of tasks.

1. Differentiation vs. integration
2. Centralization vs. decentralization
3. Standardization vs. mutual adjustment
4. Organizational culture

There are two different archetypes of organizations that allow organizations to achieve certain aims (Jones):

1. Mechanistic organizational structure (manufacturing firm)
- Individual specialization with clear tasks
- Simple integration, mainly through hierarchy
- Strong centralization of authority and control - High level of standardization
- Tall hierarchy
2. Organic organizational structures (consultancy)
- Joint specialization with ad hoc coordination
- Complex integration, with special purpose teams
- Strong decentralization as authority and control are delegated
- Mutual adjustment
- Flat hierarchy

If people engage in collective value generation, then there are three main things that need to be accomplished:

1. Control -> Control that everyone is doing what they are supposed to do.
2. Integrate -> Integrate different components and different tasks that everyone carries out between one another.
3. Motivate -> Motivate people in order for them to actually do what they are supposed to and want to do the best they possibly can.

There are two primary means by which an organization can accomplish these three primary objectives:

1. Formal organization (structure)
2. Informal organization (culture) These two primary means also interrelate and are somewhat conditioning one another. It is crucial to align both the formal and the informal organization.

If the six Weber’s principles of bureaucracy are fulfilled, an organization should achieve organizational objectives (controlling, integrating, and motivating). The six Weber’s principles of bureaucracy are:

1. Authority hierarchy (positions are organized in a clear chain of command hierarchy)
2. Job specializations (jobs are broken down into simple, routine and well-defined tasks)
3. Formal rules and regulations (to ensure uniformity and to guide the actions of employees) 4. Career orientation (managers are professionals rather than owners)
5. Formal selection (members are selected based on qualifications)
6. Impersonality (all rules and controls are applied uniformly, not according to personalities or personal preferences)

Hierarchy of authority helps accomplish the primary three tasks.

Control (probe subordinates, direct observation, prevent freeriding)
Integrate (continuous task-assignment and managing relations)
Motivate (mentoring and professional development, immediate feedback and performance-based rewards)

Mechanistic organizational structures are typically well developed for environments with a very low degree of uncertainty. Resources can be easily acquired. Preferences of the customers are clear. To make a mechanistic organization structure successful, the following adaptations must be made:

Centralized decision making
Standardization by use of SOP

Organic structures are very well adapted to highly uncertain environments. An organization needs to respond quickly to the environment. To make an organic organization structure successful, the following adaptations must be made:

Decentralized decision making
Mutual adjustment

Divisional structure pros & cons

+ Clear division of responsibilities.
+ Increased efficiency focus.
+ Avoid information overload.
+ Diversification of risks.
+ International markets
- Difficult managing the relationship between headquarter/divisions.
- Integration between divisions.
- How to set the transfer price.
- Bureaucratic costs.
- Communication problems because it is a tall hierarchy.
- Slowing innovation

Matrix structure pros & cons

+ Reduce subunit orientation.
+ Allows communication/collaboration between specialists of different functional areas.
+ The combination of functions (vertical) and products (horizontal) promotes concern for both cost and quality.
+ Promote innovation and facilitates the adaptation to changing environments.
- Matrix lacks a control structure that leads employees to develop stable expectations of one another.
- Conflicts between functions and product teams over the use of resources.
- People are likely to experience a vacuum of authority and responsibility.
- People create their own informal organization to provide themselves with some sense of structure and stability.

Culture is the collective programming of the human mind that distinguishes the members of one human group from those of another. Culture in this sense is a system of collectively held. Culture can be nested at different levels:

National culture
Industry culture
Organizational culture

A culture has different layers of culture. On the top levels the visible layers of culture are visible. On the lower levels the layers are not invisible:

Artefacts (surface level) -> Tangible aspects that can be seen, heard and observed (slogan, company name, visible set-up of offices).
Espoused values and norms (middle) -> Shared principles, standards and goals. It is about what people say they or others “should do”.
Assumptions (deepest level) -> taken for granted beliefs about human nature, “reality”. Often unspoken and typically reside out of immediate awareness. Discerned from how people explain and justify what they do.

A distinction can be made between two primary orientations that organizations can take towards socializing their employees to bringing the employees into the organizational culture:

1. Institutionalized role orientation -> Respond to a new context in the same way that existing organizational members do. All employees behave in the same way (for example a hotel).
2. Individualized role orientation -> Be creative and experiment with changing norms and values. Employees will not feel restrained and think out of the box.

A strong culture has a few risks:

Values, norms, and accepted behavior may be misaligned with the company’s environment. It is not well suited in the competitive market
Strong culture makes it really hard to change if the internal or external environment changes.

Hypocrisy attribution dynamic

is when employees identify with a culture, the more attuned they are to violations. If leaders fail to uphold the culture this can trigger a deidentification spiral in employees, leading to organizational cynicism and the demise of a culture.

Espoused values -> What members of an organization say they value.
Enacted values -> What is reflected in the actual behaviors of the members of an organization.

When you observe individuals within an organic organization responding to a new situation in a very similar way independently from one another; what most accurately describes the organizations' socialization process outcome?

Institutionalized role orientation

Which culture-structure combination is the most likely to enable organizational members to flexibly respond to changing environmental conditions?

Weak organizational culture and a decentralized structure

Value-chain cycle Strategy

is a specific pattern of decisions and actions that managers take to use core competencies to achieve competitive advantage and outperform competitors. Strategy helps defining how an organization can turn resources into competitive advantage. The value-chain cycle is a visualization of this process.

There is a clear distinguish between two types of business level strategy:

1. Differentiation strategy -> Relates to more organic forms of organizational design. There is a higher integration, differentiation, and decentralized decision making.
2. Low cost strategy -> Cost efficiently as possible. There is a simple structure and centralized decision making (car manufacturing industry).

Business level strategy and culture support individual behavior that aligns with the business level goals.

Which function typically has the most organic structure?

R&D

Technology is the combination of skills, knowledge, abilities techniques, materials, machines, computers, tools, and other equipment that people use to convert or change raw materials, problems, and new ideas into valuable goods and services. There are two faces of technology that can be distinguished:

1. Narrower sense -> Information and communication technology (hard- and software).
2. Wider sense -> All production (tools or machinery).

The four types of technology (connected with task complexity):

1. Routine manufacturing -> Low variability + high analyzability
2. Craftwork -> Low variability + low analyzability (small batch)
3. Engineering production -> High variability + high analyzability
4. Non-routine research -> High variability + low analyzability

The three types of technology (connected with task interdependence):

1. Mediating -> Standardization (piecework). Input, converting and output can work independent from one another. Task interdependence is low. Examples are banks or store chain.
2. Long linked -> Planning and scheduling (just-in-time assembly). Input, converting and output must be planned in series. Activities affects others. Any error that occurs in the beginning of the process becomes magnified.
3. Intensive -> Mutual adjustment (R&D). Input, converting and output is inseparable. A high degree of coordination is necessary.

Organizational decision making is the process of responding to a problem by searching for and selecting a solution or course of action that will create value for organizational stakeholders. There are three models for organizational decision making:

1. Rational model
2. Carnegie model
3. Unstructured model

The rational process is when all knowing managers made decisions which allow the organization to adjust perfectly to the environment. It is about attaining economical goals by behaving rationally. The rational model contains of three stages:

1. Identify and define the problem.
2. Generate alternative solutions to the problem.
3. Select solution and implement it.

The problem of the rational model is that it does not allow bad decisions to be made. It assumes that decision makers are perfect, but this is not realistic.

Carnegie model The Carnegie model is built around four pillars:

1. Bounded rationality and uncertainty. Decision makers are constrained by available information, knowledge, time, and not rational.
2. Multiple interest. There are conflicting goals, interests and knowledge. Individual versus organizational goals.
3. Standardized procedures and rules
4. Decision making structure

There are three different strategies for organizational learning:

1. Exploration -> Experimentation with new activities or procedures.
2. Exploitation -> Try to improve existing activities/procedures.
3. Listening to dissenters -> Managers surround themselves with people who hold opposing points of view to collect new information to evaluate new alternatives.
Cognitive biases can disturb organizational learning. Cognitive bias is the system of interrelated beliefs, preferences, expectations, and values a person (or group) uses to define problems and events.

Innovators are intrapreneurs (innovation inside the organization) and entrepreneurs (innovation outside the organization). The common foundation for both is creativity and creative destruction. There are two basic types of innovation that can be distinguished:

1. Quantum (radical, revolutionary, blue ocean, the first iPhone)
2. Incremental (continuous, evolutionary, red ocean, new models of iPhones)

What is a statement regarding the unstructured model of decisionmaking

The unstructured model can be developed as a way to deal with environmental uncertainty

What is an example of organizational learning that involves exploration?

An automobile manufacturer enters into a strategic alliance

There are two different organizational change approaches:

1. Revolutionary change is a bold attempt to quickly find new ways to be effective. Radical shift in processes, goals and structure. It is often when an organization does something new. Revolutionary change is structural, fundamental, organization wide, fast and goes with big steps.
2. Evolutionary change is a constant attempt to improve, adapt, and adjust strategy and structure. It is about doing the same thing but better. Evolutionary change is structural and behavioral, incremental, focused, slow and gradual.

Lewin’s three-step change process Lewin’s three-step change process describes three steps within an organization change process:

1. Unfreeze stage -> (diagnose + plan) People need to be disconnected from the current state by making awareness for change or inspire for change.
2. Change -> (implementing change)
3. Refreeze -> (evaluate

Natural selection takes place in a certain environment (ecology). This could be:

Technological
Social
Physical environment

Natural selection is a process with different stages: 1. Variation (different types of organizations exist)
2. Selection (some organizations perform better than the others/ These are the organizations that are best adapted to the environment)
3. Retention (organizations that are not performing good, extinct)

Within organizations in which institutional organization is important, organizations become more similar over time. Organizational isomorphism is the process by which organizations in a population become similar. There are three mechanisms:

1. Coercive isomorphism -> Organizational similarity that results from both formal and informal pressures.
2. Mimetic isomorphism -> Organizations within a certain field start to copy each other.
3. Normative isomorphism -> Informal rules (Code of Conduct)

The shift to online teaching at the start of the COVID-19 crisis can be characterized as a?

Revolutionary change (Jones) or a Bold stroke (Burnes)

What are the typical organizational development (OD) participation and influencing tactics?

Education & Communication

Conflict is the clash that occurs when the goal-directed behavior of one group blocks or spoils the goals of another group. This happens between and within organizations. There are two views on conflict in organizations:

1. Pluralistic (conflict) -> Organizations as arena, multiple stakeholders and conflicting interests.
2. Unitary (harmony)-> Organization as one social system, shared goals/values and organization is instrumental for achieving goals.

Politics are the activities taken within the organization to acquire, develop and use power. It is about obtaining one’s preferred outcomes in a situation in which there is uncertainty or disagreement about choice. There are two perspectives on organizational politics:

1. Machiavellian (pursue of own interests, evil-way)
2. Necessary (overcome discrepancies, consensus)

The difference between power and politics is that power is something you have and politics is the process of applying this power.

What is the difference between politics and power?

Power relates to the ability, politics to the active application of this ability.

What is the Machiavellian perspective on organizational politics?

It assumes that organizational actors pursue their own interests, while seeking to manipulate others.

The question on the page originate from the summary of the following study material:

Organizational Theory & design

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