Understanding Business Organisations: Structures, Functions & Culture

This essay provides a comprehensive analysis of business organizations, focusing on different types of business structures such as sole proprietorships, partnerships, and limited companies, and their respective advantages and disadvantages. It compares organizational structures, including flat and tall hierarchies, highlighting their impact on decision-making and communication. The essay also examines key business functions like Human Resource Management, production, and operations, emphasizing their influence on organizational effectiveness and employee well-being, using Astra Zeneca as an example. Furthermore, it explores the role of organizational culture in fostering innovation and employee engagement, particularly within the pharmaceutical industry, and concludes that a positive organizational culture is crucial for the success and growth of a business.

Understanding Business
Organisations-Essay

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................3
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................4
Advantages and disadvantages of different types of business ........................................................4
TASK 2............................................................................................................................................5
Compare organisational structures...................................................................................................5
TASK 3............................................................................................................................................6
Different business functions and impact of their functional management activities on
organisation and on their people......................................................................................................6
TASK 4............................................................................................................................................7
Organisational culture and their positive culture impact on the success of an organisation ..........7
CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................9

INTRODUCTION
Business organisation has been defined in a manner that it is designed for purpose to
focus on either improving society or generating profit. This term also explains about structure of
business and about process through which this structure helps in meeting out their goals. In this
report, the analysis has been done on different types of business structure and also analysis has
been done on concept of operational business environment (Maduku, and et.al., 2016). The
research has been done on comparison among different organisational structures and about
different business functions. The research has also been done on organisational culture and about
positive culture which impacts on success of organisation. It also includes various examples of
industry practice from different organizations. The chosen organisation is Premier Inn Hotel
Chain. This hotel belongs to the British hospitality expert company Whitbread PLC and also it is
UK'S largest hotel chain which operates over eight hundred hotels.

TASK 1
Advantages and disadvantages of different types of business
Business can be defined as it is an enterprising entity or organisation which engaged in
industrial, commercial or professional activities. This term can also be explained in a manner
that it is kind of organised efforts and activities of individual to produce and sell goods and
services for purpose of profit. There are different kinds of businesses which includes Sole trader,
Partnership and limited company.
Sole Trader: It can be defined in a manner that they carried out business on their own and for
himself and raises the necessary capital, organises the business into structured manner. For
example: Novus Accountancy Ltd.
Three advantages of Sole Trader are:
 It is easier to form and organise a sole trader's business,
 Although it is a small organisation that's why it is simple to manage
 Sole trader also enjoys profits for himself and this profit motive is an incentive to work
hard.
Three disadvantages of Sole Trader are:
 Sole trader have unlimited liability and is also liable for organisation's debt.
 It is very difficult for financing and business credit is harder to procure.
 It's a challenging task to raise capital.
Partnership: It refers to formal kind of arrangement by two or more parties for managing and
operating business and share its profits. For example: Social Chain
Advantages of Partnership are:
 It is less formal in nature with fewer obligations
 This kind of business can be started in a very easier form.
 This kind of business supports in sharing the burden.
Disadvantages of Partnership:
 It has limited capital
 This kind of business have to face difficulty in transferring shares.
 This type of business are lacking in taking prompt decision.

Limited company: It is basically a private company whose owners are responsible for all kinds
of debts only to the extent of amount of capital they invested. For example: River Island
Advantages of Limited Company:
 It has separate legal entity
 Under this type of company personal assets are in protected form
 Company gives more credibility
Disadvantages of Limited Company:
 It has long registration process and also a time taking process
 The reporting requirements are very complex in terms of nature
 Company needs lots of capital to stablish, maintain and wind up.
TASK 2
Compare organisational structures
There are different kinds of structure at the organizational level which includes
functional, divisional, matrix and flat(Canniford, R. and Bajde, D. eds., 2015). With reference to
this there are two main organisational structure which are flat organisational structure and tall
organisational structure. The key difference between these two organisational structure is that tall
structure has an organisational structure with many levels of hierarchy whereas flat structure has
limited number of levels of hierarchy.
Tall structure basically includes government agencies but in context of UK country HM treasury
is the government's economic and finance industry who maintains control over public spending,
sets direction of UK'S economic policy. In case of flat structure, square space technology which
follows this particular type of structure and it is that type of company which is all in one content
management system. It provides software as a service for purpose of website building and
hosting which allows user to use pre-built website templates. Under tall type of structure, they
are equipped with a narrow span of control where employees report to their manager whereas
under flat type of structure it has very wide span of control and also flexible in terms of nature as
compared to tall type of structure (Enyioko, N., 2016).The speed of decision-making is very slow
as it has many number of layers of management whereas in flat type of structure decision-
making is in terms of swift nature and is also highly responsive towards market changes. Under
tall type of structure, communication issues arises and delays also have been observed in this
type of structure whereas in case of flat type of structure communication level is faster as

compared to tall type of structure that's why they are more active towards their customers as well
as to market.
TASK 3
Different business functions and impact of their functional management activities on
organisation and on their people
There are basically three types of business functions which includes Human Resource
Management, production and operations. From perspective of business, human resource
management falls under category of three major areas which includes staffing, employee
compensation and benefits and designing work(Carlton, S. and Mills, C. E., 2017).The basic
purpose of HRM is to maximize productivity of an organisation by optimizing the effectiveness
of its employees. In terms of Astra Zeneca the basic role of HR manager is that to implicate the
findings that their organisation has the retrospective outlook of the HRM strategies and also
generate more manpower for organisation so that they can chalk out talented individuals for their
organisation. In case of production as business function it is also very important to consider that
products should be produced in a right direction with support of fresh resources in it.
Production department has to set standards and targets for each section of production process. In
terms of pharmaceutical industry, it is very important to make transparency so that every
medicine and vaccine should be prepared with proper ethics and into responsible manner. Astra
Zeneca company employees have to follow strict norms and regulations so that while producing
medicines they take care about their efforts and do each and every task with proper precautions.
Operation department is basically responsible for managing the process of creation of products
and services which involves planning, organising coordinating and controlling all the resources
which are required to produce company's products and services(Jagnani, K. R. and Achhnani, B.,
2019).Operation department of this company is mostly driven by delivering more medicines to
their patients. It keeps pushes employees of Astra Zeneca to continuously develop medicines and
focus on innovation for further development of company.

TASK 4
Organisational culture and their positive culture impact on the success of an organisation
Organisational culture plays a very important role into business world because it is
collection of values, expectations and practices that guide and inform actions of all team
members. In terms of pharma industry culture they have created this perception that thy put their
commercial goals above interests of governments, payers, prescribers and patients. In pharma
industry, innovation culture plays a very important role where focused innovation strategy is an
important parameter for success of an organisation (Massa, and et.al., 2015). A positive culture
plays a very important role in success of an organisation where this kind of culture leads
employees towards higher job satisfaction, deeper employee engagement and also contributes
towards increased productivity. Astra Zeneca company has particular type of values, ethics,
norms, practices and standards which includes bioethics, anti-briberry and anti corruption, data
transparency and responsible sales and marketing.
This company focuses workforce for adopting a sustainability mindset which embraces their
core values. Asta Zenca provides such kind of environment where employees feel comfortable in
discussing about their ideas and innovation with other people so that further progression can be
done with respect to growth of products (Becker, and et.al., 2017).Company also creates such
kind of environment where employees can speak up in a free will manner and with such kind of
support system it will lead towards positive growth of an organisation.
Astra Zeneca also focuses more on transparency which supports for learning and development of
employees, suppliers and partners. In this way, it supports expectations of patients, investors and
broader society.
CONCLUSION
It has been concluded from above report that business organisation plays a very important
role in terms of further growth of a nation as well as of an organisation. Within a business, there
are various kinds of functions which they need to follow to fulfil objectives of an organisation
which includes human resource management, operations and production which are very
important for proper functioning of an organisation. There are different kinds of structure within
a business world which includes flat and tall type of structure who have different ways of

working in terms of professional manner. Within business organisation, positive culture is a
parameter which is responsible for further development of an organisation.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Massa, and et.al., 2015. Developing a sustainability report in a small to medium enterprise:
process and consequences. Meditari Accountancy Research.
Jagnani, K. R. and Achhnani, B., 2019. Managing generation Y in the pursuit of creating an
effective organisation. Journal of Management Research and Analysis, 6(3), pp.150-
153.
Enyioko, N., 2016. Marketing as a Primary Function of the Entire Organisation Based on
Contemporary Issues. Available at SSRN 2757270.
Maduku, and et.al., 2016. Understanding mobile marketing adoption intention by South African
SMEs: A multi-perspective framework. International Journal of Information
Management, 36(5), pp.711-723.
Canniford, R. and Bajde, D. eds., 2015. Assembling consumption: Researching actors, networks
and markets. Routledge.
Carlton, S. and Mills, C. E., 2017. The Student Volunteer Army: a ‘repeat emergent’emergency
response organisation. Disasters, 41(4), pp.764-787.
Becker, and et.al., 2017. Community energy and social entrepreneurship: Addressing purpose,
organisation and embeddedness of renewable energy projects. Journal of Cleaner
Production, 147, pp.25-36.