Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Organizations and Organization Theory: Chapter One
Organizations and Organization Theory: Chapter One
MULTIPLE CHOICE
3. Financial resources for nonprofit organizations usually come from all of the following
except
a. the sale of competitor’s products or services.
b. grants.
c. government appropriations.
d. donations.
ANSWER: a
4. Non-profit organization managers deal with many diverse shareholders and must market
their services to all of the following except
a. donors.
b. shareholders.
c. clients.
d. volunteers.
ANSWER: b
5. The importance of organizations includes all of the following concepts except:
a. Create value for owners, customers, and employees
b. Establishing important relationships with the government
c. Facilitate innovation
d. Bring together resources for achieving desired goals and outcomes
ANSWER: b
7. Organizations create a drive for _______ rather than reliance on standard products and
outmoded ways of doing things.
a. profitability
b. fixed structures
c. innovation
d. developing change
ANSWER: c
8. An open system:
a. Means that the financial books and records are shared with employees.
b. Exports resources to the environment.
c. Has all the energy it needs within itself.
d. Was the basis for early management concepts such as scientific management.
ANSWER: b
13. Mintzberg’s five basic parts of an organization include all except which of the following:
a. Administrative support.
b. Middle management.
c. Technical support.
d. Computer infrastructure.
ANSWER: d
15. Functions such as human resources, organizational development, the employee cafeteria,
and maintenance staff refer to which of the following five basic parts of an organization:
a. Technical support.
b. Human infrastructure.
c. Administrative support.
d. None of the above.
ANSWER: c
16. _______ is the subsystem responsible for directing and coordinating other parts of the
organization.
a. The technical core
b. Management
c. Human Resources
d. Accounting
ANSWER: b
17. Contextual dimensions:
a. Represent only the external environment.
b. Are centralization and personnel ratios.
c. Represent only the organization characteristics.
d. Include size and environment.
ANSWER: d
18. Which of the following provides labels to describe the internal characteristics of an
organization?
a. Contextual dimensions
b. Contingency analysis
c. Organizational dynamics
d. Structural dimensions
ANSWER: d
19. The 385-page book that McDonald’s uses to describe all rules and procedures in each of
its stores best represents which of the following dimensions:
a. Learning theory.
b. Sequential interdependence.
c. Formalization.
d. Specialization.
ANSWER: c
20. The degree to which organizational tasks are subdivided into separate jobs is referred to as
a. formalization.
b. specialization.
c. professionalism.
d. centralization.
ANSWER: b
21. _______ refer to the deployment of people to various functions and departments.
a. Professionalism
b. Specialization
c. Personnel ratios
d. Hierarchy of authority
ANSWER: c
22. Which of the following concerns how the organization actually produces the products and
services it provides for customers and includes flexible manufacturing, advanced
information systems, and the Internet?
a. Size of the organization
b. Organizational technology
c. Organizational goals
d. Organizational culture
ANSWER: b
23. Which of the following is a contextual, rather than a structural dimension of an
organization?
a. Labor force
b. Culture
c. Professionalism
d. Centralization
ANSWER: b
24. Compare W.L. Gore Associates with Wal-Mart (In Practice activity). These two
companies illustrate the concept that:
a. Larger organizations need to have tight controls at the top.
b. Successful organizations can have very different strategies and goal emphases.
c. A moderate to high level of formalization is crucial to an organization's success.
d. Centralization is necessary in organizations when they face high levels of
competition.
ANSWER: b
26. Which of the following integrates diverse organizational activities by looking at various
organizational stakeholders and what they want from the organization?
a. Effectiveness
b. Organizational culture
c. Efficiency
d. Stakeholder approach
ANSWER: d
27. Scientific management, pioneered by Frederick Taylor, claimed that decisions about
organizations and job design should be based on:
a. Precise, scientific procedures after careful study of individual situations.
b. The insights of practitioners.
c. Leadership, motivation, and human resource management.
d. Management theory.
ANSWER: a
30. Interpretations of _______ concluded that positive treatment of employees improved their
motivation and productivity.
a. bureaucratic organizations
b. stakeholder approaches
c. scientific management
d. Hawthorne Studies
ANSWER: d
32. John Black, a management consultant, successfully implemented and MBO program on
his first consulting job. He now recommends MBO to all his clients. In so doing, our text
would say the main point is that he is ignoring:
a. The latest techniques for solving problems.
b. The principles of contingency theory.
c. The external environment of the organization.
d. The internal environment of the organization.
ANSWER: b
39. The primary level of analysis in organization theory is on the __________, with some
concern for the __________ and the __________.
a. departments, employees, environment
b. organization, environment, departments
c. environment, organization, departments
d. organization, environment, individual
ANSWER: b
ORGANIZATIONS AND ORGANIZATION THEORY · 157
TRUE / FALSE
1. A key element of an organization is a building or set of policies and procedures, not the
people and their relationships.
ANSWER: False
2. A closed system would be autonomous, enclosed, and sealed off from the outside world,
whereas consumes resources and exports resources to the environment.
ANSWER: True
3. Outputs of an organization include employees, raw materials and other physical resources,
information, and financial resources.
ANSWER: False
8. The underlying set of key values, beliefs, understandings, and norms shared by employees
is referred to as an organization’s culture.
ANSWER: True
10. The eleven contextual and structural dimensions are not dependent on each other.
ANSWER: False
11. 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.
ANSWER: True
12. The stakeholder approach integrates diverse organizational activities by looking at various
organizational stakeholders and what they want from the organization.
ANSWER: True
158 · Chapter One Test Bank
13. Usually, organizations can easily satisfy the demands of all of its stakeholders
simultaneously.
ANSWER: False
14. Research has shown that the assessment of multiple stakeholder groups is an accurate
reflection of organizational effectiveness, especially with respect to organizational
adaptability.
ANSWER: True
15. The classical perspective of organization design sought to make organizations run like
learning organizations in a turbulent environment.
ANSWER: False
16. Scientific management focused on the total organization and grew from the insights of
practitioners.
ANSWER: False
17. Scientific management focused on primarily the technical core, whereas administrative
principles focused on the design and functioning of the organization as a whole.
ANSWER: True
18. Because of the Hawthorne Studies, a revolution in worker treatment took place and laid
the groundwork for subsequent work examining treatment of workers, leadership,
motivation, and human resource management.
ANSWER: True
19. Contingency means that one thing depends on other things, and for organizations to be
effective, there must be a “goodness of fit” between their structure and the conditions of
their external environment.
ANSWER: True
20. For much of the twentieth century, organizations operated in a world that was relatively
stable, but today the environment can be characterized as turbulent.
ANSWER: True
21. Organizations today have rigid boundaries separating them from other organizations.
ANSWER: False
22. In the learning organization, the vertical structure that creates distance between managers
at the top and workers in the technical core is disbanded.
ANSWER: True
23. In the learning organization, everyone knows how the organization works and how
everything fits together.
ANSWER: True
ORGANIZATIONS AND ORGANIZATION THEORY · 159
24. The primary level of analysis in organization theory is first line supervision.
ANSWER: False
ESSAY
2. Define an open system. Describe and illustrate the open system in action.
4. Henry Mintzberg suggests that there are five parts to every organization. List and
describe each of these five parts.
5. Name and define any two structural dimensions and any two contextual dimensions.
8. Define "organization theory" from several perspectives that were discussed in the first
chapter.
9. What are the levels of analysis that are studied in organization theory? Using any
organization with which you are familiar, state one fact about each level of analysis in that
particular organization.
11. Discuss why the Hawthorne Studies are so important to today’s organizations and their
workers.
12. What is the difference between organization theory and organization behavior?
14. What is the example most outstanding in your mind that accurately illustrates the reality
of a learning organization?
160 · Chapter One Test Bank
16. Describe the learning organization in terms of its five elements of organization design:
structure, tasks, systems, culture, and strategy.
17. What is the role of administrative principles in the era of learning organizations?
18. What are the four levels of analysis? Describe each level.
19. You are in a job interview, and the interviewer is looking over your transcript. He says,
“Oh, I see that you took a course in organization theory and design. What is that all
about?” What do you answer?
20. Defend this statement: Diversity is a fact of life that no organization can afford to ignore.