Management Course - Have you ever made an assumption

Management Course

10 questions, 130-150 words per answer

L1Q1: Have you ever made an assumption about the causes of another person's behavior at work (e.g., poor performance) that you based your response to the person on, where the assumption turned out to be wrong? Briefly describe the situation. What was the consequence for you, for the other person, and for the organization? Have you ever been the "victim" of an incorrect assumption? Tell us about it.

L1Q2: HHave you ever been involved in creating an organization's mission statement? If so, was it easy or difficult? If it's difficult, what did you find hard about it? Were the difficulties just conceptual, or was organizational politics involved in articulating what the organization should be doing?

L1Q4: Evaluate your own behaviors as a manager, and/or the behaviors of the person who manages you. How effective or ineffective are you/your manager? Which of Mintzberg's managerial role behaviors do you/your manager exhibit? Which ones do you/your manager not exhibit but should? Being as honest as you can, how well or poorly are you/your manager carrying out these roles? What could you/your manager do to improve?

L2Q1: Describe the external environment, primary tasks, size and technology of an organization that you (or someone you know) have been a member of (now or in the past). As best you can, describe this organization’s overall design and the design of its subunits (i.e., its departments, divisions, etc.) in terms of the “organic” and “mechanistic” concepts. Evaluate the appropriateness of its design in relation to the contingency factors identified above. That is, to what extent does the design "fit" its external environment, primary tasks, size, and technology? If the fit is not very good, how would you re-design the organization differently? How is the design affecting performance?

L2Q2: What, in general, would you consider to be the most and least desirable characteristics of the functional, divisional, and matrix approaches to structural differentiation? Why? Which of these structures do you think you would be most comfortable working in, and why?

L2Q3: Describe as best you can the organization where you work (or one you have known in the past) in terms of how subunits are differentiated. Does this approach to structure appear to be effective or ineffective? Why? If the organization's structure has some shortcomings, what are they, and how would you re-structure it?

L3Q1: Describe a situation or two that you have observed, or been a part of, at work (or on a team or club or formal group that you were a member of) that involved use of the integrative mechanisms we have discussed. Which mechanisms were they, and how were they applied?

L3Q2: Which of the above integration attempts worked well? Which worked poorly? Why? What do you think could have been done to integrate the organization more effectively?

L3Q3: Have you ever found yourself in a job conflict or job overload situation due to multiple lines of authority? How did you react to it emotionally and behaviorally? How did the managers involved react to it? How did it affect your job performance? What could have been done to resolve the problem?

L3Q4: How would you describe the culture of the organization where you now work, or have worked in the past (or perhaps the organization that someone you know has worked at)? Is/Was it an adaptive culture or an inert culture? How is/was this culture communicated to employees? What stories, ceremonies, language, or other behaviors are/were used, intentionally or otherwise, to communicate cultural messages? How has/did this culture affected employee attitudes and behavior?