1) Environmental complexity is the "magnitude of the problems and opportunities in the organization's environment as evidenced by the degree of richness, interdependence, and uncertainty". The environmental richness is high when the economy is growing. Currently the economy is slowly recovering from one of the largest recessions, and the brokerage firms are slowly recovering as well. The market has been doing well and the brokerage firms are doing better as well. While the economy was suffering, the brokerage firms also got hit with different law suites for their analysts' decisions and for their inability to control the mutual fund breakpoints. It was a double hit, with the market steadily…show more content… However, most of the activities are organized, planned and decided on by the president, the rest of the organization is informed of the activity coming up and is supposed to participate with no discussions. There is a high level of formalization that is done in our organization. There are typed up procedures for everything, which is something that is required by the regulators, however, it seems that rules only apply to us in the North branch, where downtown/main office can bend the rules as much as they desire. We have a time frame on everything in terms of when the paperwork should be turned in and in what order, main office can mess up on the order and on the paperwork with no consequences to them. 4) I would say that our organization is highly differentiated. Each person belongs to his/her own department and they do not overstep the boundaries of these departments and never venture to help another department out. Each department has their own task that they perform well and guard to make sure no one tries to do their job, trying to help would men to them that you think they are not doing a good job and you are trying to go over their head to get things done. Operations is responsible for processing paperwork, analysts make investment decisions, brokers get clients and maintain relationships and the sales assistants support brokers and maintain client relationships as well. The partners
