King Digital Entertainment Ltd: A Case Study in Organizational Culture and Strategic Management

This case study examines King Digital Entertainment Ltd, the developer of the popular mobile game Candy Crush Saga. It analyzes the company's organizational structure, its culture as defined by Charles Handy's framework, and its innovative strategic management objectives. The study explores how these factors contribute to King's success and provides insights into the challenges and opportunities facing the company in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.

Management and Organisations
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Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Task 1.........................................................................................................................................4
Introduction of Organisation..................................................................................................4
Task 2.........................................................................................................................................5
Identify the organisational structure of the company and analyse how this structure
facilitates its functionality......................................................................................................5
Task 3.........................................................................................................................................7
Suggest one modern management approach that could be used in the company to improve
its functionality.......................................................................................................................7
Task 4.........................................................................................................................................8
Using Charles Handy’s cultural framework, identify and analyse the relevance of the
company’s organisational culture to its on-going success.....................................................8
Task 5.........................................................................................................................................9
Critically analyse two innovative strategic management objectives of the company............9
Conclusion................................................................................................................................10
References................................................................................................................................11
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Introduction
The study of section includes the vivid description of the King company, the owner and
developer or worldwide renowned smart phone gaming application Candy Crush Saga. The
game came into existence in recent past but soon gained popularity due to attractive features,
engaging model, and impressive modulation and design. The company runs under the
authority and monitoring of Riccordo Zacconi, who has been providing his services since
2003, the establishment of company. In further study of section, the reader would come
across the management theory company is suggested to follow and implement with
company’s latest and current statistical data. There is a brief introduction of Charles Handy’s
theory of organizational culture. The study is concluded with innovative management
approach and reliable content resources.
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Task 1
Introduction of Organisation
The organisation, King Digital Entertainment Ltd, widely popular and goes by ‘King’ is a
social conduct and interactive game developing company. King creates games for web, cell
phones of all variety such as iOS, Windows, Android phones, Microsoft windows itself, and
Facebook. King has gained its popularity with the launch of cross-platform game popularly
known as Candy Crush Saga in 2012. It is the most successful game on financial basis
utilizing the model freemium. Candy Crush Sagar is presently making about $850,000 per
day, the puzzle game revealed the secret of success due to the model success of the freemium
business. King, the owner of Candy Crush has maintained the art of in-app purchasing of the
game and constant regular updates to keep the gaming experience exciting and attractive.
In 2016 February, the company was acquired for $5.9 billion by Activision Blizzard and
continued to function as its own entity with the acquired company. The current Chairman of
Board is Gerhard Florin. Former COB Melvyn Morris stepped down from the position in
2014 November. According to the latest survey of 2017, the company has a labour force of
2000 employees. In recent past, the company King has spent about $110.5 million on
development and research, which is roughly the 6% of company’s sale (Dockterman, 2013).
The company deals on a global level with the objective to raise brand consideration,
awareness, and purchase of the product. The format of the game is mobile gaming application
(Smith, 2014).
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Task 2
Identify the organisational structure of the company and analyse how this structure
facilitates its functionality.
A company requires a formal system of communication, task-completion, and decision-
making strategic structure for the efficient and effective operation of the organization.
Work Specialization: It refers to the division of workforce, to a certain degree from where the
specific task is broken down into individual jobs. In case of extensive work specialization, a
company can allot single task to an individual of a large project. This suggests better
functioning and huge assistance. For enhanced efficiency companies can employ larger job
profile to challenge employees with additional responsibilities.
Departmentalization: It refers to the ways of company differ from the segments of the
company itself i.e. a functional organization group broadly refers to functional operations of
the company, such as sales, marketing, manufacturing, customer services. Some
organizations use divisional approach depending on the geography of region whereas some
use departmentalization of product, market, and customer segment.
Hierarchy of Authority: It refers to organization line of charge and describes the reporting of
employees to respective management leaders. Hierarchy of authority can be subcategorised
into two parts, flat and tall structure. In this case, former deals with the fewer level of
authority and the wider area to control where latter deals with many levels of authority and
petite area to control.
Line and Staff Relationships: It refers to the involvement of people in the organizational
structure of the organization. Line manager is solely responsible for achieving goals and
objectives of the company. Employees and staff manager provide advice, suggestions or
recommendations to managers to support overall operations.
Decentralization and Centralization: Decentralization structure of organization refers to
distributing decision-making authority to lower-level management or non-managerial
employees. Whereas Centralization structure of organization refers to decision making
authority limited to the head or near the top of the company
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Task 3
Suggest one modern management approach that could be used in the company to
improve its functionality.
The contingency management approach can be used in the company to improve its
functionality. It aims at the engaging theory that includes practice in the framework of the
system. The behaviour in contingency management depends on sub-unit environment and
relationship to different and other sub-units that access some control expected and desired by
sub-unit (Hill, et. al., 2016).
 Situations require to be managed, and managers in such conditions are to be aware of
objectives, organization designs, strategies, plans and policies that would help
overcome raising circumstances.
 Policies should be effective to change and trend.
 The foresight knowledge is necessary as to anticipate changing environmental
conditions.
 Managers are to inhabit the skills to stabilise and accommodate change.
 The contingency model of management should apply to the design of org.,
information and communication system development, leadership style, suitable and
effective aims; programs and practices.
Therefore, the development of organization vividly depends upon the thorough knowledge
and adaptation of management practice theory (Geisler and Wickramasinghe, 2015).
Figure 1.1: Annual Revenue of king.com from 2010-2017 (In million U.S. Dollars)
Source: The Statistical Portal
The company in the year 2017 generated 1.99 billion US dollar revenue representing a
downhill movement in comparison to the revenue of 2014 2.26 billion US dollar. The
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revenue majorly generated by virtual in-app purchase. Apart from Candy Crush, King has
developed Farm Ville Saga and Bubble Witch Saga.
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Task 4
Using Charles Handy’s cultural framework, identify and analyse the relevance of the
company’s organisational culture to its on-going success.
Charles Handy, widely known philosopher specialized in organisation culture, born in Ireland
in 1932. According to Handy’s culture framework, there are four culture types that a
company needs to follow:
Power: In some firms, the authoritative power is limited to some certain people of the
company. At work, they are ones to enjoy first preference and special privileges. These are
the most important people and major decision makers of the firm. Individuals are often seen
delegating responsibilities to other fellow employees or subordinates. In condition as such,
the employees have no escape from commands and conditions of the respective superior. The
employees in this condition have almost nil liberty to explain and express their ideas, views.
Managers in such situations can be particular and significantly partial which eventually leads
to unrest amongst employees (Do Carmo Silva and Gomes, 2015).
Task Culture: Task culture refers to the team formation to achieve set goals and targets or to
solve issues, critical matters and problems. Individuals with a common interest fall together
to make a team, there are roughly five to six members on each team. In conditions as such,
each team member contributes equally to accomplish the assigned task in innovative ways.
Person Culture: Person culture refers to the condition where the employees consider
themselves more important and precious than the organization itself. Some organizations
vividly follow the person culture.
Individuals in conditions as such are highly concerned about them and are quite self-centred.
The result of which is paid by organizations. These individuals perform tasks for the sake of
money without any interest in the job itself. They are seldom found loyal towards
management, never in the favour of organisation. Others require remembering that
bifurcation of priority is important, i.e. organization comes first than everything else.
Role culture: In order to extract the best of an employee on the basis of skills, qualifications,
specializations role culture includes dedicating roles and responsibilities to every employee.
In such conditions, employees perform the best they can and willingly accept the forthcoming
challenges. Each individual is accountable, responsible, and has complete ownership of the
task they are assigned. With power comes a huge responsibility (Do Carmo Silva and Gomes,
2015).
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Task 5
Critically analyse two innovative strategic management objectives of the company.
Strategic management refers to an organizations way of redesigning or reinventing the
corporate strategy of the company to enhance the growth of the business, optimize the value
of customers and the company, and to create some competitive advantage. This strategic
management is essential for the firms looking to adopt the change of technology turning up
with speed and influence (Goffin and Mitchell, 2016). There are few considerations of
strategic management:
 It includes the bifurcation of goods and services that require development or require
to be reinvented.
 The knowledge of competitive market
 The information of business models
 The requirements of business processes to optimize best
 Ideas to expand the customer base
 Knowledge of company position in regard to customer relations
 Information regarding the efficient supply and value chain
 The go-to-market plan and strategy
Two innovative strategic management of the company
1. King can most certainly permit the internal use of fast-growing gaming service to
engage customers for a longer period of time.
2. The company roughly earns general revenue in a billion figures, the company can
invest the revenue in sectors where the profit margin is high and market value of the
company is maintained.
SWOT Analysis
Strength
 50 Million+ monthly users.
 Users are thoroughly engaged in the
game and imply high rating.
 The transactional model of the game
is profitable.
Weakness
 High competition with short-lived or
limited brand loyalty.
 It is highly difficult to manage and
implement new ideas within short
spans of time.
Threat
 High competition
 Raising substitute products and games
Opportunity
 Areas to expand; smart television, and
various developing technical fields.
 Raising use of internet and
smartphone users.
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Conclusion
In the study of the section the company King, the owner and founder of trending smartphone
gaming application ‘Candy Crush Saga’ has been discussed. The company and the
functioning of the company with thorough description have been discussed in the beginning
of the study. The study further included management theory that company has been suggested
to include and follow to optimize more profit. Charles Handy’s organizational culture has
been elaborated. There has been a vivid discussion on Strategic innovation suggesting that the
company does not necessarily require the change in goods and services they provide to
customers, nor is the change required in the technology with which these goods and services
are produced to grow. Innovation in strategic management refers to the innovative projects
and projection that appears the level of execution. The study has been concluded with valid
references.
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References
 Annual Revenue of king.com from 2010-2017 (In million U.S. Dollars), 2017 The
Statistical Portal [Online], Available at
https://www.statista.com/statistics/288974/king-annual-revenue/ (Accessed on 30-06-
2018)
 Chen, C. and Leung, L., 2016. Are you addicted to Candy Crush Saga? An
exploratory study linking psychological factors to mobile social game
addiction. Telematics and Informatics, 33(4), pp.1155-1166.
 do Carmo Silva, M. and Gomes, C.F.S., 2015. Practices in Project Management
According to Charles Handy's Organizational Culture Typologies. Procedia
Computer Science, 55, pp.678-687.
 Dockterman, E., 2013. Candy Crush saga: The science behind our addiction. Time
magazine, 15.
 Geisler, E. and Wickramasinghe, N., 2015. Principles of knowledge management:
Theory, practice, and cases. Routledge.
 Goffin, K. and Mitchell, R., 2016. Innovation Management: Effective Strategy and
Implementation. Palgrave Macmillan.
 Hill, C.W., Jones, G.R. and Schilling, M.A., 2014. Strategic management: theory: an
integrated approach. Cengage Learning.
 Smith, D., 2014. This is what candy crush saga does to your brain. The Guardian, 1.
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