Human resource (HR) management is the process of hiring, developing, motivating, and evaluating employees to achieve organizational goals. The goals and strategies of the firm’s business model form the basis for making human resource management decisions. HR practices and systems comprise…
Exhibit 8.1 (Credit: Ludovic Bertron /flickr / Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)) Learning Outcomes After reading this chapter, you should be able to answer these questions: Exploring Business Careers Andrea Herran, Human Resources Consultant In college, Andrea Herran studied business administration…
Building Organizational Structures Firms typically use traditional, contemporary, or team-based approaches when designing their organizational structure. In the traditional approach, companies first divide the work into separate jobs and tasks. Managers then group related jobs and tasks together into departments.…
To improve organizational performance and achieve long-term objectives, some organizations seek to reengineer their business processes or adopt new technologies that open up a variety of organizational design options, such as virtual corporations and virtual teams. Other trends that have…
Up to this point, we have focused on formal organizational structures that can be seen in the boxes and lines of the organization chart. Yet many important relationships within an organization do not show up on an organization chart. Nevertheless,…
You are now familiar with the different ways to structure an organization, but as a manager, how do you decide which design will work the best for your business? What works for one company may not work for another. In…
The optimal span of control is determined by the following five factors: The final component in building an effective organizational structure is deciding at what level in the organization decisions should be made. Centralization is the degree to which formal authority is…
Once companies choose a method of departmentalization, they must then establish the relationships within that structure. In other words, the company must decide how many layers of management it needs and who will report to whom. The company must also…
One of the most apparent trends in business today is the use of teams to accomplish organizational goals. Using a team-based structure can increase individual and group motivation and performance. This section gives a brief overview of group behavior, defines…
Although traditional forms of departmentalization still represent how many companies organize their work, newer, more flexible organizational structures are in use at many firms. Let’s look at matrix and committee structures and how those two types of organizations are helping…