Deck 9: Organizations: Effectiveness, Design, and Cultures

Question 1

According to Kent Thiry, CEO of DaVita, good management requires leaders to hide their uncertainties.

Answer 1

False

Question 2

With open-system thinking, environmental influences and external factors are largely ignored.

Answer 2

False

Question 3

During is company meetings with more than 400 employees, Kent Thiry, CEO of DaVita, builds trust with his employees when he responds, "I don't know. I'll have to get back to you on that." And he follows through to find an answer.

Answer 3

True

Question 4

Both managerial and technical subsystems are part of the open-system model of a business.

Question 5

The purpose of the management process is achieving organizational objectives in an effective and efficient manner.

Question 6

An organization chart is a visual display of an organization's positions and lines of authority.

Question 7

Horizontal specialization and vertical hierarchy are the two basic dimensions of an organization chart.

Question 8

Division of labor is a characteristic common to all organizations.

Question 9

In the open-system model of a business, the boundary-spanning subsystem is directed inward toward the relationship between management and labor.

Question 10

The chain of command is also known as the hierarchy of authority.

Question 11

Organizations are systems made up of interacting subsystems.

Question 12

The production function is the same as the managerial subsystem in the open-system model of a business.

Question 13

According to the traditional organizational theory, responsibility can be delegated but not authority.

Question 14

A company public relations director holds a boundary-spanning job.

Question 15

Division of labor is established by vertical hierarchy.

Question 16

Open-system thinking is part of the modern view of organizations as it includes the dynamic interaction between and organization and its environment.

Question 17

By definition, organizations are technological rather than social entities.

Question 18

Authority is the right to direct the actions of others.

Question 19

When viewing a business as an open system, both inputs and outputs should be considered.

Question 20

Coordination of effort, common purpose, division of labor, and hierarchy of authority are all necessary before an organization is said to exist.

Question 21

According to management author James D. Thompson, grouping jobs through departmentalization is a cost-effective way to handle coordination.

Question 22

W. Edward Deming's PDCA cycle stands for: Plan-Do-Check-Act.

Question 23

The three stages in David A. Garvin's model of organizational learning are cognition, behavior, and performance.

Question 24

The boundary-spanning subsystem serves as a bridge between the technical and managerial subsystems.

Question 25

Efficiency is a measure of whether or not organizational objectives are accomplished.

Question 26

Contingency design is based on the assumption that there is no single best way to structure an organization.

Question 27

W. Edward Deming's PDCA cycle is an excellent tool for learning through systematic experimentation.

Question 28

Profitability is the only acceptable criterion of organizational effectiveness.

Question 29

When a company implements a wider span of control for their managers they are reducing administrative costs and increasing self-management.

Question 30

Mercy medical center is organized with the following departments: nursing, housekeeping, administration, food service, radiology, accounting, records, and billing. This is an example of customer classification departments.

Question 31

At Sky Factory, there are no managers, anyone can assume the leadership role in any given situation. This is an example of a mechanistic organization.

Question 32

At Shoppers Super Stores, decision making is retained by top management in the corporate office including all personnel and product related decisions. Shoppers Super Stores is an example of a decentralized organization.

Question 33

An organization must be adaptive and capable of developing in the intermediate future.

Question 34

Learning from organizational experience and history is a skill companies must have in order to thrive.

Question 35

When a manager delegates to an employee, the manager is giving up both authority and responsibility.

Question 36

Organizational effectiveness refers to being effective, efficient, satisfying, adaptive and developing, and ultimately surviving.

Question 37

Tom Burns and G.M. Stalker categorized organizations by their level of effectiveness.

Question 38

According to David A. Garvin's model of the learning organization, the only learning skill organizations need is "continuous improvement."

Question 39

Change is the only certainty for today's managers.

Question 40

Today, more companies are following the organic organizational model in an effort to thrive in an unstable and uncertain business climate.

Question 41

By definition, organizations are ____ entities.

A) legal
B) social
C) political
D) corporate
E) for-profit

Question 42

By definition, how many people does it take to make an organization?

A) Two or more
B) One or more
C) More than fifty
D) More than twenty
E) At least six

Question 43

The organization's mission statement fully explains its culture.

Question 44

Subculture elitism and an inward focus are two symptoms of a weak organizational culture.

Question 45

The transformation of outsiders into insiders is achieved through organizational socialization.

Question 46

Symbolism plays a large part in organizational culture.

Question 47

The purpose of the management process is

A) to manage people.
B) to make a profit
C) to be the best that there is.
D) to achieve organizational objectives.
E) zero defects.

Question 48

Personal values and organizational values are essentially the same.

Question 49

"Two heads are sometimes better than one" describes which of these characteristics of organizations?

A) Coordination of effort
B) Division of labor
C) Hierarchy of authority
D) Span of control
E) Equal authority and responsibility

Question 50

Organizational culture is the "social glue" that binds an organization's members together.

Question 51

Actual behavior is what really counts in organizational culture, not stories of past situations.

Question 52

______________________ is one of the ways that Kent Thiry, CEO of DaVita fosters an organizational culture that values trust and learning.

A) Happy talk all the time
B) Zero tolerance for confrontation
C) Restricting questions during town meetings
D) Admitting his uncertainties and what he doesn't know
E) Telling good stories during town meetings

Question 53

According to Peter Drucker, one of the keys to delegation is that managers (the delegators) must follow-up as they are still accountable for performance.

Question 54

Good management requires telling the truth, learning, and ________________.

A) keeping uncertainties secret.
B) never admitting ignorance on a subject.
C) telling people what to do.
D) asking for help.
E) the ability to bluff your way through a sticky situation.

Question 55

____ is not a characteristic common to all organizations.

A) Coordination of effort
B) Division of labor
C) Hierarchy of authority
D) Equal authority and responsibility
E) Common goal or purpose

Question 56

Which of these is a characteristic giving the organization focus and its members a rallying point?

A) Equal authority and responsibility
B) Span of control
C) Common goal or purpose
D) Division of labor
E) Hierarchy of authority

Question 57

Among the common characteristics of organizational cultures are being collective, emotionally charged, and future focused.

Question 58

An example of a group that satisfies the definition of an organization is

A) commuters on the Long Island Expressway.
B) strangers standing in line to buy tickets to a U2 concert.
C) three people riding an elevator.
D) two sisters who own and operate a commercial cleaning business.
E) the crowd watching an Arizona Diamondbacks baseball game.

Question 59

Orientation is the first step in the socialization process.

Question 60

____ permits each organization member to become more proficient by repeatedly doing the same specialized task.

A) Division of labor
B) Hierarchy of authority
C) Span of control
D) A common goal or purpose
E) Coordination of effort

Question 61

____ establishes the chain of command in an organization chart.

A) Vertical hierarchy
B) Downward communication
C) The corporate charter
D) Horizontal specialization
E) The mission statement

Question 62

Ahn is looking for a job with a "very effective" company. What should you tell him about assessing organizational effectiveness?

A) Organizational effectiveness cannot be measured
B) Look for satisfied customers
C) There is no single approach
D) Look for happy employees
E) Bottom-line profits are all that count

Question 63

A diagram of an organization's official positions and formal lines of authority refers to a(n)

A) fishbone diagram.
B) organization chart.
C) flow chart.
D) position chart.
E) pattern diagram.

Question 64

A ____ organization is one that is skilled at creating, acquiring, and transferring knowledge, and at modifying its behavior to reflect new knowledge and insights.

A) learning
B) matrix
C) traditional
D) closed-system
E) mechanistic

Question 65

Which of these organizational characteristics does the chain of command refer to?

A) Division of labor
B) Span of control
C) Communication channel
D) Impersonality
E) Hierarchy of authority

Question 66

What establishes the division of labor in an organization chart?

A) Span of control
B) Vertical hierarchy
C) The mission statement
D) Horizontal specialization
E) The corporate charter

Question 67

The three organizational subsystems in the open-system model are technical, ____, and boundary-spanning.

A) managerial
B) social
C) procedural
D) sociotechnical
E) human resource

Question 68

The three stages of David A. Garvin's organizational learning model are cognition, ____, and ____.

A) behavior; performance
B) cultural; technical
C) social; administrative
D) attitudinal; procedural
E) reorganizational; conceptual

Question 69

What are the two dimensions of an organization chart?

A) People and tasks
B) Economic and social power
C) Vertical hierarchy and horizontal specialization
D) Division of labor and coordination
E) Boxes and lines

Question 70

According to David A. Garvin's model of the learning organization, what are two good ways to learn from others?

A) Experimenting and employee feedback
B) Benchmarking and customer feedback
C) Experimenting and benchmarking
D) Benchmarking and downsizing
E) Downsizing and experimenting

Question 71

In David A. Garvin's model of organizational learning, ____ is not one of the required organizational skills.

A) learning from experience/history
B) solving problems
C) hiring expert talent
D) experimenting
E) learning from others

Question 72

By definition, which of these is defined as the right to direct the actions of others?

A) Power
B) Authority
C) Responsibility
D) Leadership
E) Hierarchy

Question 73

According to the open-system model, a sporting goods company's sales representatives would be part of the ____ organizational subsystem.

A) managerial
B) service
C) boundary-spanning
D) technical
E) marketing

Question 74

In which way has the concept of the learning organization extended the open-system model of organizations?

A) It has introduced a seven-stage organizational life cycle
B) It has not extended the open-system model
C) It has eliminated the idea of equifinality
D) It has reintroduced the idea of responsibility
E) It has put a human head on the biological (open-system) model

Question 75

____ is the relationship between outputs and inputs, whereas ____ is a measure of whether or not organizational objectives are accomplished.

A) Profitability; satisfaction
B) Effectiveness; efficiency
C) Efficiency; effectiveness
D) Implementation; adaptability
E) Adaptability; profitability

Question 76

W. Edward Deming's PDCA cycle stands for

A) Prioritize-Develop-Control-Authorize.
B) Put Down Company Authority.
C) Pump-Dump-Create-Act.
D) Plan-Do-Check-Act.
E) Plan-Develop-Control-Appreciate.

Question 77

The ____ subsystem controls and directs the other subsystems in the organization.

A) production
B) managerial
C) technical
D) marketing
E) boundary-spanning

Question 78

Robert is the owner of a small pizza shop where there are no departments and all of the employees report directly to him. He currently has two employees, one who cooks and one who waits on tables. Robert wants to hire one additional employee to be the delivery person. This new employee will represent which dimension in the organization chart?

A) Closed-system control
B) Diagonal communication
C) Vertical control
D) Lateral command
E) Horizontal specialization

Question 79

Angelo, a supply-chain manager at a construction firm, is responsible for making sure the organization has a steady and reliable flow of raw materials and subcomponents. This is an example of what kind of job?

A) Production
B) Service
C) Technical
D) Marketing
E) Boundary-spanning

Question 80

The ____ subsystem, also called the ____ function, physically transforms raw materials into finished goods and services.

A) managerial; technical
B) technical; production
C) boundary-spanning; managerial
D) technical; organizing
E) managerial; organizing