BUS272 TB

Chapter 13 Organizational Structure 481
P I A PERSONAL
INVENTORY
PERSONAL INVENTORY ASSESSMENT
ASSESSMENT
Delegation Self-Assessment: Most employees, whether leaders or team members, need to delegate work from time
to time. Use this scale to assess your ability to delegate effectively.
OB at Work
Cognitive Style Indicator: Cognitive style can profoundly influence both task preferences and organizational structure
preferences. Use this scale to determine your preferred cognitive style.
Organizational Structure Assessment: Personality and cultural factors can influence which organizational structure
you prefer. Use this scale to determine what type of organizational structure would be the best fit for you.
BREAKOUT GROUP EXERCISES
Form small groups to discuss the following topics, as assigned by your instructor:
1. Describe the structure of an organization in which you worked. Was the structure appropriate for the tasks
being done?
2. Have you ever worked in an organization with a structure that seemed inappropriate to the task? What would
have improved the structure?
3. You are considering opening up a coffee bar with several of your friends. What kind of structure might you
use? After the coffee bar becomes successful, you decide that expanding the number of branches might be a
good idea. What changes to the structure might you make?
EXPERIENTIAL EXERCISE
Words-in-Sentences Company
Overview:
Time:
Group Task:
Raw Materials:
You are a small company that
1. manufactures words; and
2. packages them into meaningful English-language sentences. 61
Market research has established that sentences of at least 3 words but not more than 6 words are in
demand. Therefore, packaging, distribution, and sales should be set up for 3- to 6-word sentences .
Approximately 30 minutes. (Note: A production run takes 10 minutes. While the game is more
effective if 2 [or more] production runs are completed, even 1 production run will generate effective
discussion about how organizational structure affects performance.)
Your group must design and participate in running a W-I-S company. You will be competing with
other companies in your industry. The success of your company will depend on (a) your objectives,
(b) planning, (c) organizational structure, and (d) quality control. You should design your organization
to be as efficient as possible during each 10-minute production run. After the first production
run, you will have an opportunity to reorganize your company if you want.
For each production run, you will be given a “raw material phrase.” The letters found in the phrase
serve as the raw materials available to produce new words in sentences. For example, if the raw
material phrase is “organizational behaviour is fun,” you could produce the words and sentence
“Nat ran to a zoo.” One way to think of your raw material phrase is to take all the letters appearing
in the phrase and write them down as many times as they appear in the phrase. Thus, for the phrase
“organizational behaviour is fun” you have: a-4; b-1; c-0; d-0; e-1; f-1; g-1; h-1; i-4; j-0; k-0; l-1;
m-0; n-3; o-3; p-0; q-0; r-2; s-1; t-1; u-2; v-1; w-0; x-0; y-0; z-1, for a total of 28 raw material letters.