True or False

Venture teams are large groups of employees dedicated to coming up with new ideas for improved organizational structure.

False

An organization's culture is usually contained in a written policy manual.

False

An organizational mission and its operational goals are the same thing.

False

Usually, organizations can easily satisfy the demands of all of their stakeholders simultaneously.

False

A task force is located in one department but has the responsibility for communicating and achieving coordination with another department.

False

All ethical standards are legal requirements.

False

As companies begin to explore international opportunities, they typically start with an international division that grows into an export department.

False

As organizations become larger, a larger percentage of top administrators becomes necessary.

False

Common structural variables studied as dimensions of organizations are goals, culture, and environment.

False

Companies that put ethics on the back burner in favour of fast growth and short-term profits succeed in the long run.

False

Culture strength refers to there being a low number of different subcultures within the culture as a whole.

False

Engineering technologies tend to be low in analyzability and high in variety.

False

Given their flexibility, specialists are able to reallocate resources internally to adapt to a changing environment, whereas generalists are not.

False

Implementation of change is often the easiest part of the change process.

False

In a bureaucratic culture, an important value is taking care of employees and ensuring they have whatever they need to help them be satisfied as well as productive.

False

In studies of culture and effectiveness, it has been found that two factors form the basis of the fit: the extent to which the environment requires change or stability and the extent to which the technology is analyzable or unanalyzable.

False

Indicators of effectiveness are quantitative but not qualitative in nature.

False

Intergroup conflict requires three ingredients: group identification, observable group differences, and commitment.

False

Intuition should not be used in organizational decision making.

False

Mass customization refers to the separation of one product from the mass production line so that it can be adapted to the needs of a particular market.

False

One drawback of increased coordination is the added cost.

False

Perrow's study is classified as pertaining to organization-level technology, while Woodward's is classified as pertaining to department-level technology.

False

Pooled interdependence refers to the expansion of the number of different tasks performed by an employee.

False

Scientific management focuses on the total organization and has grown from the insights of practitioners.

False

Since programmed decisions are novel and poorly defined, and no procedure exists for solving them, a program must be devised using the garbage can method.

False

Symbols are narratives based on true events that are frequently shared among organizational employees and told to new employees to inform them about an organization.

False

Tacit knowledge is formal, systematic knowledge that can be written down and passed on to others.

False

The allocation of power to middle managers and staff is dangerous because it hinders those employees from being productive.

False

The classical perspective of organization design sought to make organizations run like learning organizations in a turbulent environment.

False

The elaboration stage involves the installation and use of rules, procedures, and control systems.

False

The four perspectives of a framework of interorganizational relationships include resource dependency, population ecology, collaborative network, and reengineering.

False

The horizontal coordination model is used primarily for innovations in the administrative core.

False

The outcome of mechanisms of mimetic, coercive, or normative forces is that organizations become more heterogeneous to reflect the natural diversity among managers and environments.

False

The primary weakness of the virtual network structure is lack of control.

False

The reactor strategy is considered a strategy because it responds to environmental threats and opportunities in a strategic fashion.

False

The switching structure refers to production lines that alternate with ease from daytime production to 24-hour production.

False

The term limited resources refers to the dependence of one unit on another for materials, resources, or information.

False

The term mimetic forces refers to the similarity between organizations that results from environmental influences such as governmental laws and legislative requirements.

False

There are 10 stages of life cycle development that an organization must generally go through to reach the final stage, in which rewards are personal and aimed at those who contribute to organizational success.

False

Traditional authority refers to control coming from the exemplary character of an individual and the aura he or she creates.

False

Transaction processing systems facilitate decision making at the highest levels of management.

False

One of the three primary domains of political activity is structural change.

True

One outcome of high differentiation is that coordination between departments becomes more difficult until integrative devices are put in place.

True

Organized anarchy is characterized by rapid change and a collegial, nonbureaucratic environment.

True

Problem consensus and technical knowledge about solutions to those problems are two characteristics that determine the use of decision approaches.

True

Project teams can be thought of as permanent task forces.

True

A niche is a domain of unique environmental resources and needs.

True

A recent survey of Wall Street workers found that 52 percent of finance professionals believe it is likely that their competitors have engaged in illegal or unethical behaviour.

True

A strategy is a plan for achievement of organizational goals.

True

A transnational team is a work group made up of multinational members whose activities span multiple countries.

True

Centrality reflects a department's role in the primary activity of an organization.

True

Corporate downsizing is an example of top-down structural change.

True

Divisional structures may be organized by product, services, major projects or programs, or profit centres.

True

Efficiency refers to the amount of resources used to achieve the organization's goals, whereas effectiveness refers to the degree to which an organization achieves its goals.

True

For much of the 20th century, organizations operated in a world that was relatively stable, but today the environment can be characterized as turbulent.

True

Functional grouping places employees who perform similar work processes and who typically have similar knowledge and skills together.

True

Goal incompatibility can be a kind of built-in conflict between departments—especially marketing and manufacturing departments—that are faithfully attempting to accomplish their own missions.

True

Growth and output volume are examples of overall performance goals.

True

High-velocity environments call for decision makers to depend heavily on one or two savvy, trusted colleagues as counsellors, even though everyone is ultimately involved in the decision.

True

Horizontal power is not defined by the formal hierarchy or the organization chart.

True

Ideas are generally not seriously considered unless there is a perceived need for change.

True

In rapidly changing environments, an organic structure is most appropriate.

True

Internal integration, as it relates to corporate culture, means that members develop a collective identity and know how to work together effectively.

True

Leaders who have taken their companies through major successful transformations often have one thing in common: they focus on formulating and articulating a compelling vision and strategy that will guide the change process.

True

Management science sometimes produces decision failures, in part because quantitative data are not rich.

True

Managers use periodic statistical reports to evaluate and monitor non-financial performance such as customer satisfaction, employee performance, or rate of staff turnover.

True

Many new product development teams today are global teams because organizations must develop products that will meet diverse needs of consumers all over the world.

True

On Woodward's scale, large-batch production is considered to have greater technical complexity than small-batch production.

True

Rather than establish buffer departments, a newer approach in many organizations is to drop the buffers and expose the technical core to its uncertain environment.

True

Technology alone cannot give organizations the benefits of flexibility, quality, increased productivity, and customer satisfaction.

True

The following statement is a correct usage of the terms power and authority: Some secretaries are likely to have a great deal of power in the organization even though they have little authority.

True

The global stage of international development signifies that the company transcends any single country.

True

The international stage of international development means that exports are taken seriously and that the company deals with the competitive issues of each country separately.

True

The life cycle phenomenon is a powerful concept used for understanding problems facing organizations and assessing how managers can respond in a positive way to move an organization to the next stage.

True

The organization chart is the visual representation of a whole set of underlying activities and processes in an organization.

True

The point of the rational approach is that managers use systematic procedures to arrive at good decisions.

True

The primary responsibility of top management is to determine an organization's goals, strategy, and design, thereby adapting the organization to a changing environment.

True

Today, most companies with intranets have moved their management information systems, executive information systems, and so forth over to intranets so they can easily be accessed by anyone who needs them.

True

Truly global companies no longer think of themselves as having a single home country and have been called stateless corporations.

True

Two explanations of why managers escalate commitment to a failing decision are that 1) the managers block or distort negative information when they are personally responsible for a negative decision and that 2) consistency and persistence are valued in contemporary society.

True

Weber's predictions of the triumph of bureaucracy have proved accurate.

True

Whistle blowing is a disclosure mechanism.

True

Within business ecosystems, managers learn to move beyond traditional responsibilities of corporate strategy and designing hierarchical structures and control systems.

True