Hierarchies, incentives and firm structure ECOS3003
Tutorial 3
1. Discuss the costs and benefits of decentralized decision making relative to centralized decision making?
2. Discuss the positive and negative effects of a university rule that would not allow lecturers to change a grade once recorded.
Copyright By PowCoder代写 加微信 powcoder
3. United Airlines assigns flight attendants to routes using the following procedure: once a month, the attendants request the routes they prefer, with conflicts resolved strictly on the basis of seniority. Why does United use this procedure rather than simply let the supervisor of the attendants assign the flights?
4. An organizational consultant evaluates your division. She indicates that she does not like the divisional manager’s top-down style. She recommends setting up a board that consists of the divisional manager and his top 10 department managers. The consultant suggests that all major policy decisions be made by the board by a majority voting rule. She argues this process will make better use of information within the organization. She also argues that tour political system is a democracy, which works well, and that the same concept could be applied beneficially within a corporation. Evaluate the recommendation.
5. Traditionally, lending decisions at financial institutions were made by people relatively high up in the organization. For instance, a senior loan officer might have to approve even a small loan. Recently, some financial institutions have decentralized this decision, sometimes to people without university degrees. Discuss why it might have historically made sense to centralise the lending decision. Discuss potential factors that might motivate the decentralisation of these rights in certain organisations.
6. Define the terms decision management and decision control. Under what circumstances might it be optimal to make one individual responsible for both decision management and decision control? What do you expect the ownership of common stock to like in such a firm? Explain.
7. Consider a firm’s decentralisation decision – a firm can completely decentralise decisions in which case D = 1 or a firm can completely decentralise a decision (D = 0).
a. What does it mean to partially decentralise a decision?
The benefits of decentralisation are given by 10.D. The costs of decentralisation are given by 2D + 6D2. b. What is the optimal level of decentralisation?
8. See page 359 of the text (the case study on ).
(a) What factors motivated Kodak to change its organisational architecture?
(b) What mistakes did Kodak make in changing tis architecture?
(c) What might have been done differently?
9. Question 12-4 on page 393 of the text.
ECOS3003 Tutorial 3 1
10. In the past several years, General Motors, a large car manufacturer, and , a major apparel manufacturer, have implemented team-based production processes. Under team-based production each employee is assigned to a team and each employee is evaluated and compensated on the productivity of their team.
General Motors implemented team-based production at its new Saturn car plant. No other GM plant has implemented team-based production (at least not nearly to the same extent). The Saturn plant is new facility (that is, not an old facility that has been converted) and team-based production processes have been in place since the plant began production. Saturn employees are new hires; few, if any, came from other GM facilities.
adopted team-based production processes at its existing plants. Employees who had been previously paid a piece-rate were put on a team-based reward process.
a. In general, what are the advantages and disadvantages of team-based production?
b. Team-based production at GM’s Saturn division is widely considered as a success. Saturn cars are some of the best-built in the GM production line. Workplace morale is high at the Saturn plant. By constrast, the team initiative is widely considered a failure. Worker productivity has declined and employee morale is low. What factors caused the Saturn experiment with team-based production to be a success and the experiment to be a failure? Why?
ECOS3003 Tutorial 3 2
程序代写 CS代考 加微信: powcoder QQ: 1823890830 Email: powcoder@163.com