Conduct a technology analysis of your fictitious organization.

What kinds of good or services does your organization produce? Are input, conversion, or output activities the source of greatest uncertainty for your organization?

What role does technology in the form of knowledge play in the production of the organization's goods or services?

What role does materials technology play in the production of the organization's goods and services?

What is the organizations level of technical complexity? Does the organization use a small-batch, mass production, or continuous-process technology?

Use the concepts of task variability and task analyzability to describe the complexity of your organization's activities. Which of the four types of technology identified by Perrow does your organization use?

What forms of task interdependence between people and between departments characterize your organization's work process? Which of the three types of technology identified by Thompson does your organization use?

The analysis you have done so far might lead you to expect your company to operate with a particular kind of structure. What kind? To what extent does your organization's structure seem to fit with the characteristics of the organization's technology? For example, is the structure organic or mechanistic?

Do you think your organization is operating its technology effectively? Do you see any ways in which it could improve its technical efficiency, innovativeness, or ability to respond to customers?