Adopting the Functional Departments Division

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Table of Contents

Functional Structure
Nudlez Corporation
Product Structure
Eastman Chemical Company
Area Structure
Whirlpool Corporation
Customer/Market Structure
Barclays Bank
Reference List

Functional Structure

Functional organizations are subdivided into key functional departments whereby each department encompasses all the activities related to it. For example, an organization may be divided into three segments such as the finance, production, and marketing departments. Sales promotion and advertisements would fall in the marketing department. This structure is normally adopted by organizations with limited product scope. The CEO of the organization coordinates all the functions of the departments (Malamud & Rotenberg, 2010).

Nudlez Corporation

Nudlez is a fast-food service industry in Washington that majorly deals in Asian meals. The company operates in Seattle as its headquarters and has various facilities and personnel that enable it supply food across the CBD. It operates franchises and also has mobile cooking units that make it flexible to prepare fast-food individual meals. It has several food stores across Washington as well as street vending systems. The vending units are mobile and are built to accommodate its cooking processes (Khera Communications, 2010).

The company has been departmentalized to into the product preparation and production, purchasing, marketing and sales departments with each department having distinct roles under one CEO, Bill Cook who manages the business processes as well as the human resource in the organization.

Nudlez adopted the functional structure since it wanted to achieve efficient specialization in preparation of its meals as well as in its other business processes as such there was need to make employees be able to better understand their roles and responsibilities as well as the required job skills. The corporation wanted to avoid duplication of work in its business processes.

Organizations with clearly defined roles for each sub department and departments are able to avoid such problems. The organization chose the structure as it needed to eliminate redundancy by grouping resources by function and therefore focus on quality, healthy as well as competitively priced meals. Grouping an organization’s resources enables the organization to achieve economies of scale. This has enabled the company achieve a strong brand with emphasis on achieving fund brand culture.

The company also wanted to adopt a structure that would enable it standardize its policies, practices as well as procedures that could be applied in every part of the organization. The company wanted to implement a business structure that would reduce management risks. Functional structure enables Nudlez to develop the skills of its employees to make them more efficient in their departments and therefore achieve high gross margins from its meal products.

Product Structure

Product structure is where an organization operates a stand alone business under the larger organization. An organization that applies product structure segments the organization into several semiautonomous divisions as well as profit centers by considering the activities of the organization.

In carrying out segmentation, the organization may consider the products, customers or even geographical locations. In this case, each unit functions as a separate business. Each product unit is again subdivided into sub units for particular products (Malamud & Rotenberg, 2010).

Eastman Chemical Company

Eastman Chemical Company is a chemical company that has its headquarters in Kingsport, Tennessee and deals in chemicals, fibers as well as plastics. It operates in many countries including Mexico, USA, UK, Netherlands, Malaysia and China. The company has five major sectors.

These include fibers, polymers as well as speciality plastics. It also has coatings and adhesives as well as performance chemicals. Each division has various products that it deals in and the products are segmented as either industrial or consumer goods (Eastman, 2011).

Since the organization wanted a structure that would enable it focus its resources and attention towards customers, it chose the structure to facilitate its single products to the targeted customers. Eastman Chemical Company chose the structure as it needed a business structure that would facilitate its expansion. The structure allows an organization to add new business units to focus on new profit opportunities without making significant changes to the existing systems (Malamud & Rotenberg, 2010).

Eastman Chemical Company also wanted to attain high levels of accountability in its business performances since divisional units can be easily evaluated. It needed a system where decision making in one area of production does not affect the whole company.

Product structure allows managers to employ specific expertise in making decisions which can drive the particular product production and performance in the market to greater levels (Malamud & Rotenberg 2010). The company chose the structure so as to allow each product unit to fully manage its profit as well as loss responsibility.

Area Structure

Area structure is normally adopted by organizations that want to concentrate on geographically specific strategies and therefore focus their decisions on meeting local needs. The organization may therefore be divided into regional structures. The manager for each regional structure operates an almost autonomous business with each regional structure focusing on meeting the local needs of those regions. Each region again has substantial local authority and is responsible for its profits and losses (Malamud, & Rotenberg, 2010).

Whirlpool Corporation

Whirlpool Corporation is a company that operates globally and deals in appliances of various categories. It operates in North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia with each region managed by its own CEO. Its products are tailored to meet the needs of the local conditions and the people in its region of operation. It focuses on cost productivity, innovation, product value as well as consumer value. Whirlpool is flexible to produce brands that meet the consumers’ demands in its regions of operations (Whirlpool, 2011).

The company’s choice of business structure was influenced by its quest to meet the needs of all its local stakeholders. The company has the capacity to sense and understand local conditions and therefore be able to formulate strategies for meeting the needs of local stakeholders. The company optimizes its product mix as well as product design to meet local conditions and needs. This has enabled the company to beet competition from its rival companies.

Customer/Market Structure

It allows companies to organize their operations in such a way as to fulfill the needs of their customers. They are therefore segmented to meet the needs of their various markets. It becomes important therefore to ensure that the human resource department remains proficient in terms of fulfilling the diverse needs of the customers (Malamud, & Rotenberg, 2010).

Barclays Bank

Barclays bank is one such corporation that offers various customer services. It is a global company and operates in most countries in the world with its headquarters being in the UK. The bank offers various account services, loans, insurance, savings and investments, mortgages and investment advice services. It offers services to both individuals and corporate businesses and has expanded its innovativeness to offer online banking services (Barclays, 2011).

Barclays Bank had to implement the customer structure to focus its attention and resources to meet and satisfy its customers through quality services. Commercial banking is a competitive sector and therefore gaining competitive edge over rival companies is always the main focus.

Besides, the financial sector needs those who can effectively evaluate the business outcomes of every activity that one undertakes in his or her operations. Therefore Barclays has to apply the structure to enable it develop and train its employees to be intelligent in their operations as they as maintain high standard customer service.

Reference List

Barclays. (2011). Barclays. Web.

Eastman. (2011). Eastman Chemical Company. Web.

Khera Communications. (2010). Fast food restaurant business plan. Web.

Malamud, V., & Rotenberg, Y. (2010). International business for entrepreneurs: Organizational structure and human resource management. Web.

Whirlpool. (2011). Whirlpool Corporation. Web.

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