With Appropriate Examples, Discuss the Concept of Job Design and the Core Dimensions That Define a Job, and Discuss the Pros and Cons of Job Rotation

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Divisional structure is a type of organizational configuration that groups together those employees who are responsible for a particular product type or market service according to workflow. It can also be broken down further into product, market and geographic structures. For example, Home Depot Company has a geographic divisional structure. The company has one geographic division for the U.S., another for Canada, and another for Mexico. An Executive Vice President heads the U.S. Stores division, and a President heads each of the other divisions.There are further divisions in Home Depot’s organizational structure. For instance, the U.S. Stores division is composed of the Northern, Western and Southern U.S. divisions.

Matrix structure is a structure in which the reporting relationships are set up as a grid, or matrix, rather than in the traditional hierarchy. In other words, employees have dual reporting relationships that is generally to both a functional manager and a product manager. For example, MNC Company has a matrix organizational structure combines the efficiency of the functionally organized company with the flexibility of extensive local operations. Foreign workers report to local managers for questions about their work, while they report to the head office for all other functions. The home organization retains control of disciplinary matters, pay and promotions, while the employees carry out the work according to local requirements.

Network structure is an organizational structure that is founded on a set of alliances with other organizations that serve a wide variety of functions. This kind of organization structure has a core coordinating with other organizations or organizational units. For example, Sony Mobile is a multinational telecommunications company founded on October 1, 2001 as a joint venture between SONY and ERICSSON, headquartered in Tokyo, Japan and wholly owned by Sony. It was originally incorporated as Sony Ericsson, but Sony acquired Ericsson's share in the venture on February 16, 2012.

2.a) Discuss the factors that affect an organization’s need for coordination, and how integrating mechanisms can be used to coordinate organizational activities.

The factors that affect an organization’s need for coordination is interdependence. There is three level of interdependence which is pooled interdependence, sequential interdependence and reciprocal interdependence. Pooled interdependence means each organizational department or business unit performs completely separate functions. While departments may not directly interact and do not directly depend on each other in the pooled interdependence model, each does contribute individual pieces to the same overall puzzle. Sequential interdependence occurs when one unit in the overall process produces an output necessary for the performance by the next unit like an assembly line. Reciprocal interdependence is similar to sequential interdependence in that the output of one department becomes the input of another, with the addition of being cyclical. In this model, the organization’s departments are at their highest intensity of interaction. To coordinate organizational activities, the integrating mechanism can act as a general management system, increasing coordination potential and reducing the need of organization. In general management system, the managers can use managerial hierarchy, basic rules and procedures or plans and goals to coordinate organizational activities. The management team can increase coordination potential by information system and lateral relationship and reducing the need of organization by creating “slack” resources.

b) Discuss the cost and benefit of centralised and decentralised decision making.

Centralization means the power of planning and decision making are exclusively in the hands of top management. The cost of centralised decision making is inflexibility because customer service does misses flexibility and the speed of local decision- making. It also is a poor diversification management so centralization is not suitable to manage diversified and dispersed organizations and it is a poor management development because centralization blocks the management development of subordinates. The benefits of centralised decision making is cost effective because duplication efforts is minimized. It also gives top-level maximum control and improved capacity of lower level. Furthermore, centralization encourages personal leadership.

Decentralized decision-making is any process where the decision-making authority is distributed throughout a larger group. Decentralized decision making has high cost incurred because of the duplications of efforts and wasted of resources. Human resources also need to be trained so organisation need amounts of money and time consuming. High management may also loss of control to the subordinates. This is not a good situation as they become far removed from the detail of underlying operations and unaware of the decisions being made by lower level managers. Besides, uniform policies are not followed because each manager will work under his or her policies. The benefits of decentralized decision-making are it encourages managers to provide freedom and independence in decision making. It also relieves the workload of top management because the managers are relieved from making routine decisions. Besides, decentralization provides power, prestige and status to subordinates and it promotes competitive climate to improve the performance of divisions and profits centre.

Chapter 9

1. You are a Human Resource Manager of an accountancy firm, and are required to employ 5 new accountants. Discuss the process of choosing the right accountants to be employed by your firm

First of all, I will put a notification of job vacancy on the social media to get attention from the people. After receiving the application, the screening process is needed to spot the applicants that achieve the requirement of an accountant. For example, the applicants must come from bachelor degree of accountancy. After the screening process, I will give employment test to each applicants. Written, performance and personality tests will be given to them to test their knowledge, skills for the specific job and personality. Physical examination and drug test will also be given to them to ensure that the person is physically able to carry out certain job requirements and for continued employment. The candidates who qualify the above tests are called for the employment interview to get more information about the candidates, to check the communication skill of the candidates and to give him/her the actual picture of what is required from him/her. One