Analysis of Harrods Company: Structure, Culture, and Ownership

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Harrods Company, delving into its organizational structure, workplace culture, and ownership type. It begins by introducing the context of modern workplaces and the evolution of organizational structures, contrasting traditional hierarchical models with more contemporary approaches. The main body of the report examines Harrods' history, including its founding and growth into a leading luxury department store, and details its various outlets and subsidiaries. It explores Harrods' tall organizational structure and its shift towards empowering employees, as well as its status as a private limited company. The report then discusses Charles Handy's model of organizational culture and how Harrods' aligns with a power culture. Furthermore, it applies Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions Theory and the GLOBE theory to assess Harrods' cultural dimensions, offering insights for strategic improvements and organizational development. The report concludes by emphasizing the importance of a strong organizational and cultural structure for Harrods' continued success and growth, encouraging the company to conduct self-analysis and benchmark its practices against competitors.

INTRODUCING THE
MODERN WORK
PLACE

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY ..................................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
In modern Era, organisations are continuously looking for different ways in which they
can engage its employees. Workplace culture puts a great impact on how the employees in an
organisation feels and what motivates them to come to the company every day for work.
Traditional workplace culture was always in the hierarchical form in which superiors were the
decision makers and the people sub ordinate to them were to strictly follow and were bound by
their orders or command (Barratt and Smith., 2018). But now the workplace culture is changing
with the change in organisational structure and cultural change in an organisations. This report
contains the analysis of the “Harrods company”. It explains the structure, type of ownership of
the company and also explains what type of a company is Harrods. It also mentions the structure
and culture of Harrods organisation in UK.
MAIN BODY
Harrods limited is most successful and luxurious departmental store which was officially
founded in 1849. It is located on Brompton Road in Knightsbridge, London, England. It was
founded by Charles Henry Harrods with a motto which says that “ all things for all people,
everywhere”. The store is well known for its food hall and the variety being served. It is also
famous for beauty and fashion departments (Hamilton, 2020). Harrods is considered as the
biggest departmental store in whole of the Europe. There are many store outlets of Harrods in
UK. The location of outlets are: Heathrow airport, Gatwick airport, Westfield( London), etc.
Apart from shops and outlets, Harrods have 3 subsidiaries namely: Harrods Estates, Harrods
Aviation and Air Harrods.
Harrods Estates is a private Real Estate company which is based in London. It was
started in 1897 which gradually expanded itself. In 2005 they opened their second office in
Mayfair. In 2013, they opened their 3rd office in Chelsea and lastly in May 2015, they opened
their 4th office in Kensington church street. The main work of this company was to manage the
property and provide services for buying and renting of the property.
Harrods aviation is a limited company. They provide assistance at the airport by proving
its services related to aeronautics, such as: maintenance of aircraft, fuelling, aircraft rental
services, etc. These services are provided by them in London where the base is at London Luton
Airport and London Stansted Airport.

Air Harrods is a limited company which has its hub at London Stansted Airport. The
work of this company is to five aircraft services in case of need such as: to broker the arms. They
also provide VIP services of charter and also arrange the executive travel to the destination.
Every business or an organisation have either long term or short term goals irrespective
of its size and any other factor (Berti., 2017). It helps an organisation by helping them to achieve
success. It is important for a company to know an organisational structure of a company. This
helps a company to run efficiently and effectively. There are 2 types of organisational structure.
They are: tall and flat structure.
Tall structure is also known as vertical hierarchy and is considered as a traditional
structure. It is mainly adopted by large companies. Tall structures have more management levels
and with the growth of the organisation the management levels also increases. The commanding
is done in an hierarchical form i.e. from top to bottom. The superiors give commands to the ones
who are down the level in tall structure.
Flat structure is mostly preferred by the companies who have few employees or are start-
ups. This is also termed as horizontal structure as it involves less levels of management in its
hierarchy (Donald, 2019). The employees mostly function at the same level and together to
accomplish the goals of an organisation. The main aim to follow this structure in the company is
to empower the employees instead of controlling or commanding them. This helps to encourage
the employees which helps company to achieve the set goals of the company.
Harrods have tall organisational structure. But later on in order to achieve the goals , the
company decided to make changes in the tall structure of the company. They broke down the
structure into various different layers to give its employees more responsibilities on them. The
company gave its employee the power to make decisions and provide proper training to the
employees by develop their skills. The company had a very big hierarchical structure which was
at times difficult to maintain and this was the reason to break the hierarchy in small layers so as
to have proper functioning of the departmental store. It helped in improving the performance of
the company and its growth.
To understand the functioning of any company it is very important to know what type of
company it is. Public limited company are those which offers its shares to the public. This types
of company have abilities to raise its capital faster then that of private company; Private limited
company are those which operates individually and it has its own separate legal entity. They do

not have any government control. They are treated as one single unit and is recognised by the
law. It is also given various rights by the state few of which citizens enjoy too. A company being
a private limited company do not have its shares listen in the stock exchange and thus its shares
are not for public . The shareholders of the company also have limited liability in case of loss of
the company.
Harrods company is a private limited company. This company is not owned by the
government. They are profit-making organisations and work in direction to earn more and more
profit. The shares of this company is not listed to buy for the public. It is considered as a separate
legal entity. It has its own property, its profit is also owned by the company itself. It is
advantageous for Harrods that its a private limited company as even if the business makes losses
and company is suppose to pay off debts, the directors do not own any money to be paid as debts
(Ruhanen and Whitford, 2018). The company use the word 'private' because the shares are not
listed for public buying. The word 'limited' is used because in case a company fails, the liability
is limited.
The company being a private limited company have many advantages like: it is easier for
the company to enter other people into the business and make them its part, lots of tax can be
saved legally which would be less than the sole traders, due to the limited liability provision the
amount of losses is also limited, its has its own legal identity which gives it rights to enjoy like
that of any citizen, the company may also transfer its shares easily as it is a registered business.
There are several models which explains the work culture of an organisation, one of them
is Charles handy model (Spagnoli, Presti, and Buono, 2019). This type of culture has four types
which is followed by an organisation. They are: power, task culture, person culture and role
culture.
Power culture is where the powers to make decisions is only in the hands of few people.
These people enjoy privileges and delegate the work to their subordinates. In this case the
subordinates cannot deny the order or command of their superiors and have to strictly follow it.
Task culture is where an organisation is focused on achieving particular target given to
the team. In such type of organisation, all the teams are focused on achieving their targets and
work on the common specialisation.
Person culture is where an organisation make its employees feel that they are more
important than the organisation itself. In this type all are more concerned about themselves and

do not care about the organisation (Chowdhury, 2019). They come to the organisation only for
the sake of earning money and there exist no attachment with the organisation.
Role culture is where an organisation is delegate the work and responsibilities to its
employees based on the field, educational qualification and area of interest (Donnelly, 2020).
They are given work in which they are best at.
Harrods company follows power culture. The main power is given to the CEO of the
departmental store to make decisions regarding the stores and there are different work areas
where the decision making powers are distributed between the managers of those areas in
particular (Stene, 2019). The company follows tall or hierarchical structure and therefore it
follows power organisational culture as the powers are mainly given to the one who is at the top
of the hierarchy. The employees are given duties and responsibilities by the superiors. They are
not allowed to deny it and have to strictly follow them.
There are many culture theory that the organisations follow. The most important theory is
Hofstede's Culture Dimensions Theory. The theories determine the work culture and
organisational behaviour of the company. There are total six dimensions which are mentioned
under this theory. First is the power distance index (PDI) which helps in knowing the inequality
and power (Kasemsap., 2017). If the power of this index is high then the company accepts the
inequality and there exist a difference in the power and vice -versa. The second Dimension is
Individualism vs. Collectivism which helps in determining whether an individual focus on the
personal goals or collective goals of the company (Edgar and et. al., 2020). The third dimension
is the uncertainty avoidance index which helped in determining the capacity of the company to
tolerate the uncertain situations and how to deal with them. The fourth dimension is masculinity
vs. femininity which helps to determine whether the company is gender and role biased or not.
The fifth dimension is long term orientation vs. short term orientation which helped in
determining the goals of the company and the success expectations of the company. The last
dimension is the indulgence vs. restraint which helped in determining how desires and impulses
of the society are controlled.
Harrods should apply this theory in its company to determine the culture of its
organisation and work on the flaws if they have any. They should perform all the indexing and
then should draw conclusion on its basis. This will help the company to make improvements and
grow more.

There is one more theory which is considered important after Hofstede culture dimension
to determine the structure and culture of an organisation i.e. GLOBE (The Global Leadership &
Organisational Behaviour Effectiveness) theory. This theory is almost similar to that of the
Hofstede culture dimension theory but this theory instead of six dimensions have nine
dimensions on which the structure and culture of the company is determined (Minkov and Kaasa,
2020). They are: ability of the company to avoid uncertainty, determination of the distribution of
power in the company, equal distribution of resources or equality, ability of the team to achieve
common goals, whether company have gender equality, presence of assertiveness, to determine
the future orientation of a company, whether the company is focused on the performances and
work in improving it and last is the orientation of humane is also considered.
CONCLUSION
It is concluded from this report that it is very important to have good organisational and
cultural structure in an organisation. Both the theory mentioned above and the model discussed
above will help the Harrods company to determine the structure and culture of the organisation.
By this the company will along with the self analysis can also compare its work culture with
other companies who can also be its competitors. This will also help Harrods to develop new
strategies and implements new work culture in the organisation. For any company it is very
important to have good work culture and structure as this directly impact the growth of the
Harrods as employee satisfaction is very important for any organisation. This may help Harrods
grow, be more successful and compete with all its competitors.

REFERENCES
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