Structure and Culture in Business Firms

This assignment report discusses the importance of structure and culture in business firms, with a case study on TESCO. It explores different types of organizational structures and cultures and their impact on performance. The report also highlights the recommended structure and culture for TESCO.

STRUCTURE
AND CULTURE

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
Organisational Structure in context with business firms........................................................1
Culture for an organisation.....................................................................................................3
Influence of adopted culture and structure on the performance of selected organisation......4
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
Structure in context with a business organisation is referred to the system that outlines the
specification adopted by company to perform their work in appropriate manner. Structure of an
organisation helps in dividing responsibilities, roles and rules as per the business requirement.
Culture is related to the assumption, values, shared beliefs and the perception of people
(Battistella, 2014). This assignment report is prepared in context with TESCO which is a UK
based multinational retailer of grocery and merchandise operating in global context. In terms of
gross revenues, this organisation is placed at third number. This project report is going to
mention about structure and culture of an organisation. In this context, different types of
organisational structure and culture will be discussed. Along with this, appropriate models and
frameworks will be mentioned so that impact of culture and structure on the performance of
company can be acknowledged in a proper manner.
MAIN BODY
Organisational Structure in context with business firms
Organisational structure is referred to the hierarchy of placing the roles, rights, duty and
other responsibilities in a business organisation. This will allows the workers of a company to
acknowledge their power and duties according to their departments. Structure of a company is
designed according to their objectives and strategy. There are multiple aspects that are associated
with structure of a company. In context of TESCO, these aspects are discussed here:
In case of organisational structure, chain of command is described as the hierarchical
arrangement in which interdepartmental relations will be defined from below to top. By this,
employees of a company get to know to whom they are accountable. This aspects will helps the
manager in TESCO to lay accountability and decision-making power so that each activity of
company can be performed appropriately. Another important aspect in case of organisational
structure is span of control which is concerned with the number of workers that works under
direct supervision of the manager (Brewster and Hegewisch, 2017). In relation with TESCO, if
the manager in HR team have ten subordinates working under him then in this case span of
control for HR manager is ten. By this performance of each employee can be acknowledged
properly.
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Different design for organisational structure
There are different kind of organisational structure which helps a company to perform
their work and activities in a productive manner. These structure have different characteristics
and attribute but main purpose of adopting this structure is to perform organisational work in a
systematic way. Some of these structures are discussed here. In Geographic structure, workers
of an organisation are grouped together according to their geographic divisions. In case of
geographic division, each division of firm will work in an independent manner and they will
have their own finance, marketing, production and other functions. Function structure is an
organisation structure which helps in organising employees according to their educational and
academic qualifications. In this organisational structure, employees of a company are grouped as
per their skills (Brown and et. Al., 2019). This type of structure divides a company in vertical
manner which means that employees associated with Finance will be treated as a single entity
irrespective of their division. Adoption of this organisation structure will benefits different
functions of TESCO like finance, production and sales team to directly contact with top
management if they are facing some issue.
Other than geographical and function structure, an organisation can adopt product
organisational structure in which a business firm will be bifurcated according to their projects,
products, activities and geography. Adopting this kind of structure will assists a company to
focus on a specific activity or work while performing their business operations. There are some
organisations which prefers to adopt Mixed organisational structure in which talented and
capable employees of an organisation perform business activities in multiple departments. In this
kind of structure, employees of TESCO will be needed to report two or more managers about
their activities due to which a confusion can take place (De Maré, 2018).
Along with this, Matrix organisational structure is also adopted by a company so that
their organisational work can be accomplished completely. In this structure, employees are group
in multiple teams which are headed by a project or product manager. Under this type of structure,
various project managers reports their activities and operations to a functional manager. This
means that these organisations perform their work as cross functional groups. By implementing
this structure, manager in TESCO can promote dynamic work environment, flexibility and open
communication. Out of all the organisational structures, manager in TESCO is recommended to
adopt geographic structure. If TESCO will adopt this structure than, different divisions of a
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company will be able to operate their work without depending on each other and all the work
will be carried out in an efficient manner. Due to which failure of one division in achieving
targets will not impacts other divisions and organisational productivity will be able to stabilised.
Hence, geographical structure is suitable for big organisation like TESCO (Hirakawa and et. al.,
2015).
Culture for an organisation
In order to achieve expected goals and targets, it is important for a company to maintain
appropriate working culture in their organisation. If culture of a company will not be appropriate,
employees will not be able to work in a comfortable manner. This will reduce their productivity
to perform work which in return will impact the performance of an organisation in a negative
way. Thus, it is essential for TESCO to maintain proper culture at their workplace so that
employees can perform their activities without facing any issues and problems. In order to
analyse the culture of a firm, Handy's cultural dimension is the best framework. In context
with TESCO, this model is discussed beneath:
Charles Handy has discussed about various kind of cultures which are prevailed in an
organisation. These culture have different characteristic, advantages and limitations but their
main role is to increase the overall productivity of company so that organisational goals and
targets can be attained properly (Jorna, 2017). As per the theory given by handy, four kind of
organisational cultures are role culture, power culture, task culture and person culture. In Role
culture, an organisation works and perform their operations according to the rules. These kind of
organisations are highly controlled and each employees of firm have idea about their roles and
responsibilities. In this culture, person which have highest power is given supreme authority.
This culture allow the employees to work as their preference due to which chances of
accomplishing work on time has more chances (Macnaghten and Chilvers, 2014).
In case of Power culture, organisational power is distributed among few people and
these individuals have the right to take all the decisions related with business. These
organisations have less number of regulations and rules and employees are forced to follow the
orders given by their superiors. This is the reason decision-making in this culture is fast but
employees and their opinions are not given preference due to this their working morale is less.
This reduces the working efficiency of employees due to which attainment of organisational
goals became difficult (Moxon and Smith, 2016). There are some organisations that are in favour
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of adopting Task culture where working staff of a company is divided into teams which are
allotted special tasks. These teams remains in existence until required work is accomplished.
Here, role of employees in team is to solve a complex problem and power is given to workers as
per the requirement. In this kind of culture, no single individual holds entire power.
Effectiveness of employees in task culture depends upon the dynamics of team while performing
their work. By including skilled employees and right leadership, appropriate teams can be
prepared. This type of culture will help TESCO in performing their organisational work in a
productive manner due to which attainment of goals will be easy (Nübling, Schmidt and Weiss,
2016).
As per the opinion of Handy, Person culture is also prevailed in some organisations in
which employees of an organisation considers themselves more superior than the company and
their targets. In case of person culture, individual feels that their personal goals are more
important than the objectives and targets of an organisation. In this culture, an organisation only
exist so that employees of a firm have some place to work together. This type of culture is not
suitable for large organisations like TESCO in which profits and revenues of company depends
upon the cooperation among employees (Danner and et. al., 2017). In case of TESCO, manager
of company is recommended to adopt role culture in which employees will be given work as per
their expertise and skills. This culture is suitable for those business firms which are built
according to tall organisational structure and posses long command chain. This is the reason,
taking decision in this organisational culture is time consuming. As employees have knowledge
about their work and roles, overall productivity of employees while performing their work is
very high (Shafritz, Ott and Jang, 2015).
Influence of adopted culture and structure on the performance of selected organisation
In case of organisational structure, manager of company is recommanded to adopt
geographic structure where an organisation will be bifurcated on the basis of multiple divisions
and operate at different locations. In this structure, each division of TESCO will have their own
management, marketing, sales, production, finance and HR team due to which satisfying people
of a specific region will be more easier. This type of structure is best suitable for large companies
like TESCO which perform their activities in global manner. By this, TESCO will be able to
achieve high profits and market shares against their rivals (Young and Ghoshal, 2016).
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Due to the adoption of role culture at workplace, employees in TESCO will be able to get
work as per their skills and educational qualifications. This will increase their confidence and
motivational level while performing their work. Due to this, overall productivity of company will
enhance and management of TESCO will be able to take strategic decisions without considering
about the acceptance of consumers (Kreutzer and et. al., 2017). By this, high advantage over
rivals will be possible and performance of TESCO will increases exponentially without any
compromise. Hence, it can be infer that both geographic organisational structure and role culture
at workplace will impact the performance of TESCO in a positive manner.
CONCLUSION
As per this given report, this has been comprehended that to achieve a strong position
against rival organisations, a company is needed to have right kind of structure and culture at
workplace. Various kind of organisational structure includes matrix structure, geographic
structure, product structure etc. for big organisations, geographic structure is best. There exist
different type of organisational culture which impacts the performance of company either in a
positive or negative manner depending on the situations. An organisation can implement culture
at workplace as per their requirements. Right kind of culture will motivate employees to perform
their work efficiently due to which overall performance of a business firm will improve.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
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Brewster, C. and Hegewisch, A., 2017. Human resource management in Europe Issues and
opportunities. In Policy and Practice in European Human Resource Management (pp.
1-21). Routledge.
Brown, E. and et. Al., 2019. Making residential care work: structure and culture in children's
homes. Ashgate.
De Maré, P., 2018. Koinonia: From hate, through dialogue, to culture in the larger group.
Routledge.
Hirakawa, Y. and et. al., 2015. Simplification of vacuole structure during plant cell death
triggered by culture filtrates of Erwinia carotovora. Journal of integrative plant biology.
57(1). pp.127-135.
Jorna, R. ed., 2017. Sustainable innovation: The organisational, human and knowledge
dimension. Routledge.
Moxon, S. R. and Smith, A. M., 2016. Controlling the rheology of gellan gum hydrogels in cell
culture conditions. International journal of biological macromolecules. 84. pp.79-86.
Nübling, S., Schmidt, H. and Weiss, A., 2016. Variation of the Pseudomonas community
structure on oak leaf lettuce during storage detected by culture-dependent and-
independent methods. International journal of food microbiology. 216. pp.95-103.
Shafritz, J. M., Ott, J. S. and Jang, Y. S., 2015. Classics of organization theory. Cengage
Learning.
Young, C. and Ghoshal, S., 2016. Organization theory and the multinational corporation.
Springer.
Kreutzer, J. and et. al., 2017. Cell culture chamber with gas supply for prolonged recording of
human neuronal cells on microelectrode array. Journal of neuroscience methods. 280.
pp.27-35.
Macnaghten, P. and Chilvers, J., 2014. The future of science governance: publics, policies,
practices. Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy. 32(3). pp.530-548.
Danner, J. E. And et. al., 2017. Genetic population structure in an equatorial sparrow: roles for
culture and geography. Journal of evolutionary biology. 30(6). pp.1078-1093.
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