Analyzing Kellogg's Organizational Structure and Culture: A Report

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Business Introducing the Modern Workplace

Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Discussion........................................................................................................................................4
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................13
References......................................................................................................................................14

Introduction
An organizational structure refers to a controlled system which helps to delineate how certain
actions and activities are directed in order to achieve the goals and objectives of an organization.
These activities include coordination, cooperation, supervision and task allocation. The structure
also enforces certain roles, responsibilities and rules to effectuate a proper flow of information
amongst different levels of the organization. Sequentially, organizational culture is a reference to
the organization’s expectations, philosophies, values and beliefs which turns out to be a
guideline for the employee behavior and a mode of expression itself by worker’s self-image,
collaboration and interaction and the future expectation. The organizational structure and culture
engraves the outcome of organizational performance, therefore organizational performance
transpires to be the final output of the organization measured against the goals and objectives. It
is distinguished in three broad parts such as financial performance, market performance, and
shareholder value performance of an organization.
Organizational culture impacts directly on employee performance and their motivational values,
whereas several procedures and policies along with performance management strategies,
supervisory relationship, and productive workflow inside an organizational structure affects the
business performance. Employee behavior, ethics and attitude along with their optimized skills
also impacts upon the organizational performance. A detailed study has been conducted to
analyze the various factors of Kellogg’s in support of the statements.

Discussion
The Kellogg Company performs their business as Kellogg’s, is specifically an American
multinational food manufacturing organization headquartered in Battle Creek, Michigan. Their
product range is diversified into several goods like cereal, cookies, crackers, toaster pastries and
similar others. According to the survey conducted on 2017, their current employee number is
32,944. The annual revenue generation of Kellogg’s in the last three consecutive years can be
reckoned as 12.965 billion dollars in 2016, 12.854 billion dollars in 2017 and recording an
5.39% increment from 2017 it has ended in 13.537 billion dollars in the year 2018. Their revenue
rate over past years can be projected hereby with an graph.
Figure 1: Revenue Generation Rate of Kellogg’s
Source: (Winnubst, 2017).

Kellogg’s follows a divisional structure as it operates in larger and several horizontal objectives,
other than that it follows a tall hierarchy where the autonomy is present amongst the different
divisions but they most likely report to their certain group heads (Winnubst, 2017).
The organizational culture of Kellogg’s abided by a legacy of integrity. They follow a global
code of ethics. Therefore the organization is shaped up by a ethical performance culture.
Alongside the uncompromisable value and supreme heritage drives Kellogg’s business
throughout the larger sections of the world.
Kellogg’s functions in delivering a low-fat, nutrient-dense food with indispensable vitamins and
minerals, also it functions in enriching everyone with food. Kellogg’s primary activities
surrounds around producing the cereal products in their operational unit in order to provide
nourishment for the purpose of their nourishing and thriving (Bortolotti et al., 2015).
The leadership board of Kellogg’s gradually understood the necessity of communicating the
objectives for their people with complete clarification along with providing importance to their
members. For lending recognition, feedback, training and checking to their fellow members
certain insights have been rendered by the leaders which includes certain theories which are
mentioned below;
Situational leadership theory, in the premises of Kellogg’s, turned their leaders into effective
members who can achieve their goals and ambitions by the medium of certain tools which are
extremely necessary, like adhering to recognition and sensitivity, existing in the realism and
ability to communicate impact fully stepping beyond the restraints of the leadership position.
After the allocation of certain projects and campaigns there has been a chain of thought which
leads to become intimidated with the goals and responsibilities of their direct report and propel
their direct report further. It helped Kellogg’s to bring about the strategic alignment and
eventually aid in the leader’s accomplishment (Shin and Konrad, 2017). On the other hand, the
leaders of Kellogg’s need to be aware of the essentiality of the promotions which modifies the
strategic direction and whenever the leaders authorize some new course there has been a cultural
adoption. Kellogg’s leaders need to get permission from the other subordinate groups to access
their resources.

Figure 2: Situational Leadership
Source: (Cheng and Tang, 2017).
Once again the coordination and cooperation with other divisions of Kellogg’s will help their
leaders to carry out the propositions smoothly. Exhibiting the agendas of Kellogg’s in a proper
format, as an example with a proper answers of how, when, why and what their employees are
going to do would make the leader appear as a role model and thus, the employees would learn
to trust his instincts and function accordingly. Apart from all these, the leaders are also needed to
receive the minutely detailed information in order to make better decisions. According to
Halloran, Kellogg’s need to break the ‘glass cone’ which will lead to informed decisions (Cheng
and Tang, 2017). Continuously asking questions to the fellow employees is always expected
from the leader of Kellogg’s. Some other insights are providing all with the right resources,
affording the room of errors for the organizational members and focusing on people, rather not
elements.
The management body of Kellogg’s properly focuses and concentrates upon several factors like
customer service optimization, customer focus retention, customer satisfaction providence,
customer loyalty prevention in order to meet their organizational objectives and qualified

organizational performance. In order to make that easy for the managers below provided is the
path goal theory for manager s of Kellogg’s.
The Path-Goal theory of Leadership in Kellogg’s specifically concentrates upon the style and
behavior of their managerial leader which becomes suitable for the employee’s necessities and
work environmental balance. Through the incorporation of this process Kellogg’s has witnessed
employees’ motivation, satisfaction, dedication and empowerment which turned them into
productive members of the organization (Farhan, 2018). This theory has been implemented in
Kellogg’s to determine the employee and environmental condition and characteristics, and
further application of certain motivational factors to make the employee successful all through
the guidance of managerial leader.
The managerial leader of Kellogg’s need to understand the customer’s degree of structural need,
affiliation requirement, level of capability and controlling capacity accordingly he can implement
new processes and procedures. The task designing requires the support from a managerial leader;
also he must look at the enforcement of task authoritative system. Alongside, another important
factor of Kellogg’s lies in the hands of their managerial leader as he is solely dependent on
injecting the enthusiasm, devotion and cohesiveness amongst the other employees. Finally
Kellogg’s is still in the process of discovering a supportive, directive, participative managerial
leader (Thompson and Glasø, 2015). In certain cases and situations, it is also effective for
Kellogg’s to abide by certain other behaviors from their managerial leader as well as his other
subordinates. The behaviors are respectively; work facilitation, conclusive decision by oriented
groups, networking and representing the workforce globally and lastly proper evaluation.

Figure 3: Path-Goal Theory
Source: (Thompson and Glasø, 2015).
Another popular theory can also be discussed briefly context of Kellogg’s in order to understand
the impact of leaders, managers in the organizational culture and performance and furthermore
relate it to the certain human resource management policies which gets impacted, which is the
behavioral theory.
The Behavioral theory, in context to Kellogg’s, primarily concentrates upon the special actions,
behaviors and skills undertaken by the leadership board and the managerial body which drives
beyond the certain characteristics and attributes of an individual. Deductively, an individual of
Kellogg’s requires three basic skills to manage and lead their followers, those are; technical skill
which procures an involvement of knowledge from the management and leadership division
dependent on the process of techniques, human skills, which is encountered as the ability of
communication and meaningful interaction with individuals, lastly conceptual skills, which is an
enactment of coming up with new visions, and ideas and efficiently enforcing them inside the
organization (Greve and Teh, 2018).
Figure 4: Behavioral Theory
Source: (Greve and Teh, 2018).

The behavioral theory, when implemented on Kellogg’s, is beneficial for their human resource
management policies; but only if it is directly supportive to the strategic business ambitions and
objectives. The jussive mood of behavior must be understood acutely in order to enable certain
HRM policies.
The employees are the largest contributor to the success of the organization sand thus, adequate
measures to satisfy their needs and desires requires to be adopted by the organization, in order to
keep them amply satisfied. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs can be referred to as a motivational
theory which psychologically encompassed of a five level model of human needs. In order to
understand the demand and expected satisfaction bar of employees at Kellogg’s and gradually
meet them, the above theory is conducted in the chosen organization (Lynch, 2015).
The first four levels of the below mentioned criterions are deficiency needs while the top level is
growth needs.
Physiological needs -
These are regarded as the biological requirements for basic human survival like, food, water,
clothes, shelter and similar others. These necessities are considered to be very basic for the
proper functioning of a human body, and without attaining physiological needs other needs
become secondary and irrelevant.
Safety needs -
Safety needs describe about the protection from certain elements along with the providence of
security, law, order, stability, freedom and fear control.
Love and belongingness needs -
The third level of human needs refer to the social involvement and a feelings of belongingness.
This level necessitates a motivational interpersonal relationship such as; friendship, love, trust,
intimacy and similar others (Lee and Hanna, 2015).
Esteem needs -

This level is distinguished into further two parts which are, 1) esteem for oneself such as dignity,
independence, achievement while the other is 2) desire of reputation, recognition and respect
such as status and prestige. The second criterion is mostly crucial for children and adolescents.
Self-actualization needs -
Maslow derived this stage as the desire of becoming everything one can become. This stage
comprises of the realization of self potential and self fulfillment which precedes personal growth
and development.
Figure 5: Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs
Source: (Lee and Hanna, 2015)
According to the findings in Kellogg’s, they propagate an in-depth importance in the deficiency
needs of Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs. Furthermore, amongst all the levels, the physiological
needs and the safety needs are taken care of by Kellogg’s for all their employees. They are being
asked about this and as the levels also include a personal checkout of all the employers, that’s

why Kellogg’s provide a home allowance for all their domestic and international employees.
Gradually they also focus on the growth needs of an individual once they familiarize with
Kellogg’s (Schulte, 2018).This has helped the company to retain their staffs for long periods and
thus, are able to expand their market operations to different regions without any tension about the
labor forces.
Edgar Schein developed a model upon organizational culture in order to make the cultural
changes more visible within an organization. In order to bring a cultural change within Kellogg’s
Edgar Schein’s model has been applied and conducted in order to understand the direct and
indirect mechanism within Kellogg’s. The direct mechanism like opinions, status, behavior and
the indirect mechanism like mission, vision, guidelines, rituals are been revised inside the
premises of Kellogg’s to attain a healthy and suitable organizational culture.
Artefacts and Symbols -
Artefacts denote the soil of the organization. The visible elements inside Kellogg’s like their
architecture, structure, processes, procedures, logos, corporal clothing are updated and glorified
as these becomes visible to the employees as well as external entities (Duerr et al., 2018).
Espoused Values -
This section encompasses the values, standards, ethics, rule of conduct. Therefore Kellogg’s
promotes on exhibiting their strategies and philosophies delicately towards public and tries to
avoid the existent dissimilarity of ideas between the managerial leaders and the governing body.
Basic underlying assumptions -
The basic underlying assumptions of Kellogg’s are deeply engrafted inside the organizational
culture and often become the experience of self apparent behavior. Assumptions are generally
hard to depict from inside Kellogg’s.

Figure 6: Edgar Schein Model of Organizational Culture
Source: (Kwiatkowski, 2016).
The interrelationship between organizational culture and functions is quite prominent since the
structure of the organization influences the culture that is followed therein. Therefore a compact
understanding can be made that through implementing Edgar Schein’s model, Maslow’s
Hierarchy of needs the proper management and balancing of Kellogg’s employee necessities as
well satisfaction and cultural changes can be adhered while there are certain factors like
underlying assumptions and esteem needs of customers must be addressed properly in order to
excel (Kwiatkowski, 2016). Further the behavioral theory, path goal theory and situational
leadership helps in their leadership board and management body which eventually glorifies their
organizational performance.