Individual Assignment for 23 Mar 2024:

Deadline for submission: 10:30am today (23 Mar)

Submission via: google link posted on Blackboard

1. READ Chapter 8 in the textbook, and Slides of chapter 8 uploaded on

Blackboard. If you have any question or any thing unclear, let’s write down
here to ask the lecturer.

2. Choose one organization, search about that organization to draw its

organizational chart, and identify which model they are using (Line-and-
Staff organization, or Matrix-style organization, or Cross-functional self
Managed Team or what?)

Organization: Samsung

Organization chart:

CEO

Digital Media and Corporate

Device Solutions
Communications Management

IT & Mobile
Consumer
Communications Memory Division
Electronics (CE)
(IM)

Mobile
Visual Display
Communications S.LSI Division
Division
Division

Digital Appliances LED Business

IT Solution Division
Division Division

Printing Solution
Network Division
Business

Health and Medical Digital Imaging

Equipment Business Divison

Media Solution
Division

Samsung’s organizational
structure’s main
characteristic
Samsung has a product-type divisional organizational structure. This structure
uses
product categorization as the basis for determining which resources and business,
operations belong to certain divisions. Each division is a group of resources and
operations that represent a product category, such as resources and operations for the
production, distribution, and sale of consumer electronics. The corporate structure’s
emphasis on technological innovation and product development in these
divisions helps in achieving Samsung’s corporate vision and mission
statements.

3. HOW DO ORGANIZATIONS GROUP ACTIVITIES?

Corporations use their websites and social media pages to communicate with
investors, customers, and the general public. Just by visiting the company’s site you
can usually discover the organization’s chain of command and approach to
departmentalization. Go to the websites for each organization below and identify the
primary organizational units. (Hint: Look for the “Corporate Information” or
“Investor Relations” sections.) Based on that information, speculate on the type of
departmentalization used.1

1. Coca-Cola Company
Primary Organizational Units: Global Business units, Functional
Department, Coca-Cola Bottlers, Corporate Functions, Strategic Business Units,
Venture and Department

Type of Departmentalization Used: geographical and product division,

and functional group

2. The Walt Disney Company

Primary Organizational Units: media networks, parks and resorts,
studio entertainment, consumer products and interactive media.

Type of Departmentalization Used: decentralized cooperative

multidivisional organizational structure with business divisions, centralized functional
group, geographical divisions

3. The United Methodist Church

Primary Organizational Units: General Conference, Council of

Bishops, Judicial Council

Type of Departmentalization Used: Functional departmentalization.

4. Kraft Foods
Primary Organizational Units:

Type of Departmentalization Used: Product Departmentalization

5. Boeing
Primary Organizational Units: Commercial Airplanes; Defense, Space
& Security; and Global Services.

Type of Departmentalization Used: matrix structure of management

1
(this is optional) CASE DISCUSSION AND ANSWER QUESTIONS FOR
MORE BONUS POINTS

STRUCTURAL COLLAPSE: RESPONSIBILITY AND ACCOUNTABILITY

To publicize its newly opened nightspot, a major hotel instituted weekly “tea dances”
in the lobby of the hotel. A local band played 1940s-era music while dancers
competed in friendly contests. On a Friday night in July, the band was playing Duke
Ellington’s “Satin Doll” when two skywalks spanning the lobby of the year-old hotel
collapsed. Sixty-five tons of concrete, metal, glass, and dance spectators plunged four
floors to the sidewalk below, killing 114 persons and injuring 216 others.

The investigation after the collapse revealed that the collapse resulted from poor
judgment and a series of events that, in combination, produced a disastrous result. The
study showed a history of oversights, misunderstandings, and safety problems
plaguing the 40-story, 780-room luxury hotel during construction and for months after
its opening.

Mishaps aren’t uncommon on big projects, of course. But this huge project, which
was built on an accelerated schedule, encountered a series of accidents and near-
accidents during construction. At one point the building’s owner dismissed its general
contractor and barred an inspection company from bidding on future company
projects.

The hotel was erected using the “fast-track” method, a fairly common procedure in
which construction proceeds before all drawings are complete. With a $40 million
construction loan outstanding and all building costs soaring, the owner wanted the
hotel up and open as quickly as practical.

Design changes are common on fast-track projects, making clear communications

more critical than usual. The owners of the building had circulated a 27-page
procedures manual explaining the proper channels for design changes and approved
drawings. But the procedures weren’t always followed, and other mistakes slipped in.
Because some connections were misplaced on the drawings, for instance, workers
installed a sweeping cantilevered stairway without fully attaching it to a wall.

The investigation found that the skywalks fell as a result of a design change made
during a telephone call between the structural engineering company and the steel
fabricator. Stress calculations would have shown that the redesigned skywalks were
barely able to support their own weight, let alone the weight of dozens of dance
spectators. However, court depositions of the two engineers who made the telephone
redesign indicate that each person assumed it was the other’s responsibility to make
new calculations, and neither did.

Edward Pfrang, then chief of the structures division of the National Bureau of
Standards and a participant in the investigation, says, “One thing that’s clear after . . .
[this] failure and a few others is that there isn’t a clear-cut set of standards and
practices defining who is responsible in the construction process.

discussion questions
1. Who was responsible for the collapse? Explain.

2. Identify several key time points at which the problem could have been
corrected.

3. Is this a failure of planning, organizing, leading, or controlling?