1. (10 pts.) Discuss how organizational architecture and corporate culture are related. Use an example of a real-life firm and discuss how its corporate culture blends with its organizational architecture.
Organizational architecture is based on the way the organization’s design incorporate the following three aspects: the designation of decision rights, modalities of rewarding employees, and the evaluation system structures to gauge performances of employees or business units. Corporate culture entails how people work and how authority and power is spread through the organization (Alvesson, 2002). This is the point where the organization’s architecture and corporate culture meet. Taking Apple for example, it had a simple organization culture that requires distinct performance in which it is ether a win or a loss, and no in-betweens. In line with the simplicity of the organizational architecture, Apple has an extremely ruthless corporate culture (Lashinsky, 2012).
2. (10 pts.) Billy Riggan is in charge of all technical developments at Always Round Tire. He makes all the choices concerning product innovations in the company. He finds that he is overworked and that several of his research scientists seem to be spending work hours playing tennis. What is going on?
In this case, there is a breakdown of the organizational architecture, and a bad company culture has taken root. In terms of organizational architecture the role of designation of decision making has been left to Billy Riggan, it is eminent that brainstorming over ideas has been overridden. This has the possibility of blame games at the workplace should the decisions that he makes fall short. The architecture has failed to play its evaluative role and bad company culture has caught up with employees since there seems to be no disciplinary framework. A disciplinary and rewarding framework serves to guide or shape the company culture (Alvesson, 2002).
3. (10 pts.) Always Round Tire tries to base its promotions on seniority (where education and training requirements are not necessary). The company finds that this system seems to work most of the time with shop floor supervisors and team managers. But the system breaks down for higher-level positions. Why?
At the high levels of management it is crucial to have employees who meet high educational and training requirement. This is attributed to the versatility and flexibility that comes with a wide educational exposure. If an educational background is coupled with years of experience, the employee is capable of handle matters even of colossal challenge (Martin, 2010).
4. (10 pts.) Economists believe the free rider problem is very important in complex business organizational structures. Still, businesses continue to build teams to solve problems or to deliver products to consumers. Often special rewards or bonuses are provided to the team rather than to the individuals on the team. Write a brief essay that either defends the economists' concern or explain why economists are wrong on this issue.
In complex business scenarios, it is difficult to come up with a clear-cut outline as to who did or does what? As such it is important to consider a group of people as a single individual for purposes of ease of management. This way they transfer the role of management of mass dynamics from themselves to the group. A novel example of the free rider problem is the existence of governments in the modern world. The government provides a super solution to free rider problems. Governments in the modern world play the crucial role of providing public services such as defense and education. The provision and regulation of these services would be difficult if everyone in the society were to take care of themselves. The education system, for example, is a very complex system. It is in order to accommodate potential free riders, and resolve the problem; the government provides such services (Brickley et al., 1997).
5. (10 pts.) Many firms today use 360-degree performance evaluations. Make a case for this type of evaluation based on the informativeness principle. What problems may be encountered from implementation of such a system?
360-degree feedback is a mode of evaluation that is executed through the use of people around the one being evaluated. This includes supervisors, workmates, peers, and or from customers. The problems of such a system include bias from the respondents based on personal issues and attitudes. Accuracy is the other problem that presents due to the likelihood of conflicting feedback (Ziegenfuss, 2007).
References
Alvesson, M. (2002). Understanding organizational culture. London: SAGE.
Brickley, J. A., Smith, C. W., Zimmerman, J. L., & Brickley, J. A. (1997). Managerial economics and organizational architecture. Chicago: Irwin.
Lashinsky, A. (n.d.). How Apple works: Inside the world's biggest startup - Fortune Tech . Fortune Tech: Technology blogs, news and analysis from Fortune Magazine . Retrieved October 18, 2012, from http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/08/25/how-apple-works-inside-the-worlds-biggest-startup/
Martin, J. (2010). Key concepts in human resource management. London: SAGE.
Ziegenfuss, J. T. (2007). Customer friendly: The organizational architecture of service. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
