Work Specialization
Dividing work activities into separate job tasks
What is work specialization?
The line of authority extending from upper organizational levels to lower levels, which clarifies who reports to whom
What is chain of command?
The degree to which jobs within the organization are standardized and the extent to which employee behavior is guided by rules and procedures
What is formalization?
The basis by which jobs are grouped together
What is departmentalization?
The degree to which lower-level employees provide input or actually make decisions
What is decentralization?
Another name for work specialization
What is division of labor?
The obligation or expectation to perform assigned duties
What is responsibility?
Fewer constraints on how employees do their work means that the organization has this
What is low formalization?
The type of departmentalization that groups jobs according to geographic region
What is geographical departmentalization?
The degree to which decision making takes place at upper levels of the organization
What is centralization?
Early proponents of work specialization believed that it could lead to great increases in this
What is productivity?
Two different types of authority
Line authority and staff authority
Lots of rules and policies about how work gets done indicates that there is
What is high formalization?
Five different forms of departmentalization
What is geographical, product, process, customer and functional departmentalization?
Giving employees more authority to make decisions
What is employee empowerment?
This can result in human diseconomies such as boredom, fatigue, stress, poor quality, increased absenteeism, and higher turnover
What is overspecialization?
Three important chain of command concepts
What is low formalization?
The type of departmentalization that has a director of sales, retail accounts manager, wholesale accounts manager and government accounts manager
What is customer departmentalization?
When the environment is complex and uncertain, this organizational element is best suited
What is decentralization?
A motor car company that became rich in the 20th century by building cars in an assembly line
What is Ford Motor Company?
A concept that states that a person should report to only one manager. Without this, conflicting demands from multiple bosses can occur (one of Fayol's fourteen management principles)
What is unity of command?
Traditional management theorists favored this means of formalization
"Can only be used with certain types of products" is a disadvantage of this type of departmentalization
What is process departmentalization?
Centralization vs. decentralization seeks to answer this
What is "At what organizational level are decisions made?"