Practice these TOEFL iBT listening tests to help you score high in the TOEFL Listening Section. Check the correct answers and audio transcripts below. This video is in the series of NEW TOEFL iBT Tests 2015.
Listen to part of a lecture in a business management class.
Professor
OK. Uh, let’s talk about organization and structure in a company. How are companies
typically structured?
Female Student
Functionally.
Professor
And . . . ?
Female Student
By projects.
Professor
Right. By function . . . and by projects. Twenty years ago companies were organized in
function groups, where people with a certain expertise worked together as a unit—the,
uh, architects in one unit, the finance people in another unit. Well, nowadays a lot of
companies are organized around projects—like a construction company could be
building an office building in one city and an apartment house somewhere else, and
each project has its own architects and engineers.
Now, the good thing about project organization is that it’s easier to change to
adapt to the needs of the project—it’s a small group, a dedicated team, not the whole
company.
Now, with that in mind, here’s a question for you: Why do we continue to organize
ourselves by function, even now, when in fact we admit that projects are the lifeblood
of a lot of organizations? Why do some companies maintain a functional organization
instead of organizing around projects? Yes?
Female Student
Because, um, if you don’t have that functional structure within your organization,
chances are you’d have a harder time meeting the goals of the projects.
Professor
Why?
Female Student
Why?
Professor
Listen, let’s say we got four new cars we want to design. Why do we need a functional
organization? Why not just organize the company around the four projects—these
people make car number one, these other people make car number two . . .
Female Student
Yeah, but who’s gonna be responsible for what? You know, the way you tell who’s . . .
Professor
Well . . . well, we’ll appoint a manager: new car number one manager, car number two
manager—they’re completely responsible. Why should we have a single engineering
department that has all four cars passing through it?
Female Student
When you design a car, you need the expertise of all the engineers in the company.
Each engineer needs to be in touch with the entire engineering department.
Professor
Yeah, but I keep . . . I keep asking why? I wanna know why. Yes.
Male Student
Well, to eliminate redundancy’s probably one of the biggest factors in an organization.
So that uh. . . so that there’s there’s . . . standards of . . . for uniformity and efficiency
in the organization.
Professor
OK. And . . . and that’s probably the primary reason for functional organization right
there—is that we want some engineering consistency. We want the same kind of technology
used in all four cars. If we disperse those four engineers into four parts of the
organization and they work by themselves, there’s a lot less chance that the technology’s
gonna be the same from car to car. So instead we maintain the functional
organization—that means the engineers work together in one part of the building. And
their offices are next to each other because we want them to talk to each other. When
an engineer works on a project, they bring the expertise of their whole functional
group with them.
But there’s a downside of that though, isn’t there? I mean, organizing a company
into functional groups is not all positive. Where’s the allegiance of those engineers?
It’s to their coordinator, right? It’s to that chief engineer. But we really want our one engineer,
the engineer that’s working on car number one, we want that person’s loyalty
to be to that project as well as to the head of the engineering group. We . . . we really
want both, don’t we? We want to maintain the functional organization, so we can
maintain uniformity and technology transfer, and expertise. We want the cutting edge
expertise in every group. But at the same time we also want the engineer to be totally
dedicated to the needs of the project. Ideally, we have a . . . a hybrid, a combination of
both functional and project organization.
But there’s a problem with this kind of hybrid structure. When you have both functional
and project organization, well, what does that violate in terms of basic management
principles?
...
Correct Answers:
1. B
2. B
3. C
4. A
5. B
6. It encourages people with similar expertise to work closely together : Functional Organization
It helps the company to adapt quickly and meet changing needs : Project Organization
It helps to achieve uniformity in projects : Functional Organization
