Typrite is a relatively small family owned private limited company based in Warrenpoint, Co. Down. It was established in 1985 and is involved in the manufacturing and distribution of a large range of printing consumables i.e. ink cartridges, laser toner cartridges, thermal transfer fax rolls etc. It sells mainly to businesses, although it does sell directly to the public at it’s manufacturing plant in Warrenpoint. In 2008 Typerite exports it’s products to 33 countries across the world.
In the 90’s Typerite employed over 100 staff as the work involved in the manufacturing process was manual in nature and very labour intensive. Now due to technological advances in the area they employ 30 members of staff. Members of staff include; Gary Barlow who is the owner and acts as Managing Director, his wife and co-owner Florence Barlow who is Company Secretary, their daughter Cathy Gamble who deals with Sales and Marketing of the company, Fiona Boyle who is Office Manager, Jim Coglan who is Purchasing Manager and Tracey Tsang who is Marketing Executive. The reminder of staff are Production supervisors and Production staff.
For the purpose of this assignment I will examine and evaluate the structure and design of Typerite Ltd.
Typrite as well as any organisation is composed of certain parts or departments i.e. Sales and Marketing Department, Administration Department, Purchasing Department and the Production Department. These groupings can be described as the division of work, according to specialisation, the use of the same set of resources, or the shared expertise of members of staff as described in (Mullins). These parts are interdependent on each other and therefore some sort of co-operation is needed for the organisation to exist and function as a whole. For this there needs to be some sort of deliberate structural system. Structure allows the different functions and processes to be clearly allocated to different departments and employees.
“Structure is the pattern of relationships among positions in the organisations and among members of the organisation. Structure makes possible the application of the process of management and creates a framework of order and command through which the activities of the organisation can be planned, organised, directed and controlled.” (Mullins)
Organisations are structured in a variety of ways, depending on many aspects including their size, objectives, culture and management style. It is important to look at these aspects as these influence the design and the structure of the business.
The Organisation structure of a company addresses the fact that every organisation has specific units that are responsible for different roles and actions in the organisation and that no department within the organisation stands alone, they are intertwined. The organisational chart or structure should be designed to divide up the work load, responsibilities and roles to be done
Description- The Riordan Company has four plants that produce a variety of different items. The Albany, Georgia plant produces plastic beverage containers for the beverage makers and bottlers. Customized plastic parts for the appliance manufacturers are produced at the Pontiac, Michigan plant. Plastic fans for the automotive parts manufactures are fabricated at the facility in Hangzhou, China. The R&D is in development of different items for the Department of Defense and are conducted at the corporate headquarter in San Jose, California.
First of all, organizational structure determines the hierarchy, the levels of communication, and how job tasks are formally divided, grouped and coordinated within an organization (Langton, Robbins, & Judge, 2013). There are six key elements that managers need to address when they design their organization’s structure: work specialization, departmentalization, chain of command, span of control, centralization and decentralization, and formalization (Langton et al., 2013). The way in which an organizational structure is constructed and implemented can affect company productivity.
Organizational structure is one of the three key organizational assets that could contribute to the effectiveness of operations of any organization (Zheng, Yan and Mclean 2009) It is joined together by different flows of information, decision processes, hierarchy of authority, specialization and working materials. (Enz 2009; Mintzberg 1980) Furthermore, it also determines the operating workflow, control of information, decision-making in the organization and the line authority (Mintzberg 1980). The facets of the organizational structure, the relationships that exist within it, and how the business processes (Bititci et al 2011) are controlled, determine the managerial style that should be utilized in addition to the strategies the organization could implement. Going further, a company’s organizational design and the parts that constitute it are seen as a contributing factor to superior performance, which ultimately provide an organization with competitive advantage over its competitors. (Enz 2009; Zheng, Yang, and Mclean 2009)
“Structures incorporate a network of roles and relationships and are there to help in the process of ensuring that collective efforts is explicitly organized to achieve to achieve specific ends." Child (1977)
Organizational structure can be defined as the “formal arrangement of jobs within an organization” (Robbins & Coulter, 2009, p. 185). Having a defined and unified structure helps employees work more efficiently. Jacques Kemp, former CEO of ING Insurance Asia/Pacific, realized this need early on in his role. The company had been performing well and recently acquired another insurance company to become “one of the largest life insurance companies in Asia-Pacific” (Schotter, 2006, p. 4). However, Kemp’s proactive personality led him to seek out ways to achieve more efficient coordination between the regional office and business units (Robbins & Coulter, 2009). Kemp noticed that “most business unit managers did not even know the current corporate standards” and he began searching for a way to manage the managers (Schotter, 2006, p. 5). ING Insurance Asia/Pacific’s organizational structure was mechanistic and fairly well structured, but for a company that had recently been involved in a major acquisition and was divided across 12 geographically dispersed markets there was a great need to tweak this structure to unify the company (Schotter, 2006). If I had been in Kemp’s position as CEO, I would have made modifications to the organizational chain of command, formalized business processes, and used technology to stimulate collaboration amongst the region to help this company overcome organizational design challenges.
There will be a manger who is in charge of the stores’ profitability and the overall cooperation of all functions within the region like making sure every stores sells the same collection of clothing. By using matrix, managements not only organize their work more flexible with lower costs, but also improving communication and coordination across the countries. However, the matrix structure violates the unity of command principle as each employee reports to at least two or more managers. Next, high degree of centralization is exercised in H&M. Centralization is the concentration of authority for making most decisions at the top levels of the organization. In this instance, the head office in Sweden are in charge of establishing the code of ethics, internal policies, and manuals. Important decisions that are strongly related to the company’s profits are also made by the top management. Nonetheless, H&M has a decentralized system. For example, there are 32 production teams that handle
These centralized structures had very weak contact between the different levels of an organization. The now popular decentralized and flexible structures create relationships that are much closer than centralized structures. The elimination of boundaries in decentralized structures allows close interaction and collaboration with people inside the firm. This close knit contact is highly fluid and adaptive. For example, all levels of workers in a decentralized organization would be able to collaborate together and brainstorm solutions and ideas. An organization that emphasizes collaboration and might benefit from a decentralized structure. Decentralization also fosters cooperation and motivates the employees which is further
In order for one to evaluate and identify with the diverse business structures, he/she must be aware of the meaning and standards that makes that structure. Various businesses functions in different ways as the world is full of technology and new structures, company cultures and new ways in which companies are run. In order to fully grasp the concepts of Organizational structure and culture in the movies, I will use the Movie Up in the Air and The Devil Wear Prada movies to analyze a business scenario from them.
The XYZ Corporation was established in 2004 and their main office is located in Vancouver, BC. The company’s main objective is to create new innovating technology for media devices, computers, and digital music players. They deal with the design, manufacturing and marketing of the products. XYZ Corporation has been providing Canadians with groundbreaking technology throughout the years and continues to create new technology to provide others with top-level technology. Although, recently their success rate has appeared to drop rapidly due to a number of factors that will be explored throughout this case study. Their main objective is to target the problems so that they can work towards having the issues resolved as quickly as possible. If they do not take any course of action, the state of the company may be in extreme danger. This case study is designed to explore the areas of the company and discover the problems blocking the XYZ Corporation from success.
Organizational structure within an organization is a critical component of the day to day operations of a business. An organization benefits from organizational structure as a result of all it encompasses. It is used to define how tasks are divided, grouped and coordinated. Six elements should be addressed during the design of the organization’s structure: work specialization, departmentalization, chain of command, spans of control, centralization and decentralization. These components are a direct reflection of the organization’s culture, power and politics.
Understanding the structure of an organization plays a vital role in laying the blueprint for how a company will be managed and organized. It provides a well-defined framework that outlines the roles and responsibilities of each employee in a particular company. It shows how each employee interacts and works one another in achieving the goals of a company. In other words, organizational structure is a reflection of the working relationships that govern the workflow of the company. It has a profound effect on a company’s structural dimensions, which includes formalization, specialization, hierarchy and centralization.
Organizational structure is the way that an organization arranges people and jobs so that work can be performed and goals can be achieved. Good organizational design helps communications, productivity, and innovation. Many organization structures have been created based on organizational strategy, size, technology, and environment. Robbins and Judge (2011, p. 504) listed three common structures: simple, bureaucracy, and matrix. In this post the author will describe the matrix structure, and discuss its advantages and disadvantages.
Organizations must operate within structures that allow them to perform at their best within their given environments. According to theorists T. Burns and G.M Stalker (1961), organizations require structures that will allow them to adapt and react to changes in the environment (Mechanistic vs Organic Structures, 2009). Toyota Company’s corporate structure is spelt out as one where the management team and employees conduct operations and make decisions through a system of checks and balances.
In today's world of corporations business, small business and even non-profit Organization, there is structure in order for these workplaces to be operational. All the way back to early 1900’s it was proven that workplaces that do not have structure, usually tend to be