Learning Team A

Organizational Structure

Summarize the impact of structure on an organization.

Compare and contrast management and leadership.

Explain how organizational behavior (OB) theories shape management purpose, positions, and essential skills.

Course Assignments

Readings

Read Ch. 1 of Leadership in Organizations.

Read Ch. 2 of Leadership in Organizations.

Read Ch. 1 of Organizational Behavior.

Read Ch. 8 of The Strategy Process.

Read this week’s Electronic Reserve Readings.

Discussion Questions

In what specific ways may an individual influence an organization through his or her management and leadership skills?

What is a significant employee behavior issue managers confront? According to organizational behavior theories, how should it be addressed?

What is the difference between managers and leaders? Is it possible to be an effective manager but not an effective leader? Provide examples.

Individual Assignment: Examining a Business Failure Paper

Resource: Internet

Research a failure that occurred at a large organization such as Tyco International Ltd.®, Chrysler LLC®, Daewoo Motor America®, WorldCom, or Enron.

Write a paper of no more than 1,050 words, describing how specific organizational behavior theories could have predicted or explained the company’s failure.

Compare and contrast contributions of leadership, management, and organizational structures to the failure.

Format your paper according to APA standards.

I am not going to make it to the first night of class, next Thursday. I will be camping in Gold Beach, Oregon.

I contacted the instructor and requested a copy of the syllabus. I will post it if she sends it to me.

WEEK 1 – TOPIC 1: ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE

Objectives

Summarize the impact of structure on an organization.

Compare and contrast management and leadership.

Explain how organizational behavior (OB) theories shape management purpose, positions, and essential skills.

Materials

SUPPLEMENT: Week One Student Road Map

SUPPLEMENT: Week One Mind Map

SUPPLEMENT: Week One Content Outline

Ebooks

ARTICLE: Electronic Reserve Readings

Assessment

Assignment: Examining a Business Failure

Committee of Sponsoring Organizations

http://www.coso.org/resources.htm

Attached is an interesting document about COSO

TAT_Nov1[1]

THE FIVE KEY COMPONENTS OF INTERNAL CONTROL

COSO’s report outlines 26 fundamental principles associated with the five key components of internal control:

1) control environment,

2) risk  assessment,

3) control activities,

4) information and communication,  and

5) monitoring.

The report systematically defines the principles associated with each of these components, examines their attributes, lists a variety of approaches that smaller companies can take to achieve them, and includes real-world examples of effective ways to evidence their effectiveness. 

CONTROL ENVIRONMENT

Because the control environment represents an organization’s first line of defense to mitigate the risks of financial reporting errors, a strong tone at the top plays a pivotal role. Research continues to prove that companies perform better and last longer when top management makes a commitment to strong internal control and clearly conveys this through their actions. COSO discovered that, while a commitment to a board of directors with outside members helps mitigate the risk of management override, smaller companies often don’t add qualified, outside personnel to their board. Why? The report asserts that dominating shareholders are often reluctant to share control with or be challenged by other parties. COSO believes that the advantages of having effective outside board members generally exceed the additional expense of directors’ and officers’ liability insurance, and this can significantly add to the long-term value of the company. COSO also recommends that the audit committee primarily be composed of independent board members. The most efficient and cost-effective way to implement and assess internal control over financial reporting is to build control-consciousness throughout the organization’s culture.

RISK ASSESSMENT

According to COSO, the major principles related to the achievement of control objectives at the risk assessment level are

1) the importance of financial reporting objectives;

2) the identification and analysis of financial reporting risks; and

3) the assessment of fraud risk.

Although smaller companies are more likely to have a more informal, less structured risk assessment process, the basic concepts of this internal control component should exist in every organization.

CONTROL ACTIVITIES

Control activities occur throughout the organization, at all levels and in all functions. In smaller businesses, control activities reflect their organizational characteristics, which include greater concentration of decision-making authority, wider spans of control, and shorter channels of communication. Smaller companies can provide controls to mitigate risks through a combination of methods, including oversight controls applied by management, segregation of duties, and independent reconciliations. Smaller businesses also can prepare and maintain a level of documentation that allows for the effective transition of job responsibilities, policies, and procedures.

INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION

Regardless of size, all businesses must identify, capture, and communicate pertinent information in a form and timeframe that enables people to carry out their responsibilities. Building sound management practices into information and communication processes affordably puts internal control over financial reporting in place. Information systems and internal communication in smaller organizations are likely to be less formal than in large ones, but they play equally significant roles. The use of information technology can help small businesses standardize controls. Also, their information systems typically will identify and report on relevant external events, activities, and conditions. And, thanks to the greater visibility and availability of their CEO, smaller businesses may more easily achieve effective internal communication than larger businesses.

MONITORING

Effective monitoring comprises 1) ongoing monitoring, 2) separate evaluations, and 3) reporting deficiencies. As a key component of the small-business control structure, monitoring confirms that all five components are in place, properly designed, and functioning effectively. Smaller businesses can reduce the cost and effort of monitoring by building it into processes. Ongoing monitoring activities of smaller companies are more likely to be hands-on and involve the CEO and other key managers. Furthermore, highly effective ongoing monitoring activities may offset the lack of separate evaluations of internal control systems commonly found in smaller businesses. Smaller businesses also can take advantage of the ease of communicating “red flags” to the right person.

COSO’S PRINCIPLES OF INTERNAL CONTROL

1. Integrity and Ethical Values

2. Importance of Board of Directors

3. Management’s Philosophy and Operating Style

4. Organizational Structure

5. Commitment to Financial Reporting Competencies

6. Authority and Responsibility

7. Human Resources

8. Importance of Financial Reporting Objectives

9. Identification and Analysis of Financial Reporting Risks

10. Assessment of Fraud Risk

11. Elements of a Control Activity

12. Control Activities Linked to Risk Assessment

13. Selection and Development of Control Activities

14. Information Technology

15. Information Needs

16. Information Control

17. Management Communication

18. Upstream Communication

19. Board Communication

20. Communication with Outside Parties

21. Ongoing Monitoring

22. Separate Evaluations

23. Reporting Deficiencies

24. Management Roles

25. Board and Audit Committees

26. Other Personnel

References

The Institute of Internal Auditors

Communications & PR

sarbanesoxley072302

It is my understanding that we are supposed to bring a copy of Sarbanes Oxley to class. It is 66 pages long and not very fun to read.

Business Forms and Governance

Compare and contrast the legal forms of business.

Analyze who Sarbanes-Oxley applies to and how it applies.

Design plans for managing the legal liability of officers and directors.

Required Reading and Assignments

Read Ch. 2, 9, 21, and Appendix K in Business.

Read materials posted in course materials.

Assignment: Corporate Compliance Plan

Access the Riordian virtual organization found on your rEsource page. Create a Corporate Compliance Plan for Riordian. The plan must synthesize your learning throughout the course and apply the legal principles of business management to Riordian. Focus your plan on managing the legal liability of officers and directors of Riordian. Your plan should address the following: ADR, enterprise liability, product liability, international law, tangible and intellectual property, legal forms of business, and governance.

Create your Corporate Compliance Plan as if you were going to distribute this to the officers and directors of Riordian. Outline the prevention and management guidelines of the legal aspects listed above. Use your individual assignments throughout the course to bring insight into this project. Implement enterprise risk management based on the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO) recommendations. COSO can be used to structure your plan. Be sure to incorporate key concepts from your readings where appropriate.

Address specific laws or aspects of the law that must be adhered to by Riordian and outline steps for employees to adhere to these laws. The plan must also address how to handle situations when laws are violated or in question (such as when to call in legal counsel, what rights the employees have, or who to turn to when actions are taken against Riordian).

Use APA format to create your Corporate Compliance Plan, and limit the plan to 10 pages.

Post your assignment as a Microsoft Word attachment

4. Respond to the discussion questions posed by your faculty 

Summary of Week 6 Deliverables

Is it just me or does our instructor wait until the last minute to return our graded assignments? I still have not received my assignment I turned in last week!

Daniel, how do I link this website with my email? Meaning, I want to receive an email every time there is a post on this website?

TANGIBLE PROPERTY – Property that has physical substance and can be touched; Anything other than real estate or money, including furniture, cars, jewelry and china. Intangible property (example; a check account) lacks this physical quality. That which may be felt or touched; it must necessarily be corporeal, but it may be real or personal. A house and a horse are, each, tangible property. The terni is used in contradistinction to property not tangible. By the latter expression, is; meant that kind of property which, though in possession as respects the right, and, consequently, not strictly choses in action, yet differ; from goods, because they are neither tangible nor visible, though the thing produced from the right be perfectly so. In this class may be mentioned copyrights and patent-rights.

“http://www.lectlaw.com/def2/t005.htm“

 INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY – Property that can be protected under federal law, including copyrightable works, ideas, discoveries, and inventions. Such property would include novels, sound recordings, a new type of mousetrap, or a cure for a disease.

http://www.lectlaw.com/def/i051.htm

PROPERTY – Not only money and other tangible things of value, but also includes any intangible right considered as a source or element of income or wealth.

The right and interest which a man has in lands and chattels to the exclusion of others. It is the right to enjoy and to dispose of certain things in the most absolute manner as he pleases, provided he makes no use of them prohibited by law.

All things are not the subject of property – the sea, the air, and the like, cannot be appropriated; every one may enjoy them, but he has no exclusive right in them. When things are fully our own, or when all others are excluded from meddling with them, or from interfering about them, it is plain that no person besides the proprietor, who has this exclusive right, can have any claim either to use them, or to hinder him from disposing of them as he pleases; so that property, considered as an exclusive right to things, contains not only a right to use those things, but a right to dispose of them, either by exchanging them for other things, or by giving them away to any other person, without any consideration, or even throwing them away.

Property is divided into real property, and personal property.

Property is also divided, when it consists of goods and chattels, into absolute and qualified. Absolute property is that which is our own, without any qualification whatever; as when a man is the owner of a watch, a book, or other inanimate thing: or of a horse, a sheep, or other animal, which never had its natural liberty in a wild state.

Qualified property consists in the right which men have over wild animals which they have redueed to their own possession, and which are kept subject to their power; as a deer, a buffalo, and the like, which are his own while he has possession of them, but as soon as his possession is lost, his property is gone, unless the animals, go animo revertendi.

But property in personal goods may be absolute or qualified without ally relation to the nature of the subject-matter, but simply because more persons than one have an interest in it, or because the right of property is separated from the possession. A bailee of goods, though not the owner, has a qualified property in them; while the owner has the absolute property.

Personal property is further divided into property in possession, and property or choses in action.

Property is again divided into corporeal and incorporeal. The former comprehends such property as is perceptible to the senses, as lands, houses, goods, merchandise and the like; the latter consists in legal rights, as choses in action, easements, and the like.

Property is lost, in general, in three ways, by the act of man, by the act of law, and by the act of God.

It is lost by the act of man by, 1st. Alienation; but in order to do this, the owner must have a legal capacity to make a contract. 2d. By the voluntary abandonment of the thing; but unless the abandonment be purely voluntary, the title to the property is not lost; as, if things be thrown into the sea to save the ship, the right is not lost. Poth. h. t., n. 270; 3 Toull. ii. 346. But even a voluntary abandonment does not deprive the former owner from taking possessiou of the thing abandoned, at any time before another takes possession of it.

The title to property is lost by operation of law. 1st. By the forced sale, under a lawful process, of the property of a debtor to satisfy a judgment, sentence, or decree rendered against him, to compel him to fulfil his obligations. 2d. By confiscation, or sentence of a criminal court. 3d. By prescription. 4th. By civil death. 6th. By capture of a public enemy.

The title to property is lost by the act of God, as in the case of the death of slaves or animals, or in the total destruction of a thing; for example, if a house be swallowed up by an opening in the earth during an earthquake.

It is proper to observe that in some cases, the moment that the owner loses his possession, he also loses his property or right in the thing: animals ferae naturae, as mentioned above, belong to the owner only while he retains the possession of them. But, in general,’ the loss of possession does not impair the right of property, for the owner may recover it within a certain time allowed by law.

http://www.lectlaw.com/def2/p100.htm

Workshop 5

Assessed Question 1: What actions should a manager in the selected industry take to identify and protect the tangible property rights of the organization? Add supplementary information to your teammates’ posts as needed. Comment on the postings of your classmates by comparing your selected industry with theirs.

Assessed Question 2: What actions should a manager in the selected industry take to identify and protect the intellectual property rights of the organization? Add supplementary information to your teammates’ posts as needed. Comment on the postings of your classmates by comparing your selected industry with theirs.

Assessed Question 3: What actions should a manager in the selected industry take to identify and protect the organization from violating the intellectual property rights of others? Add supplementary information to your teammates’ posts as needed. Comment on the postings of your classmates by comparing the industry you selected with theirs.