Managerial Decisions This a Case Study- Chapter

Managerial Decisions This a case study- Chapter 13 - "Analyzing Managerial Decisions: Bagby Copy Company" This module focuses depth leg -legged stool read module 1: assignment decision rights. Should rights granted individual a team workers? Should decisions made local level national level? Finally, connection assignment decision rights ability existing knowledge create knowledge? In Chapter 13 module continue a discussion decision rights focusing tasks bundled jobs, jobs bundled subunits a firm, determining type organizational structure meets a firm.

Analyzing managerial decisions In any business organization decisions have to be made in the event of trying to achieve set objectives and goals. The decisions made not only affect the decision maker but also the other staff members in the organization. In this paper, analysis of the managerial decisions by Bagby Copy Company focuses on bundling of tasks and determination of what organizational structure best meets the needs of the firm. Discussion Bagby Company is a global organization that produces copy machines from high-volume document machines to low-end desktop copiers.

When tasks are bundled jobs it results to economic trade-offs. The workforce under the broad task assignment performs multiple functions such as producing and testing harness while those under specialized task assignment perform only a limited or specialized number of functions such as testing a completed harness. Specialized task assignments incur the costs of reduced flexibility, coordination cost, functional myopia and foregone complimentary across tasks while exhibiting benefits of lower multiple training expenses and exploiting potential economies of scale.

Broad task assignment on the other hand has incentive issues depending on ability to measure different tasks and compensation; individuals are likely to put more effort on one task over another Brickley, Smith, & Zimmerman, 2007. Decisions on whether to bundle jobs into subunits of a firm should consider economic incentives. For the case of Bagby Company, the groups of people making the wire harness could be placed in one department or each group assigned to report to individual managers responsible for each copier.

Within subunits having groups of people together lowers coordination and communication costs though this calls for coordination of activities across subunits Brickley, et al., 2007() In determining what type of organizational structure best meets the needs of the firm, it depends on what basis the jobs have been grouped. Grouping of jobs by function develops a unitary form of organization whereby each primary function is allocated to one major subunit and the groups are decided upon by functional specialty.

A unitary Bagby organization is disadvantageous in that the employees focus on functions and not customers, senior management is concerned with making operation decisions and coordination instead of strategic planning and finally coordination problems rise across departments. On the brighter side a unitary organization promotes functional expertise, offers a well-defined promotion path and promotes effective coordination within functional area. A second organizational structure is grouping of jobs by physical location or product which leads to a multidivisional organization whereby each unit performs multiple functions.

Bagby Company operates in five European countries will benefit in that the senior management is able to focus on strategy, coordination is pertinent to a given are or product and the decision rights are tied to specific knowledge. Multidivisional organization is disadvantageous in that economies may be foregone by splitting functional personnel among business units and unit interdependencies maybe ignored Froeb & McCann, 2010. The other type of organizational structure is the matrix organization whereby employees are assigned to.