1. What would it be like to be a department manager in a functional organization

Question

1. What would it be like to be a department manager in a functional organization structure? responsibilities, skills, competencies, authority, and decision making authority 2. How do responsibility, authority, and accountability differ? What happens to responsibility, authority, and accountability when a manager delegates work to a subordinate? What issues or problems would an organization encounter with a matrix structure? Would you like to work in a matrix organization structure? Why or why not? 3. 4. Your organization is organized with functional departments. It has encountered the following problems. What coordinating mechanism would you select to manage each problem? Justify your selection a. The number of workplace accidents has increased greatly in all the departments b Departments are competing with each other for budgets and other scarce resources resulting in dysfunctional conflicts. c. The research, engineering, manufacturing, and marketing departments disagree on product specifications and performance features, and new products are being delivered too late to market as a result. 5. Does an organization in a turbulent environment require more horizontal relationships than one in a stable environment? Explain

Explanation / Answer

1. Under a functional organization structure employees are grouped according to their specialization and according to a similar set of tasks and responsibilities. Being a department manager in a functional organization structure would make my task, roles and responsibilities a whole lot easier and would reduce substantial burden from my shoulders. This is because all my subordinates and all the employees in my department have similar knowledge, skills, competencies and aptitude and thus it will become easier for me to manage them. As I manager I would be able to ensure higher productivity from my department. My authority (including my decision making authority) will be high as there is the presence of a clear hierarchy and I will be the sole supervisor within my department.

Under a divisional organizational there will be a segregation of large sections of an organization’s business into groups that will be semi-autonomous. There will be several parallel teams in this structure and the teams will focus on a single product line or a single service line. Being a department manager in a divisional organization will be significantly different from being a department manager in a functional organization. In such a structure the quantum of responsibilities will be high as the manager will have to ensure that his/her team is able to compete effectively with other parallel teams. As such the skills and competencies required will be an effective mix of technical skills as well as soft skills and competencies. The level of authority (including my decision making authority) will be high as members of a particular team will have to report to the manager of the team. But compared to the level of authority enjoyed by a manager under functional organization structure the level of authority will be lower in case of a manager in a divisional organizational structure.

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