Organisational Structure & Effectiveness of Coles

This report introduces a detailed overview of the Coles Group, a major supermarket in Australia. It further states the impact of the Coles organizational structure on the innovation and management of the firm. It provides the effect of the Colesorganizational structure on its overall business performance and its profit margin. There are some recommendations that may help the firm to develop firm’s innovation and management.

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ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURE & EFFECTIVENESS OF COLES
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1ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURE & EFFECTIVENESS OF COLES
Executive Summary
This report introduces a detailed overview of the Coles Group, a major supermarket
in Australia. It further states the impact of the Coles organizational structure on the
innovation and management of the firm. It provides the effect of the
Colesorganizational structure on its overall business performance and its profit
margin. There are some recommendations that may help the firm to develop firm’s
innovation and management.

2ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURE & EFFECTIVENESS OF COLES
Table of Contents
Introduction...............................................................................................................................3
Discussion................................................................................................................................3
Overview of The Coles Organizational Structure...........................................................3
Strategies Followed by the Company............................................................................5
Impact of Coles Organizational Structure on Management Innovation......................6
Impact of Company’s Structure on Overall Business Performance............................7
Recommendation for Improving Company’s Innovation and Management...............8
Conclusion................................................................................................................................9
Reference...............................................................................................................................11

3ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURE & EFFECTIVENESS OF COLES
Introduction
This report aims to introduce brief overview about the impact of organizational
structure on the management innovation and performance of the Coles Group
Australia. Coles Group Australia is the largest retailer present in Australia. GJ Coles
established this firm in the year 1914(Colesgroup.com.au, 2019).Coles has now
turned into largest retailer group in Australia. Coles has framed its large business in
a divisional organizational form, with the purpose of distributing equal responsibilities
to different sectors of the firm to different individuals. This not only helps them to
provide equal attention to every part of the organization but also generate the
uniqueness of products and customer service given by the company. Coles Group
has divisional organizational structure comprises more than fifteen general
managers, sixty six regional supervisors, seven hundred and forty two store
managers, nine thousands and five hundred team members (Insideretail.com.au,
2019). Coles has the specific vision to deliver quality product with effective services
that will help them to gain maximum trust from Australians and enhance the value of
shareholders.
Discussion
Overview of the Coles Organizational Structure
Coles is considered as the largest retailer group in Australia. This company
provides several facilities to their fellow customers like online shopping, home
delivery, assistance shopping, online and cash payment and others similar
ones(colesgroup.com.au, 2019). With the divisional organizational structure Coles
has expand their business to different regions of Australia. Coles has more than
10,000 staffs who provide their deliberate effort to make their client happy with the

4ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURE & EFFECTIVENESS OF COLES
services offered by their firm. Being in a divisional organizational structure Coles has
divided their firm into different subdivisions supervised by different individuals. Coles
has a large executive team, constitutes of Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial
Officer, Chief Executive, Chief Operation Officer, Chief Property and Export Officer,
Chief Marketing Officer, Chief People Officer, Chief Information and Digital Officer,
Chief Legal Officer, Company Secretary and so on(colesgroup.com.au, 2019). The
entire administrative authority has connected with each other and each have similar
power of executing their duties. Following the divisional organizational structure
Coles has distributed its power into different branches or levels of the company. The
company’s communication flows in both upward and downward directions. The
board of directors has framed different policies, that followed by every manager,
team leader, supervisor and ground- level worker. Though, the company follows the
divisional organizational structure it enjoys huge profit extracted from the Australian
market. In case of power division, equality and uniformity are the two key aspects in
this firm. Coles has 2500 of retail stores present across the globe. It has receive its
success in maintain a large supplier chain across the nations (colesgroup.com.au,
2019).The company has more than 790 supermarkets spread across the
nation(colesgroup.com.au, 2019).Coles has different subsidiary units offering wide
variety of products and services:
 Coles Liquor: Coles Liquor is considered as the national liquor shop that
comprises more than 700 liquor shops selling wide variety of wine and other
liquor(coles.com.au, 2019).
 Coles Express: Coles Express is one of the famous fuel stores present in
Australia. It has more than 680 branches scattered around the country.

5ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURE & EFFECTIVENESS OF COLES
 Coles Financial Services: Coles has also provide financial services to
support consumer’s financial crisis. It provides loans, insurance, credit card
facilities to the citizens of Australia(Colesgroup.com.au, 2019).
 Spirit Hotels: Coles has established hotels in different parts of the nation like
South Australia, New South Wales and Queensland. This hotel facility of the
company is named under the brand called Spirit Hotels(Colesgroup.com.au,
2019).
Strategies Followed by the Company
Coles Group has a specific vision on making consumer’s life easy by
providing them better shopping facilities that would help them to save their time and
effort of accessing daily requirements. The company has develop various strategies
to develop their business in the Australian market. In order to expand its business
company has followed different strategic ways like improving customer service
facilities, expanding space for the establishment of different stores, maintaining good
relationship with suppliers in order to generate a smooth supply chain, and
diversifying their services like liquor business. These strategies have formulated with
the purpose of enhancing the business profit, expanding of industry, developing
organizational leadership values, accelerating company’s sales rate and other similar
reasons. The firm use to maintain good relation with their customers that will help
them to make the brand as the alternative option for their clients (Knox, 2015). They
use to generate handsome discount offers on their premium products to retain
customers. The company has reached its success in adopting updated online
payment facility for their clients. This company has diversified its business chain.
They provide different facilities like financial facility, hotel facility. Besides maintaining
a good market environment and customer relations, it has practiced different

6ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURE & EFFECTIVENESS OF COLES
measures on maintaining good relation with their staffs to enhance the organizational
performance (Parker and Scrinis, 2014). They spend huge amount of performing
Corporate Social Responsibility programs. This will help the firm in generating
employee engagement and prevent the employee retention. In order to generate
brand awareness Coles has arranged different social welfare programs (Richard et
al., 2016). This will help the firm seeks customer’s attention and compelled them to
purchase their products and increase their profit.
Impact of Coles Organizational Structure on Management Innovation
Coles Group has framed on the basis of divisional organizational structure,
the firm headed by different board of directors, managers, general managers and
supervisors. In divisional organizational structure, the entire power has equally
distributed to its different subsidiary units that would help them to work in a team and
help the company to achieve its desired position in the market (Jenkins and Poole,
2017).Different branches of Coles are connected with each other. This bond among
different branches of Coles helps to overcome its major threat as supervisors are
continuously developing new strategies to deal with emerging threats and barriers
(Lee and Day, 2015). Team leader used to share different tasks and responsibilities
among every member present in the team and this strategy helps employees to
prevent the risk of overloading of tasks. Thus, all members have the scope to work
efficiently and helps the firm to innovate new products. Thus, this strategy helps
both the managers and the supervisors to work efficiently and provide more attention
on different innovation done by the employees. This will help the firm to manage its
equality among all the units. Employees of this firm are connected with each other
and this will help them to work efficiently (Janicijevic, 2017). This unity in the
divisional structure of Coles helps to operate its business according to the market

7ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURE & EFFECTIVENESS OF COLES
trends and helps to innovate or customize different products because divisional
structure promotes open scope of learning and inventing new products and ideas
(Garay, Font and Pereira- Moloiner, 2017). Hence, this organizational structure helps
to managemutual benefits for both the company and its consumers by satisfying
them with new products (Flanigan, 2016). Coles has followed a decentralized
organizational structure because the entire organizational power was divided into
every level of the organization they have CEO, Board of Directors, Supervisors,
Operational Team Leader, Customer Service Managers and so on. All the above-
mentioned heads have same power and this will help them to lead a joint effort to
innovate new products for development. Hence, every members of this company
have the scope of sharing their views, thoughts, and new ideas,that would help the
company to innovate new products generating sustainability of the firm. This would
help employees to utilize their skills to improve organizational profit margin. For this
reason, Coles has able to satisfy its customer’s demand with more than 40,000
products successfully. As a divisional organizational structure Coles has developed
different policies to ensure the safety measures for their workers. Coles has
innovated different management strategies like health safety facilities, rewards,
incentive facility, and training facilities to generate employee engagement. This will
help the company to enhance organizational performance.
Impact of Company’s Structure on Overall Business Performance
Coles has divisional organizational structure that create heavy impact on the
overall performance of the organization (Wu et al.,2015). The company comprises of
different board of directors and supervisors who are responsible for determining
different policies and codes that helps the company to develop new strategies for
enriching the company with new products and services (Trevena et al.,2015). Due to

8ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURE & EFFECTIVENESS OF COLES
this structure, the entire power of the company is equally segregated into different
departments. Thus, each division has the opportunity to work independently focusing
on the growth of their products and services (Su, Baird, Schoch, 2015). All employee
has the scope of sharing their views, ideas, and thoughts. This helps to generate a
healthy work environment within the firm and lead the staffs work in a team
(Kozlowski et al.,2015). Company has introduced 1200 own private label products in
the market. As per the report, Coles online sales revenue has increased by 30
percent, enhancing the company’s overall business profit(insidefmcg.com.au, 2019).
Company has the maximum share of dollar 14.68 in the Australian
market(colesgroup.com.au, 2019). Coles as a largest Australian Supermarkets use
to have 80 percent market share of Australia (Knox, 2015).Though, the company has
divisional organizational structure, the hierarchy and the entire department are
interconnected with each other, having suitable power, designation and duties. The
CEO along with other directors and team supervisors of the firm use to conduct
financial meeting, audit employee performance, determine brand position, and
analyze different weaknesses of the company (colesgroup.com.au, 2019). This will
help the firm to recognize different emerging threats and formulate strategies to
overcome the same and innovative new products and technologies that would help
them to grow. Thus, it can state that this divisional structure of the Coles helps the
company to generate employee engagement, boast team performance. Hence,
enhance the overall business performance and profit level of the company.
Recommendation for Improving Company’s Innovation and Management
There are several recommendations for the mentioned organization for
improving their innovation and management:

9ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURE & EFFECTIVENESS OF COLES
 As a divisional organizational structure, Coles need to focus on their weak
units and develop effective strategies for improving the same.
 In a divisional organizational culture, managers of Coles needs to put effective
steps to generate staffs performance to offer better service to their clients.
This will directly affect the organization’s profit level in a positive way.
 The firm needs to frame specific policies that enable the company to ensure
its innovations and long –term sustainability.
 Supervisors should maintain good relation both with their clients and staffs
associated with the firm. This will help the company to effective management
system.
Conclusion
This report concludes that the divisional organizational structure of Coles
Group has immense impact over the management and innovations of the firm.
Though, it has the divisional structure the entire power of the firm has not centralized
to its hierarchy, rather it segregated into every level of the authority or the firm. It has
different boards of directors and supervisors who innovate new strategies for
attaining company’s success and make the firm threat for its competitors present in
the Australian market. Company has achieved its success in diversifying its products
and services to extract more revenue from the Australian market. It has extended its
business through different new channels like Coles Express, Spirit hotels, Coles
Liquor. This will help the company to stretch its profit margin. Coles provides
different facilities like online payment facility, free home delivery facility and other
similar ones to attract their clients. Though, company earns public trust and huge
profit it has several barriers that refrain the company to ensure more profit. For this

10ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURE & EFFECTIVENESS OF COLES
reason company need to follow different strategies to ensure its long-term
sustainability in the market. Company needs to focus on developing their
management system to establish effective connection and transparent relation
among every members of the organization. This will lead the company to engage its
employee and take effective decisions to improve organizational performance.

11ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURE & EFFECTIVENESS OF COLES
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