Scenario - Jennifer Ray
The challenge from increased competition led Jennifer Ray, president of Paint Applications, to move to an approach using computers to automate and integrate manufacturing components such as robots, machines, product design, and engineering analysis. Paint Applications has a structure with few rules, decentralization, a small ratio of administrators to workers and a team oriented organic approach. The company's products are enjoying high acceptance from the market and growth is constant.
-With an increase in environmental uncertainty, which of the following events should Jennifer NOT anticipate?
A) Departments will have greater differences.
B) To keep departments working together, the organization needs increased coordination.
C) Integrating managers will need to be hired to respond to the adaptation.
D) The organization must maintain a flexible, responsive posture toward the environment.
E) All of these should be anticipated.

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

Since Jennifer's approach emphasizes decentralization and a team-oriented organic structure with few rules, hiring integrating managers to ensure coordination would be a contradiction to this approach. Instead, the organization should focus on maintaining a flexible and responsive posture toward the environment and fostering communication and collaboration among departments to adapt to increased environmental uncertainty. Therefore, Jennifer should not anticipate the need to hire integrating managers.