Zara: Corporate Structure and Culture

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Organizational Structure
Organizational System
Organizational Values
Organizational Powers
Organizational Cultures
References
Appendix

Introduction

The name of my organization is Zara. Zara is an international fashion company. It manufactures high-class ladies’ fashion. The company’s headquarters are in Spain. The firm has its own Designer’s Labels for its products. It is an international company operating worldwide.

Organizational Structure

Zara is organized into a functional departmentalization. The departments Consist of; the plant manager who is the organizational overall manager, the engineering manager, accounting manager, manufacturing manager, human resource manager, and the purchasing manager who coordinates each department and is accountable to the plant manager (Anderson 1988:56).

People with related professions, acquaintances, expertise, and orientations have been grouped together in one department. This ensures efficiency in terms of their work as it enhances quality output. There is exemplary coordination between Managers and Customers; this ensures that customers’ interests are met appropriately and adequately (Kahtz & Kahnz 1978:89).

Organizational System

In Luthans (1986:72), due to the large size and diversity of the organization, Zara has departmentalized itself in terms of the services and products it offers in the market. For instance, there are in charge of hairstyle fashioning, dress fashioning, general beauty among others. This has helped in reducing the workload of a manager within the organization.

Organizational Values

There is a devoted employees relationship within Zara. The relationship with the employees is hierarchically extended throughout the organization; Zara has strong coordination and understanding between its staff and subordinates. This ensures that the subordinates or employees work towards attaining the objectives of the organization; they receive guidance, support, and other essential services from the upper staff (Koontz, O’Donnell & Weihrich 1980:123).

In Robbins (1989: 45), the promotion of top managers is done within their various departments. Zara delegates task on a large scale to its departmental arms which then concentrate the work in their area of products and duties (Robbins& Coulter 1984:98).

Organizational Powers

According to Filley (1978:45), within organizations, the authority managers do have little work of imposing their authority on employees since these employees are experts in their duties. Hence, their responsibility is always to oversee the success and performance of these employees. The individual teams are the one who decides on how to divide the work amongst them and judge the span of work time.

Organizational Cultures

Each employee believes in his or her personality within the organization and would always want to improve the image of the organization. This is done by ensuring that they do the right thing always. This action has facilitated the quality of products and services offered by Zara thereby giving it more gain on the market shares (Davis& Lawrence1978:98).

The organization has maintained the ethics of its employees through innovation of their cultures; the organization through its heads has created a new culture that best suits its members while putting into account pre-cultural differences. The organization has also set achievable changes to best suit all its members. These new cultures have been integrated and embodied to maintain the cultures of its members (Nystrom & Starbuck 1981:24, Mintzberg 1981:256).

The Structure of Zara has enhanced strong organizational cultures within the company, enabling all employees to have a common goal within the organization and the willingness to collaborate through sharing of knowledge and skills. The team structure and exemplary leadership that exists within the organization enables Zara to enhance itself into fashion influential impact over its competitors (Cleland & King 1968:230)

In summary, building an organization requires a universal mindset based on ancient structural forms of decentralization of power and minimal hierarchy. This is what Zara has tried to achieve even though not yet attained perfection. In an attempt to achieve this, the organization has always ensured the support of the well-being of its members and their growth. Zara encourages teamwork and respects the importance of individualism; enhancing inclusive working to create room for advanced creativity of its employees. Although the organization has grown rapidly, it has always worked towards maintaining its entrepreneurial teamwork culture (Gullick & Urwick, 1937:123).

Just as other social systems, cultural values in an organization are charged with carrying out certain planned and non-planned social functions. For instance, culture strengthens the structure of an organization especially if the structure is socially acceptable but also conflicts with it especially when the structure does not meet the needs of the organization’s members. Thus, it usually acts as a means of controlling the variability of the behavior of members within the organization. This allows Zara to operate at its maximum level of production thus facilitating its faster growth. Specifically, by Zara sharing its managerial beliefs and values, the organization has been able to determine the fate of actions which in turn has served as an acceleration force for growth and development within Zara (Zara 2010).

In addition to the systems, structures, and values, corporate management within the organization has also developed good positive cultures. This began with the executives enabling all the members of Zara to adopt these policies and procedures. Through this, the organization has therefore managed to develop an ethical culture that aims at promoting all sorts of corporate governance, thus encouraging all the members to be ethically upright and have an understanding of the importance of this to the financial sustainability of the company.

References

Anderson, C.R. 1988. Management: Skills, Functions and Organization Performance. New York: Allyn & Bacon.

Arshervin, Robin. 2010. Zara; Annual organization Performance. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Cleland, D.L, & King, W.R. 1968. System Analysis and Project Management. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Davis, S.M & Lawrence, P.R. 1978. Problems of Organizations. London: Harvard Business Review.

Filley, A.C. 1978. The complete Manager: What Works When. Champaign, IL: Research Press.

Gullick, L & Urwick, L. 1937. Papers on the Science of Administration. New York: Institute of Public Administration.

Kahtz, D & Kahnz, R.L 1978. The Social Psychology of Organisations. New York: John Wiley.

Koontz, M., O’Donnell, C & Weihrich, H. 1980. Management. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Luthans, F. 1986. Organisational Behavior. Singapore: McGraw-Hill.

Mintzberg, H.1981. Organisation Design: Fashion or Fit. Harvard Business Review: 103-116.

Nystrom, P.C. & Starbuck, W.H. 1981. Handbook of Organisational Design. London: Oxford University Press.

Robbins, S.P. & Coulter, M. 1984. Management. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Upper Saddle River.

Robbins, S.P. 1989. Organisation Behavior: Concepts, Controversies & Applications. New Delhi: Prentice-Hall of India.

Appendix

Background: Zara Fashion Retailers

Zara is a leading retail and supply Fashion Company in Spain and the entire world. The company has gradually grown since the time of start-up, and at present, it controls the largest market share in the Europe and the world at large (Zara 2010). The company was established in 1975 in Spain as a sole proprietor firm and was headed by Johnson- the owner of the firm, who was assisted by his wife (Zara 2010).

According to (Zara 2010), the company had only seventeen (17) employees at the start-up. Due to this low number, they were subjected to long working hours as the number of their customers gradually increased. The major products retailed on by the company at the start-up time were majorly fashion goods. Thereafter, the company increased in its scope of operation by extending some of its branches to parts of Africa and throughout the world.

However, at the moment, the company also trade in various products such as electronics, foodstuffs and household goods. According the yearly journal realized by the company on 20^th November 2010, the company had a ‘total of 10000 functional retail units which functions under 100 labels’. According to that journal report, the company’s last financial years sale, that is, financial year 2010, was 8.23 million dollars.

The report also revealed that the company has 2 million employees worldwide at the moment. Hence, in Spain, the company has the highest employment rate. In addition, the company also has well organized and structured system of governance and at the same time, a proper networking system which plays a key role in the steady growth of the company. The company has also gathered many customers through their vision “helping the customers to have say in their money.” According to (Zara 2010), the company suffers the problem of coordination of its various branches located in the various parts of the world. In addition, the company also faces a lot of competition from other upcoming firms who retail in the same products.

Finally, in attempt to deal with these problems, the company is trying to restructure its modes of communication through use of fast-modern modes of communication. The company is also trying to use modern technology in its production. At the same time, the company has employed new methods of recruiting its employees to ensure that the company only endorses qualified people, fully of innovative skills needed in production and distribution of its products and services. The company is also making attempts to better both time and place utilities of their products.

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