Dw6: Organizational Leadership & Structure
Your Leader and Organizational Structure (Jack Ma)
This week, you will examine the organizational structure in which your leader currently operates or formerly operated. Using your research, apply applicable concepts from Chapter 15 and report on the organizational structure of your leader’s organization. Based on your research, use the tools in Chapter 16 to characterize the culture of the leader’s organization. What is your estimate on what kind of organizational cultural analysis result this leader’s organization would see?
Learning Objectives
After studying this chapter, you should be able to:
- Identify seven elements of an organization’s structure.
- Identify the characteristics of the functional structure, the divisional structure, and the matrix structure.
- Identify the characteristics of the virtual structure, the team structure, and the circular structure.
- Describe the effects of downsizing on organizational structures and employees.
- Contrast the reasons for mechanistic and organic structural models.
- Analyze the behavioral implications of different organizational designs.
If your professor has chosen to assign this, go to the Assignments section of mymanagementlab.com to complete the chapter warm up.
In the Flat Field
Startups often struggle to move from executing small, collaborative, local projects to becoming complex, organized, global organizations. Their leaders sometimes believe a hierarchy would create a bloated class of middle managers whose work would change into recording and administrating, rather than imagining and creating. As Craig Silverstein, Google’s first hire, says, entrepreneurs often ask, “Who needs managers? They never add any value.”