BHP Billiton limited Analysis

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BHP Billiton limited Analysis
Name
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Executive Summary
The main aim of the report was to examine the impact of the BHP Billiton Limited
Company structure on management innovation, overall performance and further provide
recommendation of what the company could do to improve on innovation and performances.
BHP Billiton Limited is a multinational natural resource company formed in 2001 through the
merging of Billiton PLC and BHP limited and its headquarters is based in Australia. The
company produced diverse products such as gas, silver, manganese, nickel, iron, aluminium,
uranium, titanium, copper and steel. BHP uses centralization and divisional organizational
structures to carry out its operations. The innovation strategies used by the company include
product and process strategies. Other entry strategies that are incorporated with the innovative
strategies to ensure the company is successful in global environment include joint venture,
acquisition and merging. The organizational structure and strategies used by BHP Billiton
Company impact management innovation as it ensures the organization utilizes the latest
technologies on its activities and procedures. Negatively, the organizational structure and
strategies used by the company have facilitated to employees making less frequent attempts to
pursue the finding of new and innovative solution to the problems. BHP’s organizational
structure and strategy has impact on performance as it facilitates quick decision making,
effective delegation of duties, encourages high motivation of staff and encouragement of
innovation. The suggested ways in which BHPs should improve its business performance is
through the adoption of specialization organizational structure that will develop expertise in one
field leading to high innovation within the organization. The paper concluded BHP company has
successfully developed within the market structure by improving on innovation, performances,
enhancing its management and implementing its marketing and organization structure.

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Table of Contents
Executive Summary.......................................................................................................... 2
Introduction.................................................................................................................... 3
Overview of BHP Billiton limited organisational structure, strategies and possible reasons..................3
Impact of the BHP Billiton limited structure on management innovation.........................................3
Impact of the BHP Billiton limited structure on overall business performance..................................3
Recommendations............................................................................................................ 3
Conclusion..................................................................................................................... 3
Reference...................................................................................................................... 3
Introduction

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BHP Billiton is a multinational natural resource company formed in 2001 through the
merging of Billiton PLC and BHP limited (Su, Yi, Hooper and Dutta, 2013 p.155). Currently,
BHP Billiton Limited is categorized among the largest mining companies in the world. The
company produced diverse products such as gas, silver, manganese, nickel, iron, aluminium,
uranium, titanium, copper and steel (Ratchev, Caffery, Sullivan, Olivares and Rigby, 2011,
p.762). In addition, BHP limited company also has interest in transportation and engineering.
The headquarters of the company are suited in Melbourne, Australia and it is listed under
Australia Security exchanges as BHP Billiton Limited (Su, Yi, Hooper and Dutta, 2013 p.155).
Currently, BHP Billiton Company has over 100,000 employees as compared to over 80,000 in
2008 across 25 countries it operates around the world (Okereke and Russel, 2010 p.100).
Furthermore, BHP Billiton Limited Company has revenues of US$43.638 billion after tax by
2018 as compared to $59.5m billion in 2008 before taxation, operating income of US$17.561
billion and net income of US$4.832 Billion.
Overview of BHP Billiton limited organisational structure, strategies and possible reasons
Organizational structure in business perspective defines how a department is arranged,
tasks are allocated, decisions are made, activities are coordinated and supervision is directed
towards achievement of set goals, objectives and targets (Colquitt, Lepine, Wesson and Gellatly,
2011 p.115). Organizational structures differ from one company or industry to another and it is
usually developed on basis of the type of industry, their SMART objectives and goals. Basically,
the most common organizational structure used in modern organizations includes Functional,
Divisional and matrix structure. In functional organizational structure, an organizational is
usually divided into smaller groups with each group designated specific roles and tasks (Verle,
Markič, Kodrič and Gorenc Zoran, 2014 p.922). This type of organization is suitable for small