Convenience

Chapter 6:
Organization Structure and Design
1 8 3
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DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Questions for Review
1.
What is job specialization? What are its advantages
and disadvantages?
2.
What is departmentalization? What are its most
common forms?
3.
Distinguish between centralization and decentrali-
zation, and comment on their relative advantages
and disadvantages.
4.
Describe the basic forms of organization design.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of
each?
5.
Compare and contrast the matrix organization and
the team organization, citing their similarities and
differences.
Questions for Analysis
1.
How is specialization applied in settings such as a
hospital, restaurant, and church?
2.
Learn how your school or business is organized.
Analyze the advantages and disadvantages of this
form of departmentalization, and then comment
on how well or how poorly other forms of organi-
zation might work.
3.
Identify five ways in which electronic coordination
affects your daily life.
4.
Each of the organization designs is appropriate
for some firms but not for others. Describe the
characteristics that a firm using the U form
should have. Then do the same for the H
form, the M form, and the matrix design. For
each item, explain the relationship between that
set of characteristics and the choice of organization
design.
5.
What are the benefits of using the learning organi-
zation approach to design? Now consider that, to
learn, organizations must be willing to tolerate
many mistakes because it is only through the effort
of understanding mistakes that learning can occur.
With this statement in mind, what are some of the
potential problems with the use of the learning
organization approach?
BUILDING EFFECTIVE CONCEPTUAL SKILLS