The topics covered in this module relate to organizational architecture and standards. The term organizational architecture is an umbrella term under which you encounter topics such as utility theory, agency theory, and systems thinking. Principals create organizational architecture, and agents are contained by organizational architecture created by others. You gain significant benefits if you are aware of the impact of organizational architecture in your professional life. In this module, you are also considering the fundamental role that standards occupy in the architectural design of so many organizations.

Sometimes you are unable to affect changes. Other times your ability to make wise changes will be essential to your success as a leader. Also, as you scrutinize new opportunities and plan career paths, an understanding of the organizational architecture that is most conducive to your ability to thrive can be very valuable.

Your post should focus on how a topic(s) covered in this module applies to your industry/company or to a professional environment you aspire to better understand. Your application may be based on any subject covered in the module. For example, you may wish to focus on the idea of misaligned goals, perverse incentives, a performance evaluation and compensation system that you believe is highly effective, practical problems encountered in a standard cost system, or tensions that are inevitable when organizations seek to address issues related to autonomy and goal congruence.

Once you have identified the subject of interest, your post should focus on an assessment of the situation. What do you believe are the key issues? If there are problems, what solutions do you see? If this is a post that illustrates a successful resolution of a challenge, how was this success achieved? Please do not include any information you consider to be proprietary, because others in your group will see your post.