Organizational Structure & Management

1. Emerging Organizational Structure

The historical stages of organizational design theory and philosophy have transmuted from the ancient church and military models of vertical structure based on discipline and authority to a modern horizontal structure for the purpose of encouraging self-initiative and reducing response time. The design imperatives are early recognition of changing environmental situations and effective information flow. The critical element is communication—recognition, interpretation, and feedback. The Thatcher article (attached) supplements the discussion with a report on the findings of a novel research project recently conducted at Intel with the objective of improving communications at the micro-level—the individual decision maker. Evaluate the method and merits of the research. Are these finding applicable to other organizations and to the world of organizational theory?

likeplum.pdf 

2.  Sales Management

If you were the sales manager and were given the sales analysis in Exhibit 13.10 (p. 324), how would you interpret the data? The data shows sales by territory and sales person. What do these data tell us and how can we use them to evaluate the company’s strategic goals? Is there a problem with the company’s strategy or with its tactics? In a perfect world, what would the data look like? Fill in the numbers corresponding to a perfect world. The numbers may indicate poor performance or good performance, but they don’t explain why? Think of alternative explanations and then suggest other metrics for the report that would increase the resolution.