Spring break week

Chapter # 9 - Organizations.

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On this chapter we have dealt with the following issues:

- Common characteristics to all organizations : Coordination of effort, common goal or purpose,division of

labor, hierarchy of authority.

- Organization charts (vertical and horizontal hierarchy).

- Traditional and modern views of organizations.

- Business organization as an open system model.

- Learning organizations - what are they?

- Organizational effectiveness.

- Organizational cultures.

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Some personal thoughts....

What kind of an organization will be suitable for me ?

I have thought about it and it did not take me a long time to decide that an open system organization is the one I'd probably fit better into. I like dynamic organizations and jobs, I prefer a workplace that changes according to environmental changes.

I believe in freedom above all and I would have liked to have the freedom to be creative at work, it makes work more challenging and interesting.

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Discussion questions and answers:

1. Describe what factors constitute an "organization". An organization is a business unit that shares a common goal or purpose,maintains a division or labor, a hierarchy of authority and coordination of effort.

2. Discuss what you think is the key determinant of organizational effectiveness. Organizational effectiveness will be determined by the following key factors: Level of bureaucracy will be medium Quality of product / service and productivity of employees will be hight Existance of a functioning chain of command Coordintaion between managements and employess. I think the main determinant is the last one (coordination between management and employees) because it is the basis for the rest of the key determinants mentioned above.

3. Explain the "Open System" model of business. (see page 295). Give some examples of businesses that you think are "open" systems. Open system businesses maintain a more realistic view of the interaction between an organization and its environment. In other words the open system organization will keep changing as long as the world keeps changing. It will often have movement of people in and out of labor force, movement of capital (stocks, loans) and movement of goods and services since it is a dynamic organization. I think that EMC is a good example for an open system organization because Emc has started off as a hardware company, and when the demand for storage software has increased - Emc has changed its main product to be software and its main work today is software engineering and less and less hardware engineering. It also had alot of employees and capital movement over the years.

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Closing case # 5 - How Great Harvest Bread company cooked up a learning organization.

Summary: The article brings up the story of Great Harvest Bread company, a seemingly ordinary chain of franchised bakeries, that developed into a learning organization by nurturing a simple idea of donation to charity, an idea that brought great publicity and served as a marketing tool passed on from one branch manager to another.

Questions :

1. What role, if any, does enlightened self interest, as covered in chapter 5, play in this case?

Reply: The definition of an enlightened self interests a business ultimately helping itself by helping to solve social problems. In this closing case the Great Harvest Bread Company decided to open its branch on Sundays and put all profits earned on that day to charity. The small investment of six hundred dollars put into products and labor had achieved great publicity and served as a great marketing tool.

2. How has Garvin’s model of the learning organization, in figure 9.3, been brought to life at Great Harvest?

Reply: According to Garvin, a learning organization is one that is skilled at creating, acquiring and transferring knowledge, and at modifying its behavior to reflect new knowledge and insights. Garvin’s model has three stages: Cognitions (learning new concepts), Behavior (developing new skills and abilities) and performance. At Great Harvest all the above had been brought to life as the company did something it had never done before – it opened its branches on Sunday, and donated profits to charity (cognition stage). It developed a new marketing and publicity tool (Behavior stage) and it has become a great success and encouraged all owners in its chain to be part of the company’s learning community.

3. What roles do Great Harvest’s organizational structure and culture play in this case? Explain.

Reply: Great Harvest has a unique structure and principles as far as franchising is concerned. The company encourages owners to be themselves and to run their stores in the old fashioned “mom and pop” manner, be unique and experiment. The company’s philosophical principle that states command and control are wrong – also encourages human creativity. All the above eventually set the basis and enables their branch owners to be creative and innovative, and encourages them to learn new concepts. The fact that freedom, including the freedom to fail, is set as top priority – supports this basis and allows a learning organization to exist. 4. What lessons can managers of today’s large organizations learn from this case?

Reply: Managers of today’s large organizations can learn from this case to be open minded about new ideas, new concepts, and things that had never been done in their company before. They can also learn the importance of learning from other organizations’ knowledge and also learn about the great importance of freedom at work as a way to support employees’ creativity.

5. Would you like to own and run a Great Harvest Bread franchise? Why or why not?

Reply: I would have liked to run a Great Harvest franchise or any other similar business that has the same ideology as Great Harvest because I think their marketing idea is brilliant and innovative, not only it helps society but it also does great things for business at a very small investment. I believe in freedom above all and I would have liked to have the freedom to be creative at work, it makes work more challenging and interesting.