Organizational behavior core concepts by kinicki chapter13

13

Organizational Behavior
core concepts

Organizational Design: How
a Structure Connects
Employees and Tasks
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McGraw-Hill/Irwin
Organizational Behavior, Core Concepts

Copyright © 2008 by the McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.


Learning Objectives
• Define organizations and their basic
dimensions
• Explain commonly used metaphors for
organizations as closed or open systems,
military/mechanical bureaucracies, and
biological and cognitive systems
• Describe basic criteria for organizational
effectiveness
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Learning Objectives
• Summarize what is involved in the
contingency approach to organizational

design
• Discuss new-style and old-style
organizations, including virtual
organizations

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What is an Organization?
• Organization
– system of consciously coordinated activities
of two or more people.

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What is an Organization?
• Four common denominators
– Coordination of effort
– Common goal
– Division of labor
– Hierarchy of authority

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Designing Effective Teams
See an article from
Administrative
Science Quarterly

on designing
effective teams

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What is an Organization?
• Unity of command principle
– each employee should report to a single
manager.

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Organization Charts
• Organization chart
– boxes-and-lines illustration showing chain of
formal authority and division of labor.

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Sample Organization Chart for a
Hospital

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Figure 13-1

Organization Charts
• Hierarchy of authority
• Division of labor
• Span of control
– the number of people reporting directly to a
given manager

• Line and staff positions

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Line and Staff Positions
• Staff personnel
– provide research, advice, and
recommendations to line managers.

• Line Managers
– have authority to make organizational
decisions.

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Needed: Open-System Thinking
• Closed System
– self-sufficient entity, closed to the
surrounding environment.

• Open System

– organism that must constantly interact with
its environment to survive

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Organizations as
Military/Mechanical Bureaucracies
• Bureaucracy
– Max Weber’s idea of the most rationally
efficient form of organization

• Weber’s Bureaucracy
– Division of labor
– A hierarchy of authority
– A framework of rules
– Administrative personality
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Organizations as
Biological Systems
• The complex organization is a set of
interdependent parts which together
make up a whole because each
contributes something and receives
something from the whole, which in turn
is interdependent with some larger
environment
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The Organization as an Open
System: The Biological Model

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Figure 13-2


Organizations as Cognitive Systems
• Organizations have mechanisms to
interpret ambiguous events and to
provide meaning and direction for
participants

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Question?
Which effectiveness criteria is the most
widely used?
A. Goal accomplishment
B. Resource acquisition
C. Internal processes
D. Strategic constituencies satisfaction

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Generic Effectiveness Criteria
• Goal accomplishment
– most widely used effectiveness criteria,
measured by comparing key organizational
results with previously stated goals

• Resource acquisition
– organization is effective if it acquires
necessary factors of production

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Generic Effectiveness Criteria
• Internal processes
– healthy system if information flows smoothly
and if employee loyalty, commitment, job
satisfaction prevail

• Strategic constituencies satisfaction
– Strategic constituency: any group of
people with a stake in the organization’s
operation or success.
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Mixing Effectiveness Criteria:
Practical Guidelines
• Goal accomplishment
– approach is appropriate when goals are

clear, consensual, time-bounded, and
measurable

• Resource acquisition
– approach is appropriate when inputs have a
traceable effect on results or output

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Mixing Effectiveness Criteria:
Practical Guidelines
• Internal processes
– appropriate when organizational
performance is strongly influenced by
specific processes

• Strategic constituencies
– appropriate when powerful stakeholders can
significantly benefit or harm the organization

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The Contingency Approach to
Designing Organizations
• Contingency approach to organization
design
– creating an effective organizationenvironment fit.

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Mechanistic versus Organic
Organizations
• Mechanistic organizations
– Rigid bureaucracies with strict rules,
narrowly defined tasks, and top-down
communication.

• Organic organizations
– Flexible networks of multitalented individuals
who perform a variety of tasks

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Question?
In what type of decision making do top
managers make all key decisions?
A. Centralized
B. Decentralized
C. Fundamental
D. Primary

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