30 Dec Report content should

ORGANIZATION STRUCTURE

Assignment Overview

Based on your background readings related to organization structure (Boundless, Chapter 2) and the case reading below, consider the following business case and answer the questions. A typical auto dealership has, perhaps, a hundred or so employees engaged in new (possibly two or more different brands of both trucks and cars) and used vehicle sales, service, finance (loans and leasing), personnel (human resource policies, evaluation, payroll and benefits administration), marketing and advertising, and other business concerns (budgeting, accounting, facilities, etc.).

Case reading

Healey, T. (2016). A guide to dealership structure. http://automotive.about.com/od/Retail/a/We-Take-A-Look-At-The-Basic-Structure-Of-An-Automotive-Dealership.htm

Case Assignment

Visit a local car dealership. Most managers love to talk to students about their businesses, but be sure to call ahead and talk to the general manager to explain the purpose of the visit and arrange a time. Request a 10-minute interview to discuss such questions as:

How many employees in how many departments?

Who heads these departments and who do they report to?

What kinds of decisions are made at the corporate headquarters and what kinds of decisions do they make at the dealership?

Any other questions you have that will help you complete your assignment.

When you have completed the readings and conducted your site visit:

Draw an organizational chart for this dealership. Identify the various management positions or titles on the chart and indicate the positions/jobs that would report to each.

SmartDraw.com (https://cloud.smartdraw.com/) provides free examples, though others are also available via Google. PowerPoint also has templates for organizational charts you can use.

Explain the current organizational structure in terms of requirements for (1) specialization (e.g., accounting vs. the body shop) and (2) decentralization, in other words, “downstreaming” authority to department heads for advertising, for example.

Make one recommendation for a change in the organizational structure that will improve productivity or efficiency, and justify that recommendation.

Assignment Expectations

This Case Assignment is graded according to the same case rubric that has been used in Modules 1 and 2. In addition:

Case reports are to be prepared in Microsoft Word and should be 3-4 pages in length, in addition to a cover page (course name and number, module number, session name, student name, and date prepared) and reference list – double-spaced, 12 pt. type, Times New Roman font.

Report content should include a brief introduction to the assignment, background information about the organization being studied, the organizational chart, and your discussion of organizational structure in terms of the concepts or theories being applied in the assignment.

Use subtitles, bullets, and tables to improve presentation values.

Attention is to be given to citing sources of information in text as well as in the reference list at the end of reports. Citation and reference style instructions are available at https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/10/.

Submit your report in the Case dropbox for this module on or before the date due, as indicated in the TLC Homepage.