Organizational Design Analysis
Interview employees of a small- to medium-size organization (Esgee Plastic Systems), analyze the reasons for its design.
1. What is the organization in business to do? What are its goals and its strategies for achieving them?
2. How large is the company? What is the total number of employees? How many work full time? How many work part time?
3. What are the most important components of the organization's environment?
4. Is the number of important environmental components large or small?
5. How quickly or slowly do these components change?
6. Would you characterize the organization's environment as certain, uncertain, or somewhere in between? If in between, describe in detail approximately how certain or uncertain.
7. What is the organization's dominant technology; that is, how does it transform inputs into outputs?
8. How rigid is the company in its application of rules and procedures? Is it flexible enough to respond to environmental changes?
9. How involved are employees in the daily decision making related to their jobs?
10. What methods are used to ensure control over the actions of employees?
Include:
- Name and description of the organization
- Number of employees interviewed, level and job title for each
- Specific findings from each interviewee on all 10 interview questions
- Summarized findings describing the technology, environment and structure of the company
- Discussion of the extent to which the structure is appropriate for the organization's strategy, size, technology and environment including specific reasons why or why not you feel the structure is appropriate
- Answers to follow-up questions 1, 2 and 3 described in the exercise