Understanding Business Organization: Virgin Atlantic Case Study

UNDERSTANDING
BUSINESS
ORGANIZATION

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................3
Organizational Structure..............................................................................................................3
Drawbacks of functional structure for Virgin Atlantic................................................................4
Business environment..................................................................................................................4
SWOT analysis............................................................................................................................5
PESTLE analysis.........................................................................................................................6
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................8
Books and Journals......................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
For developing better understanding of the organization, it is necessary to determine their
organizational and how the external & internal forces prevailing in the business environment are
affecting the functioning of the organization. The present case study would revolve around the
case of Virgin Atlantic which is one of the British airline located in Crowley, England. It was
founded in 1984 and the airline company currently uses mixed of fleets such as Boeing wide
body aircraft and Airbus and accordingly, operates in different destinations like Africa, North
America, the Caribbean, the Asia, the Middle East, etc. through their main & secondary base at
Heathrow and Manchester respectively. Around 5000 employees have been hired by the
company and due to its management’s effective contribution towards the policies of the
company, Virgin Atlantic is having strong reputation in terms of safety for its passengers.
In this case study, the organizational structure of Virgin Atlantic will be identified and
accordingly, its benefits and drawbacks to the organization will be discussed. Further, the
meaning of business environment will be stated followed by the meaning of SWOT analysis.
Post discussing the meaning of SWOT analysis, the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and
threats would be identified with reference to the Virgin Atlantic. Next, the second model which
is suitable for environmental analysis that is, PESTLE would be discussed where at first hand its
meaning would be stated and then the political, economic, social, technological, legal and
environmental factors will be discussed with regards to the Virgin Atlantic.
MAIN BODY
Organizational Structure
Organizational structure can be defined as that structural framework through which it can
be determined how activities like task allocation, supervision and coordination are carried out for
attaining the desired organizational goals (Hamilton and Webster, 2018). Virgin Atlantic
followed the functional structure where they have undertaken to group their employees in
different areas based on the functions they performed through their specialization & skills. Due
to having small size as compared to other large size organization operating in airline industry,
thus the functional structure has been found to be the best structure for the company as it makes
management & controlling easier. Further, this structure is beneficial for Virgin Atlantic because