Assignment -
Case - Whole Foods Market: Will There Be Enough Organic Food to Satisfy the Growing Demand?
Practicing Strategic Management - SMALL-GROUP EXERCISE
Speeding Up Product Development
Break up into groups of three to five people, and discuss the following scenario. Appoint one group member as a spokesperson who will communicate your findings to the class when called upon to do so by the instructor.
You are the top functional manager of a small greeting card company whose new lines of humorous cards for every occasion are selling out as fast as they are reaching the stores. Currently, your employees are organized into different functions such as card designers, artists, and joke writers, as well as functions such as marketing and manufacturing. Each function works on a wide range of different kinds of cards (birthday, Christmas, Hanukkah, Thanksgiving, and so on). Sometimes the design department comes up with the initial idea for a new card and sends the idea to the artists, who draw and color the picture. Then the card is sent to the joke writers, who write the joke to suit the card. At other times the process starts with writing the joke, which is then sent to the design department to find the best use for the idea.
The problem you are experiencing is that your current functional structure does not allow you to produce new cards fast enough to satisfy customers' demands. It typically takes a new card one year to reach the market, and you want to shorten this time by half in order to protect and expand your market niche.
1. Discuss ways in which you can improve the way your current functional structure operates to speed up the product development process.
2. Discuss the pros and cons of moving to a multidivisional or product-team structure to reduce card development time.
3. Which of these structures do you think is more appropriate? Why?
EXPLORING THE WEB - Visiting Google's Control System
Go to Google's website and look at the section on its corporate culture and operating philosophy.
1. How would you characterize Google's approach to strategic control?
2. How does its control system help it to implement its strategies?
General Task Explore the Web to find a website that displays a company's organizational chart or that talks about a company's method of managing and controlling its structure. (For example, does it use a centralized or a decentralized approach?) What kind of structure and what control systems does the company use to manage its activities? Why?
Discussion Questions -
1. What is the difference between vertical differentiation and horizontal differentiation? Rank the various structures discussed in this chapter along these two dimensions.
2. What kind of structure best describes the way your business school or university operates? Why is that structure appropriate? Would another structure fit better?
3. When would a company decide to change from a functional to a multidivisional structure?
4. What are the relationships among differentiation, integration, and strategic control systems? Why are these relationships important?
5. For each of the structures discussed in this chapter, outline the most suitable control system.
6. What kinds of control systems would likely be found in (a) a small manufacturing company, (b) a chain store, (c) a high-tech company, and (d) a Big Five accounting firm?
Textbook - Essentials of Strategic Management, Second Edition by CHARLES W. L. HILL and GARETH R. JONES.