Learning Activity 1 - Theme 1 & 2

Initial Facts from Last Week:

Jimi Henrich owns a custom acoustic guitar manufacturing company: Jimi's Jammers. He designs custom guitars to the specific requirements of the individual customer. His guitars range in price from $6500 to the most expensive one, a solid gold model, for $35,000. Jimi desires to become the Rolls Royce of the guitar world. Currently, Jimi has a small but growing clientele. So elite is his company that he has no need to advertise as he has gained most of his customers by word of mouth. Jimi suspects that there is a bigger global market for his product. Anxious to expand the business and make the plant more active, Jimi is exploring ways to gain additional orders through product and process innovation. The end product must continue to carry the Henrich reputation for its attention to detail, personal design, and quick turnaround. Jimi demands his employees produce the guitar with these ideas in mind and never to give in to the temptation to lower the quality of the guitar.

More Facts Needed This Week:

Jimi Henrich is considering amending his current organizational structure. Hendrich set up his organization to enable the company to continue innovating rapidly that emulated Apple at one point.

Currently, Henrich has four leadership team members who each head up a division: guitar design, guitar manufacture, customer service, and sales. The four leadership team members report directly to Henrich. Each of the leaders of the teams has final decision making authority within their departments but otherwise have little autonomy. They also each have three employees. Additionally, Henrich considers that he is a member of each team and meets with his leadership team once a week and with each team separately once a month.

Ringo Blaze, the current guitar design division head, will be assigned as the new project head. His duties will simply be expanded to include the new project. New employees will be hired for the division. Ringo mentioned to Henrich that he has a specific employee who is interested in working on the new project. However, Ringo know that he must meet his current and future orders and is uncertain whether he can risk lending a valuable employee to the new project.

In responding to the following questions, be sure to explain in detail and support your reasoning with the course material and your own research.

Identify the organizational structure that is currently in place. Be sure to look at all of the facts because the structure may not be one that is clearly defined.

Identify an organizational structure that might work well to help blend the new project with the existing business structure.

Discuss how you would organize and systematically align people to accomplish the vision, mission and goals of the organization? Be sure to explain how you would allocate the human resources of the company to make the new link in the decision train work on a daily basis? In accomplishing this task, think about the types of people you would need to accomplish the goal.

Learning Activity 2 - Theme 2

Continue your work and explain the type of culture that will complement the organizational structure in the Henrich scenario above. Be sure to discuss the elements of culture in your response.