BAMO 3 Organisation Structure Assignment Sample
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Introduction
Organisation structure forms the framework of an organisation within which the different business functions takes place.The organisation structure regulates the behaviour of the organisational members, governs the workforce performance and overall effectiveness (French, 2011). The organisation structure shapes the way a company is setup into different hierarchy which bears an impact on the company’s projects and management of overall projectas a result, affecting the delivery of management goals. In context of project management, the organisational structure affects in the allocation of resources, reporting, decision making and influence of the project managers. The area of project management is concern for many business organisations. This report provides an analysis of an organisation structure of a retail organisation and its related impact on the performance of the projects. The chosen retail organisation is Walmart.
Overview of the organization and the environment
Walmart belongs to a retail business organisation type. This retail business corporation was founded in 1962 by Sam Walton. The retail business is American based dealing with wide assortment of global brands and own brand of products in more than11,000 stores at a global level (Walmart, 2016). The mission is to maximise people access to high quality of life by saving money through its product offerings. The vision reflects to becomebest retailer preference by its customer and employee in the retail sector. In 2016, the company has reported $374.5 billion sale (Walmart, 2016).
Moreover, Walmart operates in a highly competitive retail environment at global level where the different political environment of countries influences the business performance. The political support for globalization has provided opportunity for Walmart. The economic factors such as growth of developing economies, unemployment rate in the US positively impacted retail business. Walmart has also been able to sustain in economic crisis situations by reducing its operating costs through sharing truckloads with its suppliers, used automated tilted stocking shelves to avoid manual handling staff. The company has adapted to local culture, needs and changing lifestyle to have a positive impact on the social factors. Technological advancement and adoption such as bid data analytics and business processes automation played a vital role to support the retail operations to improve the services, customer satisfaction and in-store experience (Motsi and Park, 2013).
Environmental factors pose a significant part in the company strategy as it follows green policies, and adopt eco-friendly products such as recycled bottles, sustainable products and reduce carbon footprint to enhance its market reputation. One of the success factors is the strategic initiatives and changes in traditional management to adapt to efficient business processes (Langley et al., 2013), new technologies, improve productivity and consistently satisfy its customers. However, the outdated management practices in some business areas is impacting the productivity and profitability and leading to customer dissatisfaction (Forbes, 2016).
The area of project management has become an important component in business undertakings to take accountability and responsibility of accomplishing management goals. Thus, to improve productivity and business performance the customer satisfaction is the main focus of the company which in turn would help to sustain in competitive position retail landscape Walmart has initiated a plan as Project Impact (The Balance, 2017). This project is based to improve customer benefits in terms of saving money, optimising products and in-store customer experience.
Project scope, size and timeline
Purpose: To improve overall customer satisfaction through improving customer benefits such as economic savings, products and in-store experience.
Project goals and objectives:
- To keep customer satisfied for repeat store visits
- Retain the lost customers
- Renovate its retail stores
- Reduce prices
- Eliminate wastage
- Improve transportation efficiency
Requirement collection: This can be done in consultation with divisional managers and suppliers and review of sales reports, supplier accounts, budget documentations and inspection of store facilities. Feedbacks can be obtained by store customers.
Project deliverables include a detailed plan, business process and transactiondocumentations, businessrequirement specification, pricing report, inventory reports, supplier list, weekly and monthly status reports, approval reports, seasonal advertising, in store signage.
(WBS)Tasks under this project: The project is divided into three major tasks which are then further categorised into work activities. The Walmart is following the completion of this project under there major tasks:
1) Economic savings: Through a) price leadership- Every Day Low Pricing (EDLP) b) seasonal advertisements, co-branding ads with suppliers, store signage c) reduce no. of supplier
2) Optimising products categories: Through a) products to focuses to gain market share b) Products to grow customer base c) reduce products/supplier such as plastic storage bag brands
3) In-store customer experience: Through a) Renovation of stores b) Adoption of cross docking process c) employing green policies from raw material to customer consumption c) efficiency in supply chain and transportation – fuel efficiency, reduce empty truck miles, increase in pallet per transport vehicles.
This has allowed the project manager to recognise the project scope and deliverables require for completing within specified time.
Project size: The project size is large as this is has been started to implement in Walmart stores and would be applied to all stores gradually to develop and maintain brand image and consistency in stores across the globe.
Timeline: The project has been initiated from April 2016 and is planned to complete within a period of 5 years.
Organization Type
Walmart as a multinational retail corporation resembles a divisional type of organisational structure. There are group of persons which are authorized to act as a single entity in this retail corporation. This structure in the retail organisation is characterised by internal business units, market clusters, grouped products and projects (Motsi and Park, 2013).Wal-Mart follow this structure as the organisation consists of different operating divisions as semi-autonomous business units with distinct goals. The divisional structure is based on geographic area, product and market structure (Berkovitch et al., 2010). Each division at Walmart has its resources that are required for its effective functioning and continuation of its business process. This kind of structure has hierarchy which specify high command and authority across the organisation. The decisions taken from the senior managers are implemented by regional and followed by the store managers, middle and junior level staff. Within each business units, there function based department which are monitored are controlled by regional and divisional managers.
Project Impact
The structuring of Walmart has an influence on the management and performance of the project. This structure bears a positive impact on the project in terms of focusing on individual goals of the project and also helps in boosting the moral and knowledge exchange for an internal business unit. This is helping the project teamto achieve specific goals but not collective goals as the divisions focus on the recourses it received separately from other divisions. Thus, the organisational structure of Walmart bears an effect on the project in terms of authority and influence of the project manager. In divisional structure, the project manager has a less authority than the divisional manager and sometimes few resources are shared across with other associated divisions. It can be said that this project at Walmart is also impacted in terms of communication, project management skills and in manage the project schedule to achieve the project goals.
The divisional structure influences the impact on achieving product optimisation as it is difficult for the project manager to project manager to direct the approval process which is a lengthy and time-consuming process. This can also generate internal issues among the internal business units for allocation of resources and budget to achieve objective in different areas such as pricing, transport, supply chain, human resources and designing team. This is a challenging situation for the project manager which makes it difficult to keep traction of various activities of undergoing project.
The nature of overall project is demanding which requires more cross-functional collaboration but here, the project manager has no direct divisional authority for different functions that is leading to less continual cooperation and support from managers of other division to arrive at project deliverable. Moreover, the divisions are focusing on the its specific goals however, the project requires working on every aspect to improve customer benefits and specification. Only one dimension such as pricing or spacious stores is not sufficient to fulfil the project goals. This structure gives less authority to project manager relative to divisional manager which complicates the influence of project manager and bear a negative impact on the developing a team culture (Berkovitch et al., 2010). There is also risk of conflicts which can bring negative outcomes and realisation of all the project goals would not be possible. There is also lack of strategic thinking as one division outperforms other divisions in the achievement of specific goals. Thus, the existing organisational structure has a mixed impact on the project. The project is successful in achieving the business goal to some extent in separate business but not as an overall effort. It is also stated by Forbes (2016), the management of Walmart is planning to restructure its organisation to retain its lost customers and to achieve future endeavour.
Critique of Existing organizational structure
It can be said that the divisional structure appears to be not very much suited for this type of project. The divisional structure has posed difficulty for the project manager to keep a power on the project. On the positive side, the divisional structure has provided a clear responsibility and accountability for each member of the project and clear coordination for the project expenses and outcomes. A clear accountability is essential for the organisation to set SMART business objectives (Berkovitch et al., 2010). Thus, it can be said that this structure has offered the divisional managers and project managers to formulate SAMRT goals and objectives for the project.
The coordination among different department is also essential to manage the project deliverables which is possible in this organisational structure. Another advantage of this structure is that it provides active departmental collaboration which is useful in forming project team with high skills. Moreover, Walmart divisional structure supports skill development due to work collaboration with specialised managers. The divisional structure is operative for sizable corporation with multiple products with ability to adapt to external changes in competitive business environment (Strydom, 2011). Thus, Walmart organisational structure also provides advantage to its product based division to easily adapt to internal and external changes when required. This is beneficial to the project to adapt to changing organisation factors and cope effectively and efficiently with internal and external risks (Albers et al., 2016).
On the differing side, divisional structure can pose difficulty for the project manager to under large-scale project with a lengthy timeframe. This is due to the fact that in divisional structure the different layers of authority make it difficult for the project manager to navigate the different project activities and to get approval and communicate decisions to other team members. The various authority layers delay in approval and to reach effective decisions even for basic task in divisional structure. This problem is less prominent in functional structure.
The assessment of Wal-Mart organisational structure also reveals that there are also budget difficulties as different divisions compete for limited funding. It is also observed that divisional structure offers less support to day to day activities of the project retail operations. Thus, the management of large scale projects a matrix structure or project based organisation structure appears to be preferred over divisional structure of Walmart. This would provide a better control and larger authority and influence on the project managers to track and manage different activities of the projects and to assign role and responsibility to different project members to fulfil the project goals and objects in an effective and efficient manner.
Conclusion
It can be said that project at Walmart requires effective communication, project management skills and cross functional collaboration to achieve short and long-term business goals. A dedicated team is required to manage the project schedule. The divisional structure of Walmart supports the achievement of specific business goals however, this project requires a collective effort and equal achievement of project goals from all the divisions. Thus, organisation is required to re-structure its hierarchy levels and provide more support and authority to the project managers to successful achieves the project goals in the specified period.
References
Albers, S., Wohlgezogen, F. and Zajac, E. J. (2016) Strategic alliance structures: An organization design perspective. Journal of Management, 42(3), pp. 582-614.
Berkovitch, E., Israel, R. and Spiegel, Y. (2010) A double moral hazard model of organization design. Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, 19(1), pp. 55-85.
Forbes. (2016) Walmart’s Outdated Management Style Is Failing Customers. [Online] Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/panosmourdoukoutas/2016/01/30/walmarts-outdated-management-style-is-failing-customers/#325924a913ae (Accessed: 28 November 2017).
French, R. (2011) Organizational Behaviour. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Langley, A., Smallman, C., Tsoukas, H. and Van de Ven, A. H. (2013) Process studies of change in organization and management: Unveiling temporality, activity, and flow. Academy of Management Journal, 56(1), pp. 1-13.
Motsi, T.and Park, J. E. (2013) The influence of industry structure and firm level factors on the relationship between regional orientation and firm performance. International Business Research and Practice Volume 7,2013, pp. 75.
Strydom, J. W. (2011) Principles of business management. UK: Oxford University Press.
The Balance. (2017) Walmart’s Strategic Initiatives. https://www.thebalance.com/wal-mart-s-strategic-initiatives-2221112 [Online] Available at: (Accessed: 28 November 2017).
Walmart. (2016) About Us. [Online] Available at: http://corporate.walmart.com/our-story (Accessed: 28 November 2017).
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