Academic Skills for Accountants: Organizational Structures and Market Structure

Academic Skills for Accountants 2
ACADEMIC SKILLS FOR ACCOUNTANTS
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Academic Skills for Accountants 3
Executive Summary
The paper presented discussion of two key tasks. First, the paper presented analysis of three
forms of organizational structures; that is, flat, matrix and tall organizational structure.
Besides, the section presented comparative analysis of scalar chain and span of controls of
the three organizational structures. Secondly, the paper presented determinants of market
structure. It also presented different forms of market structure. From the analysis, it was
found out that flat structure

Academic Skills for Accountants 4
Introduction
Organizational structures and market structure are crucial component while setting up a
business. It is up to an individual to decide which structure they wish to apply in their
business as well as which form of market to operate in. This paper is divided into two tasks,
task one entails discussion of the three organizational structures and comparing their chain of
command and span of control. The second task entails discussion of determinant of market
structure as well as explanation of different form of the market structure.
Task 1
Three organisational structures
The way an organization’s structure develops usually falls into flat, matrix or tall structure.
A matrix structure is the most complicated structure an organization could implement. In this
case, a matrix structure is the organization structure where reporting relationship are usually
set as a matrix or a grid rather than in traditional hierarchy (Morgan 2015). In this case,
employees under matrix structure have dual reporting relations; that is to both the product
manager and functional manager. Under matrix structure, personnel reporting to the
department managers could also unite together in order to custom product or the project
teams. Besides, in the matrix structure, the product managers usually have full control over
the product-related issues, while the department managers usually have the authority over
issues related to organization policy (Jonathan 2017). Basically, the matrix structure is
usually created in response to the dynamism and uncertainty of the environment as well as
need to offer specific attention to particular projects or products. Therefore, use of the matrix
structure could increase corporation and communication amongst departments since the
project managers would require coordinating their activities with those of the department

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managers. Generally, matrix structure increases frequency of the formal and informal
communication in an entity (Johnson 2012). It also has the advantages of offering quick
responses to the customer demands and technical issues. For instance, the matrix structure at
Starbucks would be as shows in figure 1 below:
Figure 1: Example of matrix structure Starbucks
Source: Meyer (2018)