ECOS3003 Assignment questions 1

Assignment ECOS3003

Choose one of the following questions:

Question A.

You have been approached by the Board of Directors of a company of your choice to
advise it on its organizational architecture.

You must:

1. Select the company (it must be a real for-profit firm).
2. Describe the company’s organizational architecture.
3. Make an assessment of the current architecture. Is the current architecture
appropriate or would you recommend change? If you recommend changes, what
are they? Provide arguments to support your case.


Question B

The University of Sydney has the core objectives of providing quality undergraduate and
postgraduate training as well as being a leading research institutes. The University gets
most of its revenue from teaching, but also receives a significant amount of money for
research (grants, payments for research output by the Federal government, and so on).
In this process, there are many decisions that need to be made: there are choices about
what degrees and subject areas to offer students; how should academics be paid?; how
should research be rewarded?; and so on.

In this question, you need to analyse the organizational architecture of the University of
Sydney. Where appropriate, make recommendations for a change in the current structure.
Provide reasons for your arguments. This report can be written as if you are a consultant
writing a report for the Vice Chancellor.


Question C

Development of new products or services in the bio-tech or high-tech fields invariably
involves a combination of highly specialized skills or techniques from different areas. This
possibly explains why there are so many joint research and development ventures in the
bio-tech and high-tech industries. But joint ventures are not without their own problems.

Taking a real example of a joint venture, what are the potential benefits and problems for
one (or all) of the participants? Discuss how the joint venture could be set up in such a
way so that still produces the potential benefits but avoids some of the pitfalls inherent in
such projects.


Question D

Taking the Aghion and Tirole (1997) model as a starting point, this question requires you
to develop your own economic model of decision making.

1. First, identify a tradeoff between decentralisation (or delegation) and
centralisation.
2. Develop an economic model that captures these tradeoffs.
3. Solve the model and provide some economic intuition for the results.
ECOS3003 Assignment questions 2

4. Relate the predictions of your model to the current literature on the optimal
allocation of decision-making rights in the literature.

Background reading for Question D

Aghion, P. and J. Tirole 1997, ‘Formal and real authority in organizations’, Journal of
Political Economy, vol. 105, no. 1, pp. 1-29.

M. Colombo and M. Delmastro 2008, The Economics of Organizational Design: Theoretical
Insights and Empirical Evidence, Palgrave MacMillan, Hampshire UK, Chapter 2.


Question E

Make up your own question. If you want to do this, you need to come and discuss it with
me first.



Instructions

Note:
1. You are expected to undertake some amount of research in completing this
assignment – certainly enough to answer the question. You do not need to know
everything about the company you are studying, but you will need to have a good
idea about at least a few aspects of its architecture. In this assignment, you will be
rewarded for the depth of (relevant) research that you undertake. This means that
you do not have to analyze everything to do with your company – rather, focus on
one or two aspects and analyze them in greater depth. The usual rules of academic
referencing apply.
2. In this assignment, you will also be rewarded for the depth of your analysis using
the tools that you will have been taught in the course.
3. You must back up with evidence or logical reasoning all statements that you make.
Your claims should, where appropriate, be supported by references to the existing
work of experts. Any references used need to detailed in the reference list at the
end of the essay.
4. Given the word count, you will be rewarded from a concise synthesis of the relevant
ideas/evidence/issues.
5. Please submit your assignment double-spaced in 12-point font.
6. Make sure you reference your assignment. Any standard referencing style is
acceptable, provided it is consistent, complete and correct.

The maximum word limit is 750 words, (excluding your reference list, appendices and
diagrams). Any


What to submit and when: Assignments must be submitted electronically via Canvas.


DUE DATE: 13.00 11 May 2022

Have fun … 