Search

Quality assurance includes all the factors involved in preventing quality problems within systematic and planned activities, which means the existence of a good quality managerial system in the field of human resources. The paper presents types of organizational structures that involve all personnel of a company in the assurance and continuous improvement of quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many financial markets are characterized by strong relationships and networks, rather than arm's-length, spot market transactions. We examine the performance consequences of this organizational structure in the context of relationships established when VCs syndicate portfolio company investments. We find that better-networked VC firms experience significantly better fund performance, as measured by the proportion of investments that are successfully exited through an IPO or a sale to another company. Similarly, the portfolio companies of better-networked VCs are significantly more likely to survive to subsequent financing and eventual exit. We also provide initial evidence on the evolution of VC networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marketing and innovation represent the key to the future success of any company. This paper considers what these dual concepts mean to the attitudes, structure and behaviour of a company, and takes a pragmatic look at the ways in which management can stifle or suppress innovation in a company. The author concludes by stating that a successful company should have a positive attitude toward innovation and meeting the needs of its customers. Its organisational structure should be one which promotes customer contact and the process of innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author examines the determinants of control loss in the marketing channels of 40 U.S. manufacturers, each of which has vertically integrated into wholesale distribution by the establishment of manufacturers' sales branches. The central hypothesis tested is that the efficiency of a vertically integrated system depends on the adoption of organizational forms which enable the firm to limit the degree of control loss and subgoal pursuit predictably resulting from vertical expansion. Control loss is operationalized in terms of the extent to which the travel and entertainment expenses of branch sales personnel exceed necessary levels. The results demonstrate the important influence of organizational structure and control systems on the efficiency of marketing operations. The findings are interpreted in terms of Williamson's organizational failures framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A study was undertaken to examine the relationships of chief executive need for achievement--and the traditional contingencies of size, technology, and environmental uncertainty--with organizational structure. A number of models relating the structural constructs of formalization, centralization, and integration with their hypothesized determinants were examined using LISREL and multiple- regression analyses. CEO need for achievement and size were found to have the strongest relationships to most structural constructs; technology and uncertainty had very little impact on structure. The relationships between need for achievement and structure were usually highest in samples of small and young firms, suggesting that CEO personality might be influencing structure, rather than the reverse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although they have been used interchangeably in previous empirical work, this study found poor convergence between the institutional and questionnaire measures of organizational structure. By emphasizing the conceptual distinction between them and measuring both simultaneously, steps could be taken toward the development of theory that better explains the process of organizational structuring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the analytical tool called the Management Responsibility Matrix (MRM) designed by the Douglas Aircraft Company to help design or streamline industrial and corporate operations easily. The MRM offers three aspects of usefulness: it highlights potential difficulties within the managerial process, clarifies issues relating to conflicts of responsibilities, and it serves as a guideline for operations and administration. The organizational chart offers both an internal and external understanding of management responsibilities.

The article presents an analysis of organizations as a set of flows, information, men, material, and behavior. As opposed to traditional hierarchical, and bureaucratic, organizational structure, the author proposes using a systems engineering approach to modifying organizational structures to enhance performance and optimize time management. He feels that his ideas are well adapted for incorporating new information and automation technologies within corporate and other organizational structures.

Increasingly, industry is having difficulty finding capable technical writers to meet a need that seems to grow almost daily. An investigation of causes, with remedies suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is science producing a revolution in the functions of the business executive? No, but evolutionary changes are taking place at a rapid rate to keep pace with automated technology--changes which are bound to upgrade marketing and research and development at the probable expense of those traditional masters of the organization chart, production and finance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Games designed for teaching can also be used as diagnostic devices to spot weaknesses in the organization chart and as potent research tools into the dynamics of group behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the sociometric approach and its application to a family-owned and controlled savings and loan association. Sociometry is a method in organizational analysis which measures the preference-relationships structure of members in a social group from a psychological perspective. The substructures in an organization are formal, informal, and operative. The operative system will be used to restructure the formal framework of the organization, which will improve communication and group together similar activities to increase efficiency. Prescribed, perceived, actual, desired, and rejected relations are mentioned, as well as the design of a sociogram and the administrative division, liaison functions, and operating divisions in complex organizations.

An organizational saga is a collective understanding of a unique accomplishment based on historical exploits of a formal organization, offering strong normative bonds within and outside the organization. Believers give loyalty to the organization and take pride and identity from it. A saga begins as strong purpose, introduced by a man (or small group) with a mission, and is fulfilled as it is embodied in organizational practices and the values of dominant organizational cadres, usually taking decades to develop. Examples of the initiation and fulfillment of sagas in academic organizations are presented from research on Antioch, Reed, and Swarthmore. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents various news items related to universities. A series of monographs reporting a major phase of the Ohio State Leadership Studies is scheduled for publication during 1956 by the Bureau of Business Research. These are studies of leadership and group behavior in formal organization structures. The techniques described cover work pattern analysis; leader behavior dimensions; group dimensions; responsibility, authority, and delegation scales; sociometric measures of personal interaction; interviewing; and ratings of effectiveness. The Bureau of Business Research has just published Ratios of Staff to Line Employees and Stages of Differentiation of Staff Functions, by AlLan W. Baker and Ralph C. Davis. The study covers 211 Ohio manufacturing companies. Ratios of the number of indirect workers in the total and in each of 16 different staff functions to total direct workers are shown. Analysis of the stage, or degree, of functional differentiation at different company-size levels is made.

In practical work, all managers should feel or experience the need for almost instant information. To meet this requirement, each seeking to create their own tools, more or less attached to a valid general concepts, but anyway required knowledge indicators relied on by tracing how the enterprise is directed. The dashboard is one of the tools of management that, alongside the other, grounding and responds very well to support managerial decisions with supplementary data provided by other means. To track attainment at all levels and categories of functions, the company has resorted to several information systems, one of these being the dashboard. When an enterprise is talking about a dashboard. the concept envisages an overall as well, corresponding to different responsibilities. Officers to have a dashboard will be designated according to the results that may be subject to short-term deviations, which would jeopardise attainment of the objectives. In this case the board shall contain the most sensitive indicators which permit the consignee an image as more complex consequences of her actions. Dashboards that were established at various levels will not contain information necessary to the exercise than by each of its functions and the responsible presentation of the results of the higher level. As a general rule, the practice of enterprises shows that the network organization of dashboards is made on the principle of pyramid, being merged in a formula similar to that of the organization chart. The basic aim of this article is derived from the complexity and variety of aspects that we reflect the scoreboard, one of the most used indicators of economic activity of any enterprise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides a description of an overall structure within the federal government wherein scientific activities are centralized. A chart showing the framework of the organization for science in the federal government is illustrated. A brief history and an explanation of the structure of some scientific organizations such as the President's Scientific Research Board, Joint Research and Development Board, the Office of Naval Research, the Research and Development Division of the War Department General Staff and the National Academy of Sciences and the National Research Council are also presented.

The article offers information on the use of computer networks in building biological and social systems of organizations. Topics discussed include the in-depth understanding required for human resource (HR) professionals in expanding the networks of knowledge and people, the use of organization charts as tools in planning and controlling the environments assumed to be predictable and stable, and the types of networks composing organizations which include prescribed and emergent.

ABSTRACT In this article, we explore how public front-line service organizations respond to contradictory demands for institutional reform and the types of hybridization this entails. Our research context is a major administrative welfare reform in Norway characterized by a dominant New Public Management ( NPM) logic of uniform user service and central administrative control, and a subordinate post- NPM logic of holistic user service and local organizational autonomy. We elucidate four types of responses by the front-line organizations as they have incorporated these contradictory demands: 'non-hybridity' (ignoring post- NPM demands), 'ad hoc hybridity' (indecisive adherence to both demands), 'negative hybridity' (separation of the demands), and 'positive hybridity' (integration of both demands). On the basis of these findings, we argue that hybridization and agency are possible in fields of public reform characterized by a highly institutionalized NPM logic and explore the key organizational characteristics that facilitate hybridization in such fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]