Organizational Culture and Structure 3A
Accountability
Definition: The expectation that managers must report and justify work results to the managers above them.
Adhocracy Culture
Description: A type of culture focused on creating innovative products by being adaptable, creative, and quick to respond to changes in the marketplace.
Authority
Definition: The right to perform or command; rights inherent in a managerial position to make decisions, give orders, and utilize resources.
Boundary-less Organization
Definition: A fluid, highly adaptive organization whose members, linked by information technology, come together to collaborate on common tasks.
Centralized Authority
Description: Important decisions made by higher-level managers.
Clan Culture
Focus: Encourages collaboration among employees, increasing commitment through employee involvement.
Corporate Culture
Definition: Assumptions held by a group that determines how it perceives, thinks about, and reacts to various environments.
Customer Divisions
Description: Group activities around common customers or clients.
Decentralized Authority
Description: Important decisions made by middle-level managers.
Delegation
Definition: The process of assigning managerial authority and responsibility to managers and employees lower in the hierarchy.
Divisional Structure
Description: People with diverse occupational specialties are grouped into formal structures based on:
Similar products or services
Customers or clients
Geographic regions.
Enacted Values
Definition: Values and norms actually exhibited in the organization.
Espoused Values
Definition: The explicitly stated values and norms preferred by an organization, as expressed by its founders or top managers.
Functional Structure
Definition: People with similar occupational specialties are grouped into formal structures.
Geographic Divisions
Definition: Group activities around defined regional locations.
Hierarchical Culture
Description: A culture with an internal focus that values stability and control over flexibility.
Hollow Structure
Definition: An organization with a central core of key functions that outsources other functions to vendors who can perform them cheaper or faster.
Integration
Description: Diversification strategy where a firm expands into businesses providing required supplies to make its products or that distribute and sell its products.
Market Culture
Focus: Driven by competition and a strong desire to deliver results, prioritizing customers, productivity, and profits over employee development and satisfaction.
Matrix Structure
Definition: Combines functional and divisional chains of command in a grid, creating two command structures: vertical and horizontal.
Modular Structure
Definition: Oriented around outsourcing specific pieces of a product, rather than outsourcing processes like human resources or warehousing.
Narrow (Tall) Span of Control
Description: A manager has a limited number of direct reports.
Organization
Definition: A group of people working together to achieve a specific purpose; a system of consciously coordinated activities involving two or more people.
Organization Chart
Description: A box-and-lines illustration of authority and official positions within an organization, representing a hierarchy.
Organizational Culture
Definition: The set of shared, taken-for-granted implicit assumptions that a group holds, determining perceptions, thoughts, and reactions to environments.
Three Levels of Organizational Culture:
Observable Artifacts
Espoused Values
Basic Assumptions
Organizational Design
Description: The process of designing optimal structures of accountability and responsibility for executing strategies.
Organizational Socialization
Definition: The process of learning the values, norms, and required behaviors of an organization.
Organizational Structure
Definition: A formal system of task and reporting relationships that coordinates and motivates members to achieve organizational goals.
Product Divisions
Definition: Groups activities around similar products or services.
Responsibility
Definition: The obligation to perform assigned tasks.
Rites and Rituals
Definition: Activities and ceremonies that celebrate important occasions and accomplishments in the organization.
Simple Structure
Definition: Authority is centralized in a single person, featuring a flat hierarchy with few rules and low work specialization.
Narrow (Tall) Span of Control
Description: A manager with a limited number of direct reports.
Wide (Flat) Span of Control
Description: A manager with several individuals reporting to them, such as a first-line supervisor managing 40 or more subordinates in low supervision contexts, such as assembly-line environments.
Story
Definition: A narrative based on true events that is repeated to emphasize a particular value.
Symbol
Definition: An object, act, quality, or event that conveys meaning to others.
Virtual Structure
Definition: A company created outside traditional business structures, specifically designed to respond to exceptional market opportunities; often temporary in nature.
Managerial Strategy
To achieve organizational vision and strategy, managers need to:
Build and support the right culture.
Get the right organizational structure.
Establish effective Human Resources practices (expanded upon in the next unit).