DEPARTMENT OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION
BA5201 ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT
FALL 2018
TERM PROJECT
Prepared by:
Ekin BERKYÜREK | 1537604
Mevlüt Aycan AŞIKOĞLU | 1938174
Umutcan Sümeyye YÜKSEL | 2395226
Instructor: Assist. Prof. Dr. Çağrı TOPAL
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Describe the organization in general. What are its boundaries inputs, processes, and
outputs? ......................................................................................................................................................... 3
2. Describe the types of differentiation and degree of centralization, degree of
formalization, span of control at different levels, standardization of organizational
processes, and whether the organization has a mechanistic or organic design. ............... 5
3. What are the official goals or mission of the organization? What are its operating or
operative goals? From the strategies of differentiation, low-cost, prospector, defender,
analyzer, and reactor, which one is used by the organization and why? .............................. 6
4. What design is used, functional, output, matrix, horizontal/team, virtual network, or
hybrid? ........................................................................................................................................................... 7
5. Describe the task (industry, raw materials, market, human resources, and
international context) and general (government, nature, culture, economy, technology,
and financial resources) environments of the organization. ..................................................... 7
6. What adaptation and control strategies does the organization use to handle
environmental uncertainty? .................................................................................................................. 8
7. Which core technology is used in the organization?................................................................. 9
8. Describe the life cycle of the organization.................................................................................... 9
9. What are the general indicators and manifestations of the organization’s culture? . 10
10. Which decision making model best explains the organizational decision process,
rational or bounded rational or garbage can? ............................................................................. 10
11. What sources of power do you observe in the organization?............................................ 10
12. Based on your findings, what changes do you suggest would benefit this
organization? How would these changes help this organization to improve? .................. 11
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1. Describe the organization in general. What are its boundaries inputs, processes, and
outputs?
Middle East Technical University was established on 15 November 1956 with a vision of a
leading international university that transforms its region and the world. Currently, METU has
28000+ students, 5 faculties offering 43 undergraduate degree programs and 5 graduate schools
offering 107 masters and 69 Ph.D. programs offered at METU Ankara Campus. Majority of
METU undergraduate students received from the top 1% of 2,000,000+ applicants annually
taking the National University Entrance Examination. We have chosen METU Publicity Office
(for domestic prospective students) as for our Management Science Project Study. METU
Publicity Office is operating under Institutional Relations Office along with GISAM, Public
Relations Director, Press Relations, Career Planning Center, ADIMODTÜ, ODTÜDEN and
Alumni Relations which all are directed by Rector’s Consultant Assoc. Prof. Dr. Y. Eren Kalay
Publicity Office’s main task is performing publicity activities for recruiting students for both
Ankara Campus and for Northern Cyprus Campus alongside with other marketing and
communications activities.
Figure 1. Position of Publicity Office in University's Organizational Structure
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In autumn and spring semesters, METU Publicity Office organizes campus tours and
presentations for the prospective students. Around 1500 high schools apply for the campus tours
and presentations. METU Publicity Office selects around 500-600 high schools and organizes
campus tours and presentations for them. In addition, Publicity Office organizes 2 publicity fairs
in the campus which are visited by more than 20000 students and parents. In the summer
semester, Publicity Office organizes METU Info Days and talk to students and parents on a oneto-one basis. Publicity Office also assists other offices related to institutional relations office such
as ADIMODTÜ and GISAM in terms of communication and marketing. Prospective
international students and exchange students are not in the scope of the Publicity Office. It is hard
to measure the performance indicators at this kind of service since university enrollment is
affected by too many variables, but surveys are applied regularly to the high schools. Also, the
enrollment rate in the top 100, top 500 and top 1000 students are counted as a key performance
indicator. It is assumed by the office that, the campus tours and presentations during the spring
and autumn semesters are very important for the students as they increase the students’ likelihood
of visiting the campus in the summer semester when they apply for the university. Campus tours
and presentations for the prospective student groups are consisting of more than %70 of the total
workload. The office operates with 4 full-time specialists and almost 30 part-time university
students as guides. Guides are from different departments; different genders and they have
different experience levels. There are also skill differences among guides in terms of public
speaking. Guides have to attend their classes and exams since they are all bachelor’s degree
students. Since METU is a huge university; campus tours are being made with the high school
buses, guides taking the bus and showing around using a microphone. After the campus tour,
university presentation is being made in a lecture hall. A campus tour lasts approximately 30
minutes and university presentation takes 1 hour. Usually, a campus tour continues with a
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presentation and a Q&A session, but due to time limitations of the high schools, there can be only
campus tours without any presentation. Since Q&A may take longer time than predicted, the
office treats each program as two hours. In an ideal program, a guide is assigned to each school
bus and for the presentation at least 2 guides are assigned; 1 male and 1 female student, 1
engineering/natural sciences/architecture student and 1 social/administrative sciences student.
The office tries to assign experienced and highly skilled guides to the important high school
whose students are more likely to enroll to the university. The office decides on the importance of
the high schools based on how many students are enrolled in the last 5 years and TEOG points of
the high schools.
2. Describe the types of differentiation and degree of centralization, degree of formalization,
span of control at different levels, standardization of organizational processes, and whether
the organization has a mechanistic or organic design.
We can state that the publicity office has a highly horizontal type of differentiation, full-time
specialists usually have independent responsibilities, but they usually work together on nonroutine projects or big events. In publicity office, one full-time specialist is responsible for
graphic design, another one is responsible from METU NCC, another one is responsible for
general communications, another one is responsible from prospective students and campus tours
but for they example work together for redesigning of a web page or a publicity fair which is
visited by 20000 students. There is no supervisor other than Rector’s consultant Doç.Dr.Y.Eren
Kalay who is rarely involved in micro-planning. Spatial differentiation can also be observed as
well, since the publicity office is responsible from domestic marketing for both Ankara and
Northern Cyprus Campus, twice in a month there are coordination meeting with the METU
Cyprus Campus’ marketing team. Apart from full-time administrative staff, there are 30 student
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guides which are responsible for phone answering, data analysis on excel, making campus tours
and university presentations. Since there is a high turnover rate for the student guides, a lot of
standardization and formalization can be observed. There are written guides and how-to manuals
for almost every task that a student is responsible for, moreover since more high schools apply
for the campus tours than the office can handle there are formulations for the acceptance of the
high school’s applications including TEOG minimum points of the high school and students that
came from applicant high school in the last 5 years. On the other hand, the presentations are
highly personalized and unique, there are certain PowerPoint slides, but each guide can add some
slides and personalize the presentation. There are certain routes for the campus tours but guides
somewhat have the autonomy for the information that they will present. Therefore, the design is
mechanistic for the administrative tasks but due to its changing and adaptation needing
characteristics tasks related to campus tours and presentations to have an organic design.
3. What are the official goals or mission of the organization? What are its operating or
operative goals? From the strategies of differentiation, low-cost, prospector, defender,
analyzer, and reactor, which one is used by the organization and why?
Publicity office is a service organization whose main official goal is attracting elite prospective
students to Middle East Technical University. Operative goals are making quality presentations
and campus tours for a lot of elite schools as well as recruiting and educating quality human
resources. METU Publicity Office is using prospector strategy, it is having new scholarship
programs for attracting top-ranked students, free summer schools for prospective students,
adapting to use social media such as Snapchat and Instagram when necessary. Although it is a
well-known public university, METU is having a competitive marketing strategy putting a lot of
time/money and effort to attracting the best students.
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4. What design is used, functional, output, matrix, horizontal/team, virtual network, or
hybrid?
Mainly, horizontal/team design is used at the organization, core work process is well defined in
line with the goal of the organization “attracting successful and hardworking prospective students
to the Middle East Technical University”. Therefore, every functional activity is made in line
with this goal, employee empowerment and flexibility are seen at the organization with a highly
collaborative culture. The organization members, especially part-time guides think themselves as
part of a team, they often collaborate by volunteering for others’ responsibilities when needed.
5. Describe the task (industry, raw materials, market, human resources, and international
context) and general (government, nature, culture, economy, technology, and financial
resources) environments of the organization.
Both task environment and general environment in the higher education industry is highly
complex and unstable. In the task environment; high schools’ campus tour applications are not
known beforehand, this is making special planning (laboratory visit, presentation by a faculty
member) nearly impossible for the schools that have high importance for the organization. There
is a high turnover rate in the human resources environment, the organization works with student
guides who are enrolled in METU. Guides have a very high turnover rate in their first years since
workload is high, they might have other interest such as student club activities or sports teams.
Apart from these, a student guide can only work for four years maximum then they graduate. The
general environment is also highly unstable and contingent, METU Publicity Office is actually a
government office; they are supposed to employ public servants but since the university gives
more importance than other administrative units, full-time staff are either research assistants or
they use exceptional positions from METU TECHNOPOLIS and METU NCC. Additionally,
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financial resources are determined by the government and there is high scrutiny over the
spending activities from Audit Court, unlike organization’s privately-owned competitors.
Moreover, the general Turkish economic situation has a direct effect in organization’s
performance indicators. When the economy is going worse, parents tend to send their sons and
daughters to public universities rather than private ones and they tend to stay where they live
rather than changing the city for higher education. This affects positively for METU’s main
campus and negatively for the Northern Cyprus Campus. The political situation, rule of law and
freedom level in the society may affect students to go abroad for higher education.
6. What adaptation and control strategies does the organization use to handle
environmental uncertainty?
The organization tries to handle environmental uncertainty by planning and forecasting,
especially using trend analysis. By looking at historical data, it is seen that the important high
schools are visiting the university in the similar periods of the year. Using these trend analyses,
the organization tries to minimize the uncertainty, it organizes the presentation halls and places
that will be visited in advance and sometimes the publicity office calls the high schools and ask if
they are planning to visit the campus proactively. For the METU NCC, the publicity office makes
suggestions for the price and quota by using forecasting and trend analysis.
METU Publicity Office also handles environmental uncertainty by focusing on a niche market
and domain selection. Even if they do not make any PR/Advertising/publicity activities; there
will be no vacant quota for the prospective students although the supply side will be determined
by the government. So the publicity office is not just in the student market anymore, it is
functioning in a niche market “best students market”. As key performance indicator, they take the
enrollment rate of top 1000, top 500 and top 100 students in the university entrance exam. In the
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last two years, after this niche market selection and focus on only to the best students; enrollment
rate of the top-ranked students got higher.
7. Which core technology is used in the organization?
The organization is basically a service organization, it uses service as a core technology. The
performance is intangible, and it is by nature labor intensive. Since the core task of the publicity
office to organize campus tours and giving presentations to the prospective students,
simultaneous production and consumption are observed. Human resources of the organization
have high interpersonal skills, and there is a low level of automation along with flexible
workflow.
8. Describe the life cycle of the organization.
In its life cycle, Middle East Technical University as a whole is in the elaboration stage; it is
extremely large and bureaucratic, the university’s reputation is extremely important. It has a wellknown culture and heritage and the administration is very resistant to change. For example; some
new privately-owned universities are establishing new departments with fancy names; spending a
lot of money in marketing and making collaborations with other European and American
universities while Middle East Technical University is making its every move after detailed
analysis and sometimes deciding extremely slow. On the other hand, the publicity office has its
somewhat autonomy and act with more agility than the university as a whole. Therefore, we think
the publicity office is in collectivity stage. It has rapid change, flexibility and increasing financial
and administrative autonomy for the last six years.
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9. What are the general indicators and manifestations of the organization’s culture?
The organization has rituals and ceremonies such as welcome parties and ice breaker games as
well as farewell dinners. In these ceremonies, more experienced member often tells stories and
funny incidents. In addition, the organization has a special language, abbreviations are usually
used for defining routine tasks, for example, Campus Tour is referred to KT, and General
Presentation is referred to GT. The organization shares a common hoody and a jersey for special
events such as prospective student fairs and summer camps.
10. Which decision making model best explains the organizational decision process, rational
or bounded rational or garbage can?
Since there is a lot of imperfect information and uncertainty, decision making for complex
problems are best explained by the bounded rational model. The organization tries to interfere in
human decisions, therefore most of the time intuitive decisions are being made, mostly based on
previous experience. Some decisions are best explained by Carnegie model, especially decisions
that have to be taken with METU Northern Cyprus Campus needs a coalition and bargaining. The
organization has satisficing solutions most of the time.
11. What sources of power do you observe in the organization?
The organization is officially part of a state university, therefore, there are rational and legal
sources of power. Expert power can be observed specifically by the graphic designers and
computer engineers, on the topics related to their expertise regardless of their hierarchical
positions these experts have the almost exclusive discretive power over these topics.
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12. Based on your findings, what changes do you suggest would benefit this organization?
How would these changes help this organization to improve?
The major problem with the organization is having integration with the METU NCC and try to
produce communication and marketing activities for both campuses, but neither the student
market nor the product is the same. Although this integration comes with more financial
autonomy, it does not increase efficiency or productivity and it does not create economies of
scale. Instead, it creates a necessity of weekly coordination meeting, coalitions in the decisionmaking process which results in an ambiguity in goals. Rituals and ceremonies serve well for the
organizational culture and they are in line with the organic design of the organization. Certain
team building activities may increase the collaborative culture of the organization. Adaptation
strategies are well defined and accurately performed.
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