Deck 7: Designing Organizations for Performance Excellence

Question 1

Functional structure make it easy to evaluate people based on a narrow but clear set of responsibilities.

Answer 1

True

Question 2

Functional structure promotes the idea that the customer is the individual whom the employee must satisfy.

Answer 2

False

Question 3

The breakup of the organization into clear functions reduces wasteful processes.

Answer 3

False

Question 4

In a functional organization, the QC department is generally responsible for collecting and maintaining quality statistics.

Question 5

Functional organizations often have separate quality control or quality assurance departments.

Question 6

In coordination mapping, each coordinating conversation between the agents moves through six phases.

Question 7

An advantage of shifting to flatter organizations is the creation of additional employment.

Question 8

Steering committees are also called quality councils.

Question 9

Job enlargement reduces fragmentation of jobs and generally results in lower production costs.

Question 10

The structural contingency model holds that there is "one best way" to organize.

Question 11

The structural contingency model holds that the choice between mechanistic and organic structures should be a function of certain contingencies pertaining to the organization's environment and technology.

Question 12

Mechanistic organizations are better suited for accomplishing straightforward tasks in a predictable environment.

Question 13

The organic organization sacrifices flexibility for reliability.

Question 14

Only a quality-oriented organization practicing continuous improvement can afford to freeze its processes by using a mechanistic structure.

Question 15

The research findings between TQ companies and non-TQ companies show that for a company to be a TQ company, it has to formally implement TQ.

Question 16

Which of the following is not an advantage of functional organizations?

A) Provides a clear chain of command
B) Allows people to specialize in the specific aspects of the work
C) Makes it easy to evaluate people
D) Promotes process improvement

Question 17

_____ processes are those that are most important to an organization's value creation processes, employees, and daily operations, but generally do not add value directly to the product or service.

A) Non-core
B) Support
C) Supplementary
D) Non value-added

Question 18

_____ processes are driven by external customer needs while _____ processes are driven by internal customer needs.

A) Core; support
B) Value-added; supplementary
C) Customer-driven; operational
D) Environmental; organizational

Question 19

_____ are generally standard flowcharts that describe a process as a sequence of steps.

A) Task-job charts
B) Organization maps
C) Process maps
D) Operations schedules

Question 20

One type of structural change associated with TQ is the creation of a high-level planning group called _____, invested with the responsibility for guiding the organization's performance excellence.

A) strategic planning group
B) steering committee
C) quality board
D) performance management team

Question 21

_____ theory holds that organizations try to succeed by creating structures that will be seen as appropriate by important external constituencies.

A) Institutional
B) Structural contingency
C) Mechanistic
D) Organic

Question 22

Which of the following is not a factor that affects how work is organized?

A) Management style
B) Customer influences
C) Company size
D) Competitor work styles

Question 23

Which of the following is true about the functional structure?

A) Fosters the feedback loop that informs employees that their work needs to be improved.
B) Quality consciousness is an organization-wide phenomenon, not restricted to quality departments.
C) Tends to motivate employees to learn about customer expectations
D) No organizational unit has control over a whole process

Question 24

Which of the following is not one of the suggestions in redesigning organizations for performance excellence?

A) Make quality everyone's job
B) Recognize internal customers
C) Consolidate hierarchy
D) Redesign work systems

Question 25

Promoting the idea of internal customer shifts the focus from _____ to _____.

A) external customer; production worker
B) manager; employee
C) supervision; management
D) vertical; horizontal

Question 26

What are core processes and support processes?

Question 27

What is the impact of promoting the idea of internal customers?

Question 28

Discuss the composition of teams in an organization.