Background Startup.com is a documentary film about govWorks.com, a start-up tech company that operated between May 1999 and December 2000. The company raised $60 million US dollars from various venture capitals and was thought to become a million-dollar business that will go public on the stock exchanges. Unfortunately, the company did not survive when the dot com bubble bursted. The company was founded by two best friends since high school, Kaleil Isaza Tuzman and Tom Herman. Their friendship also fell apart as the company came to an end. govWorks.com was acquired by a multinational corporation on New Year’s Day 2001 due to the company’s rapidly depleting cash flow and inability to get more funding. Analysis The organizational structure for govWorks.com was constantly changing throughout the lifetime of the company. The firm started as a horizontal organization since there were only 8 employees to begin with. The structure was a good fit for the size because it was more effective for the members to share tasks and have face-to-face communication. Hierarchy also did not make sense in that stage of life of the company as it will only lead to unnecessary confusion between the roles and responsibilities of each member. As the company became bigger, the number of employees grew to become 233. The company then adopted a vertical structure because hierarchy and rules now became necessary to manage a greater number of employees. Teams and task forces also helped to better manage
The organizational structures within a company can be the determining factor if a business can run efficiently or run chaotically into ruin. The organizational structure is the different hierarchy’s and arrangement of authority, roles and duties in an organization. The Cheesecake factory has a very effective organizational structure which allows for its operations to run smoothly and enables the Cheesecake factory to be one of the highest earning restaurant chains. The structure contains three main levels. The first and highest level is the board of directors which contains 7 members, including the CEO David Overton and 6 directors. The next level of hierarchy called N-1 contains 7 levels including the CFO, President, Area Operations,
An organization must align its strategy and structure to allow itself to achieve performance improvements over time. The four different structures, simple, functional, multidivisional, and matrix, are all suited to allow companies with different strategies to succeed but the company must decide which of these is correct for itself. A small start-up company will overburden itself with excessive cost if it seeks to implement a functional structure because it clearly will not have the talent on hand to create whole departments of HR employees or accountants. On the other hand, a company that grows to become a large multi-national
The job design and the motivation are not self-sufficient to increase the productivity and they require an organizational structure to further coordinate organizational activities. Organizational structure, through its chain of command, coordinates, motivates and monitors employees. Buchanan and Huczynski (2010) argue that the structure of the organizations serves 3 functions:
The bureaucratic culture is another weakness in the corporation. The General Motors Corporation employs more than 260 millions staff, which composes a huge and complex organization. The General Motors Corporation had taken the lead in organization. For example, the corporation had injected into matrix organization that combined the functional and project patterns of department in the same corporation in early years. The General Motors Corporation also organized with strategic business unit that classified products and product lines in the same independent business department in ahead of other corporations. The decentralization makes each department a profit centre. However, after ages of development the departments and business units concerns more on their own benefits
All businesses have organisational structures, even if they are small or big, they have some type of structure so they can operate productively.
The old hierarchical structure continued in the new BID. There were layers of management with bureaucratic
“Right now, it’s an industry dedicated to one thing. Profit.” This quote by author, Paddy Chayefsky, perfectly sums up the motives behind the movie “Network.” From hiring soothsayers to risking a man’s mental heath for the sake of a successful television program, the characters in “Network” have truly been blinded by fame and top ratings. This satire fiercely describes just how far a television network will go to achieve such accomplishments.
Business startups are difficult because, whether it is an internet business or a traditional one, the originators heart and soul are involved. Many people invest their life savings and they also work long hours trying to make sure that the idea works. Unfortunately, most business startups fail in the first year (Petrecca, 2010). This paper discusses the startup MusicJuice.Net, its challenges, and how the owners of the company should proceed.
The organization has a tall structure with many hierarchical levels, resembling a system with a vertical functional design. There is a fairly narrow span of management with most important decisions being by either the board of trustees or the CEO. See Figure A in Appendix
Manager’s of an organization has to use structure to help the company run efficiently. “The five types of organizational structures are functional, divisional, matrix, team-based, and virtual network” (Draft, 2013, p.316). Functional structure in an organization that is developed by grouping departments by the skills, level of knowledge, activities done daily, and the resource used. “This structure places specific departments from the bottom to the top” (Draft, 2013, p.318). For example, specific departments such as: human resources, accounting, engineering, and manufacturing are placed at the top, while there are mostly seen at the bottom in other organizations. While common functions such as; people, facilities, and other resources are combined together as a single department instead of being divided into multiple departments.
Structure and hierarchy come from how work and the work processes are coordinated together and relating how tasks and coordination of these tasks is to be obtained. When determining the authority in the structure of an organization, there are two major options, centralized and decentralized. A centralized organizational setup is where the authority to make important decisions is retained by managers at the top of the created hierarchy whereas a decentralized organizational setup is where the authority to make important decisions about organizational resources and to initiate new projects is delegated to managers at all levels in the hierarchy. Each choice is made based upon the main goal/task of the organization and what would better fit the organization. Whether work/the
The major problem every company encounters is the structure or hierarchy of the organization. Usually, it is in the form of a pyramid and gets narrower as it rises resulting in the few people on the top of the pyramid gets more advantages in the company. But the lower level employees are not given that importance when it comes to the utilization of the benefits provided by the company.
If we would refer to the history of organizations, we can see the significant changes in structure, polices, employee relations, values, etc. The first interest in organizations appeared in the 19th century, which was driven by industrialization. Industrial revolution was caused by development of technologies, which completely changed the structure of most of the organizations, and lead to the transformation of society. The introduction of manufacturing process completely changed the employment relations. Discipline was the key feature of the new organization, as it helped to control and organize people more effectively – this lead to the process of bureaucratization. New industrialists were looking for the profitable production. In order to achieve it, they needed punctuality and uninterrupted work during fixed hours from their employees. These targets were achieved by bureaucratisation, which was central to the administrative revolution. These organizations were highly rational, they functioned in a discipline and unemotional manner, their activities were calculated, systematic and predictable. This approach helped the manufacturers maximize the return on their capital. This new manufacturing process was the beginning of the new era of employment relations. Bureaucracy is a systematic approach; all the workers had their duties and were paid respectively. But, as many other theories, this
If Computer.com does not show us that the future of management is in the placing of older more experienced management then what will? This is a classic story of young hot shot trying to be more than what he is. Computer.com sold computers and accessories online, and was headed by Mike Zapolin, a young 32 year-old. He was so confident of his company’s success, he spent more than $3 million of $5.8 million in a recent round of venture funding on a trio of television spots on last year’s Super Bowl Sunday. When he was asked at that time about the prospects of Computer.com going public, his answer was “we are so down that road” adding that the Super Bowl commercials were “definitely a springboard for an IPO”.
Organizational structure is a system that consists of explicit and implicit institutional rules and policies designed to outline how various work roles and responsibilities are delegated, controlled and coordinated. Organizational structure also determines how information flows from level to level within the company (investopedia.com, 2017). If one level or department does not undertake its function accurately the entire business suffers, because all the departments interrelated to each other. There are generally four types of organizational structure: