2.5 pages due in 6 hours
budsimpson
case_study_instructions.docxCHAPTER 1: ORGANIZATIONS AND ORGANIZATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS
This chapter discusses organizations, organizational theory, and the importance of organizational design. An organization is a tool that people use to coordinate their actions to obtain something they desire or value to achieve their goals. Organizational theory is the study of how organizations function and how they affect and are affected by the environment in which they operate.
Organizational structure is the formal system of task and authority relationships that control how people coordinate their actions and use resources to achieve an organization’s goals. Organizational culture is the set of shared values and norms that control organizational members’ interactions with each other and with suppliers, customers, and other people outside the organization. Organizations are value-creation systems that take inputs from the environment and use skills and knowledge to transform these inputs into finished goods and services. The use of an organization allows people jointly to increase specialization and division of labor, use large-scale technology, manage the organizational environment, economize on transaction costs, and exert power and control - all of which increase the value the organization can create. Organizational design is the process by which managers select and manage aspects of structure and culture so an organization can control the activities necessary to achieve its goals. Organizational design has important implications for a company’s competitive advantage, its ability to deal with contingencies and manage diversity, its efficiency, its ability to generate new goods and services, its control of the environment, its coordination and motivation of employees, and its development and implementation of strategy. Organizational change is the process by which organizations redesign and transform their structures and cultures to move from their present state to some desired future state to increase their effectiveness. The goal of organizational change is to find new or improved ways of using resources and capabilities to increase an organization’s ability to create value and hence performance. Managers can use three approaches to evaluate organizational effectiveness: the external resource approach, the internal systems approach, and the technical approach. Each approach is associated with a set of criteria that can be used to measure effectiveness and a set of organizational goals.
CHAPTER 2: STAKEHOLDERS, MANAGERS, AND ETHICS
Organizations are embedded in a complex social context that is driven by the needs and desires of its stakeholders. Organizations exist because of their ability to create value and acceptable outcomes for stakeholders. The two main groups of stakeholders are inside stakeholders and outside stakeholders. Effective organizations satisfy, at least minimally, the interests of all stakeholder groups. The problems that an organization faces as it tries to win stakeholders’ approval include choosing which stakeholder goals to satisfy, deciding how to allocate organizational rewards to different stakeholder groups, and balancing short- and long-term goals. Shareholders delegate authority to managers to use organizational resources effectively. The CEO, COO, and top-management team have ultimate responsibility for the use of those resources effectively.
