Analyzing Staples: Managerial Roles, Structure, and SWOT Analysis

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Staples, Inc., examining the most challenging aspects of a manager's job, the critical characteristics of a store manager that influence customer buying experiences, and the advantages and disadvantages of the current organizational structure, including a SWOT analysis. The report also explores the potential benefits of transitioning to a matrix structure. Furthermore, it delves into the obstacles hindering effective strategy implementation at Staples. The analysis covers various aspects of the company's operations, from its initial superstore model to its shift toward customer-centric services, highlighting key challenges related to supply chain, HR, finance, and the need for adaptability in a competitive market. The report emphasizes the importance of goal-oriented, data-driven, and time-focused store managers, and discusses the implications of different organizational structures on managerial effectiveness and customer service.

Running head: MANAGING THE ORGANISATION
Managing the Organisation
Student’s Name
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Author’s Note

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Table of Contents
Q.1 Discussion of the most challenging aspects of a manager’s job at Staples.........................3
Q.2 Critical discussion of the characteristics of a store manager which would reflect on
customers’ buying experiences in a store...................................................................................4
Q.3 Comments on the current organisation structure and assessment of the advantages and
disadvantages if the structural arrangement is changed to a matrix formation..........................6
3.1 SWOT analysis of Staples, Inc.’s organisational design..................................................6
3.1.1 Strengths....................................................................................................................6
3.1.2 Weaknesses................................................................................................................7
3.1.3 Opportunities.............................................................................................................7
3.1.4 Threats.......................................................................................................................8
3.2 Advantages and disadvantages of the Matrix Organisational Structure...........................8
Q.4 Obstacles to an effective strategy implementation system at Staples...............................10
Reference List and Bibliography.............................................................................................12

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Q.1 Discussion of the most challenging aspects of a manager’s job at Staples.
In 2006, Staples performed under an organisational structure of 1500 retail units
spanning over USA and Canada. There have been several managerial departments that
handled the operations. These departments were office equipment, paper and ink, copy centre
as well as furniture. The management head have been a “general manager” whose liability
concerned management of all the internal operations of the management as well as looking
after the sales at the stores. The GM is a member of the owner managers. Other than that
there were two assistant manager and a manager atop of them who were all salaried. Initially
the management run the organisation as a superstore for the office products.
In the latter years, competition from the similar entities like as Office Depot, Office Max as
well as mass merchants like Wal-Mart and Best Buy, intensified. In order to face the
challenge the company alternated their service domain. The superstore for office products
now shifted to customer based services like outlet designing, signage, checkout processing as
well as product offering. Now the owner operators were directly responsible for the quality of
the customer service that would be provided by the company. Previously, they have been
associated with marketing and sales activities only. The customer service outcomes were not
their concern. However, in this phase, the Easy Service Model was adopted by the company.
Under this model, a clear performance standard was set out by the owner directors. This new
mode of operations posed a new challenge for the management team. They were not adapted
or trained for the new mode of operations. The executive and assistant managers had to work
hard in order to maintain the entrepreneurial spirit among the employees. Parallely, the
general manager also had to work towards leveraging the best practice from the employees
and maintain the economies of scale also.
Another challenge that was faced by the COO of the home office team of Staples,
Framingham, Massachusetts was regarding the key areas of supply chain and merchandising,
HR and finance. In this context, the issue that was faced by the management are as follows:
 Creation of a brand new supply chain and manufacturing unit
 Severe HR related issues included giving proper training to the employees so that they
can cope up with the new work methodology
 The Finance was also a big issues as the COO and the CFO was not adherent with the
formal and primary budget of the operations that were required under the new
organisational procedure

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At this moment, the organisation was in an acute need of hybridisation (Omotayo 2015).
However, the hierarchical model of organisational management made it more difficult for
the managers to handle the crisis situation at the stores of the company. Besides, in the
organisation, there were four levels of management all of whom focused on the specific
traits like customer service, developing the inventory levels and elevation of the standard
of the associates. In this context, the quotation of one of the RVPs can be highlighted:
“Managers are like Circus entertainers; we all spin plates. Our responsibility is to
make sure that the plates are spinning levelly, since then they are not going to fall. If
one does fall, our job is to pick it up and get it spinning again. The higher you are in
the management chain, the more plates you have to spin.”
Q.2 Critical discussion of the characteristics of a store manager which would reflect on
customers’ buying experiences in a store.
There are two approaches that are needed to be followed for addressing the essential
characteristics of a store manager. At first when the services of the company were confined
up to acting as a superstore for the office requirements, the mode of organisational
management would be different. As per Astami et al. (2015), the individuals who have an
endorsing attitude along with quiet experience in the retail field should find high level of
success in the field of store retail.
An important position in the organisational hierarchy of the company is the position
of the executive store manager-ship. In this case the associate full time as well as the part
time employees who have strong work ethic and a strong passion for the fulfilment of the
organisational objectives should be given preference for promotion to executive store
managers.
In the same context, the condition of the organisation after the transformation can be
highlighted. The leadership capabilities of the area managers should be adequate in order to
manage the exclusive cases of client confrontation. Again, as per Pribyl and Svitek (2015),
under the second business model, the two assistant managers and the executive chief manager
have to have the following essential characteristics in order to handle the business efficiently
and enforce efficient workplace management. The first quality of the chief store manager in
this context should be the capability to be goal oriented. The managers should understand that
previously the customers were purchasing what they offered with without choice. Hence, it
was the customer’s responsibility to adapt the goods and services with their demands. After

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the shift of the business domain, now it is the responsibility of the service providers from the
company’s end to cater to the demand of the customers. In this context, Petit et al. (2016),
opines that workplace leadership qualities of the store managers becomes very important.
They should acquire adequate knowledge regarding the services that hey provide to the
clients. This is because, the demands of the individual clients are different. The training
sessions of the individual clients are regarding different prospects and the manager needs to
have a consolidated understanding of the capabilities that need to be present in the work
group for meeting the client’s requirements.
Another important characteristic that requires to be present among the store managers
is that they have to be highly data driven. The managers have to be highly set for achieving
the sales objectives and as such they have to groom the store associates so that they are able
to achieve the sales growth objectives of the company also (Qin et al. 2016). The point of sale
system of data base management can help the individual stores achieve the targets that are set
to them.
The last and the most crucial component of the characteristics of the store managers is
that they have to be time focused. The software that they are using, can make them more time
efficient. Lean staff, stringent budget as well as back-ordered inventory can make the
business more valuable as well as impactful. A focused and goal oriented store manager
would always indulge in problem solving, immediately and knows quite well when to
delegate to the store staff. The manager, as Dehghanpour and Nehrir (2017), states, especially
when diving in to a new domain, should have the sound understanding to realise when to take
up an urgent affair and when to subside an affair and focus on other endeavours.
Q.3 Comments on the current organisation structure and assessment of the advantages
and disadvantages if the structural arrangement is changed to a matrix formation.
3.1 SWOT analysis of Staples, Inc.’s organisational design
3.1.1 Strengths
Staple, Inc. operates in three segments currently, namely delivery, international
segment as well as retail. The operations as well as retail segments are located in Canada and
in USA. The international segment of the organisation have its wings spread across 23
various countries. The international operations is supervised by the area managers who have
several store managers under them. They stores through their in-home services as well as the

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superstore facilities account for 22% of the revenue generated by the company (Dudin and
Frolova 2015). After the innovation of the new business model, Stapes, Inc. have been
recording comparatively higher sales growth rate than their chief competitors Office Max and
Office Depot. The new software based area management policy have provided the managers
of the company the opportunity to become time efficient, data centric as well as laterally
active (Laudon and Laudon 2015). The market acquisition of Corporate Express helped the
company to become emphasised and prompt in various service fronts. The company acquired
new areas and emphasised on collateral operating with the training and development team of
the Corporate Express that helped the company to enter new market domains. In the
Headquarters of the company, the GM, RVP, SVP and other parallel heads.
3.1.2 Weaknesses
The capital structure of the organisation consists of debt that has increased by 35% in
the financial year 2016 compared to 27% in the FY 2010. There are long term debt as well as
debt service requirements of $500 million with 14.75% due notes as of the third quarter of the
financial year 2016.
3.1.3 Opportunities
Since the beginning of the market entry with their “The Easy Way” business model,
the company have already been successful in getting average sized business orders from the
potential client bases in the market. As per the analysis of Kaiser and Buxmann (2017), the
strict and hierarchical management and the highly integrated training force with equally
strong workplace training and development is helping the company to retain their market
fame in spite of the economic backdrop that the company that have depreciated to a poor
level, standing at USD $280. The business performance of Staples is highly dependent on the
Business delivery sector that the company have opened up in collaboration with the
Corporate Express (Oliva 2016). The retail stores sector of the company especially that is
present in the geographical domain of North America is one of the highest grossing sectors of
the business organisation. Thirdly, the web portal based service of the company is also
emerging and is also responsible for the acquiring market variation and potential customer’s
groups, mainly including the home office owner and the small organisations.
3.1.4 Threats

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There is a big interrelationship between the macro trends and the office sales. Other
than the small and big companies, the white collar workers are also the clients of the
company. The level of employment of the white collar workers who are the end users for the
organisation have a high level of impact on the demand that is produced for the office
products.
3.2 Advantages and disadvantages of the Matrix Organisational Structure
The organisations that have hierarchical organisational structure are easy to be
graphed and defined. The same structure is prevalent in the staples, Inc. organisational
design. Such structures are also referred to as unambiguous as well as relatively stable. Every
lower entity in this organisational model reports to a higher concerned authority and the chain
concludes with the Geber Manager of the organisation (Aivazidou et al. 2016). Apparently,
every concerned departmental as well as area head reports to the single boss under this
organisational structure.
On the contrary, the matrix structure is way different from the hierarchal stricture.
Some basic differences between the hierarchical and the matrix organisational structure are
the follows:
 The employed and the office assistant are accountable to multiple bosses. In the case
of Staple, Inc. the full and part time office staff would be accountable only to the store
managers and occasionally to the area managers.
 There are generally two unique chains of management. In case of the Staples, Inc. the
first category is the main managerial body that is accountable for controlling the home
office. Another body consisting of the area managers and the RVPs would look after
the superstore sales and customer services (Hussain et al. 2015).
 The matrix structure is actually impermanent
 The role of the managers are fluid and not static. The managers in this structure are
basically functional operators and plays the crucial role of project managers also.
The primary advantage of the of the matrix structure in case of Staples, Inc.is that the
organisation would be able to maintain a functional structure. This would allow the
creation of large scale and efficient project structures. This is in fact the most adequate
requirement for the organisation at the current time. This is because there would large
amount of staff involvement for the business operations of the organisation after adopting
to the sector of customer based service (Accorsi et al. 2018). This functional structure

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would allow the organisation to implement the functional structure properly without
destroying or at large disrupting the basic structure of the organisation’s work design.
This would help the organisation to maintain two kinds of managerial component.
One would be relatively permanent and the other would be expiring after the completion
of each of the service projects. In the matrix design, the territorial struggle between the
major employees’ group of the company and that of the Corporate Express can be easily
avoided (Giardina et al. 2018).
 The project objectives (sales objectives also) would be clearly articulated
 The project objectives can be clearly articulated among the project team
 The project management process would train the mangers to emerge as
prospective leaders in the current organisational design.
However, implementation of the matrix in the scope of the organisation have some
disadvantages also. These are:
 The multiple head in management will leave the subordinate managers caught
in the middle
 Project members might be engaged in an inter team competition and this
impact the final outcome of the projects (Yildirimoglu, Sirmatel and
Geroliminis 2018)
 Possible slowdown of the management reactions leading to confusion in the
system where a clear solute was required.
 The overhead cost of the management would increase and this would in turn
increase the project budgets
Q.4 Obstacles to an effective strategy implementation system at Staples
The tight central control of the management is the major obstacle behind new strategy
implementation at the organisation. The field roles have changed over the years after the
adaptation to the new domain and the acquisition of The Corporate Express. The field
policies are now implemented after significant feed from the field. However, the major
decisional changes are still implemented by the central management and the opinions of the
home office management are still imposed on the on-field workers. In order to maintain
effective discipline in to the field work, the budget and goals of the business units that
handles the major bulk of the business activities, the inventory levels as well as the new

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designs as well as the layout for the new stores are also founded by the higher management
(Xu et al. 2015). However, the adaptability and the marketing knowledge as well as the on
field proceedings of the Home Office is confined up to the US Store Operations. Hence the
lack of knowledge about the marketing behaviour and the trends of the market makes it
difficult for the management to execute the business model with impact.
The pro forma sales forecast of the home office often do not match with the actual
achieved or realised targets of the business units of the company. However, the new strategy
demands that the store remodels and the new inventory designs should be absolutely dictated
by the area managers and the consultation support of the from the operating units. Corporate
HR and Home Office CFO is also stringent in budget acknowledgement and realisation of the
effort paid by the employees. This is why, employee empowerment is still a myth at Staples,
Inc. and in spite of the official declaration, and the “Easy Way” business model is still far
from implementation at the organisation.

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