IIA IIA Certifications IIA-CIA-PART3 Questions & Answers

• Question 711:

  A line position:

  A. Is indirectly responsible for achieving the organization's basic objectives.

  B. Makes administrative and operating decisions.

  C. Advises and assists staff positions.

  D. Is indirectly involved with the organization's product(s) and/or services.

  Correct Answer: B

  A line position is in the direct chain of command and is responsible for administering policy and making operating decisions. People in line positions have direct responsibility for achieving the organization's basic objectives and thus have formal or legitimate authority.

• Question 712:

  Line and staff positions are most likely to be in conflict because:

  A. Line managers have no authority over staff employees.

  B. Staff managers consider line managers' functional authority threatening to staff managers' own authority.

  C. Line managers believe that staff managers are resistant to line managers' advice.

  D. Staff managers dislike relying on line expertise.

  Correct Answer: A

  Line managers are directly responsible for achieving the organization's objectives, but staff managers are not directly accountable. However, line managers may have no authority to influence staff behavior when it is inconsistent with the achievement of objectives.

• Question 713:

  The manager of customer service checking at the bank is most likely to encounter conflicts) because of:

  A. The department's reliance on the savings manager and the money market manager.

  B. The manager of customer service checking providing services for customers who do not have checking accounts.

  C. The requirement that the manager of customer service checking must report directly to both the president and the vice president for customer accounts.

  D. A potential disagreement with the director of personnel about a subordinate's performance appraisal.

  Correct Answer: D

  The director of personnel DP) must coordinate all employee evaluations. Although the manager of checking services is in a line position that is not under the DP, s)he works with the DP when hiring, dismissing, transferring, or evaluating employees.

• Question 714:

  In what form of organization does an employee report to multiple managers?

  A. Bureaucracy.

  B. Matrix.

  C. Departmental.

  D. Mechanistic.

  Correct Answer: B

  A matrix organization project management) is characterized by vertical and horizontal lines of authority. The project manager borrows specialists from line functions as needed. This manager's authority is limited to the project, and the specialists will otherwise report to the line managers.

• Question 715:

  Which of the following elements of an organization requires people to be accountable to superiors?

  A. Coordination of effort.

  B. Division of labor.

  C. Common goal or purpose.

  D. Hierarchy of authority.

  Correct Answer: D

  A hierarchy of authority requires people to be accountable to their superiors in the hierarchy.

• Question 716:

  Which of the following is a staff position in the bank?

  A. The manager of customer service-checking, the department that handles checking account inquiries and transactions.

  B. The directory of personnel, the department that handles the hiring, firing, promotion, etc., of all employees.

  C. The chief loan officer, who is in charge of final approval of all loans.

  D. The vice president in charge of the mortgage department, which handles mortgages on business and residential property.

  Correct Answer: B

  Staff positions in any organization advise and support the line positions. They indirectly help to achieve the organization's basic objective. Each staff position's authority is, at most, functional. Such authority is exercised only over activities related to the staff's function or specialty.

• Question 717:

  Of the following entities, a matrix organization would be most appropriate for:

  A. A company operating a set of geographically dispersed telephone call centers that provide technical support.

  B. A company which starts several complex, multidisciplinary engineering and construction projects each year.

  C. A retail company, which sells to customers through multiple stores, located in shopping malls, as well as through a website and mailed catalogs.

  D. A company that provides temporary staffing help to a wide variety of commercial and governmental agencies.

  Correct Answer: B

  A matrix organization consists of a project team of people from various functional areas within the organization. These specialists report simultaneously to the project manager and themanagers of their functional departments. At the end of the project, the team is disbanded.Accordingly, a matrix organization that assigns specialists as needed to various projects is appropriate for such a company.

• Question 718:

  The form of departmentation that most readily lends itself to use of profit centers is:

  A. Project.

  B. Functional.

  C. Product.

  D. Matrix.

  Correct Answer: C

  Departmentation by product is growing in importance for multiline, large-scale enterprises. It is an outgrowth of functional departmentation and permits extensive authority for a division executive over a given product or product line. Its advantages include better use of specialized resources and skills, ease of coordination of the activities for a given product, and simpler assignment of profit responsibility. It is compatible with a decentralization strategy and provides, via product profit centers, a basis for allocating capital more efficiently.

• Question 719:

  Dual reporting is most characteristic of which method of departmentation?

  A. Territorial.

  B. Functional.

  C. Product.

  D. Matrix.

  Correct Answer: D

  A matrix organization consists of a project team of people from various functional areas within the organization. These specialists report simultaneously to the project manager and the managers of their functional departments. At the end of the project, the team is disbanded.

• Question 720:

  Which particular type of organization structure will likely have unity-of-command problems unless there is frequent and comprehensive communication between the various functional and project managers?

  A. Line and staff.

  B. Strategic business unit.

  C. Centralized.

  D. Matrix.

  Correct Answer: D

  A matrix structure allows authority to flow both vertically and horizontally. A manager is appointed for each project and draws on personnel who are organized by function and report to a manager for each function. This violates the principle of unity of command, which states that each subordinate should have only one superior.