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... ds and other employee related services to the villages and families. Moreover, shop managers make decisions at the family level although the travel consultants are empowered. Even though Flight centre have more similarities of a strategic apex it also has a few differences. As the flight centre has more than 800 retail shops worldwide and in each year 150 more shops are adding up, the operations would be complex because it would have more families, villages and tribe which would make communication and coordination barriers.
Furthermore, some authorities are decentralized from the tribal country, such authorities include buying products from wholesalers. Roles of functional and social specialization As organisations become large and physically dispersed, it requires people with specialized knowledge and skills to attend to problems professionally and reduce waste. The main functional areas in the flight centre include HR, marketing and information technology. In the rapidly changing business environment Information technology has becomes a vehicle for helping firms to reach their business goal more effectively. Flight Centre is well placed to keep pace with industry changes. As the flight centre is geographically dispersed, information technology enables them with quicker and more effective communication and customer support.
Social specialization that is required by the IT professionals includes attending to faults 24 -hours because flight centre is worldwide organisation where they deal with traveling and ticketing. If an IT personnel is not available, all the operations might come to a halt because tickets and holiday packages are sold worldwide. In a successful organisation, employees are seen as their primary source of competitive advantage. One of the success factors of Flight centre is that they continuously identify and adopt innovative human resource management policies and practices to sustain that advantage. It also include how they have structured their work and designed their training, performance management, pay, and reward policies to help members of flight centre to succeed in achieving desired outcomes. In other words, they have aligned their HRM policies and practices to reinforce employee behaviors that can best realize the leaders's tragic intent.
As HR professionals, they would ensure that equal employment opportunities (EEO) are not violated. The marketing department of the flight centre is like the center of a wagon wheel with each spoke connected to other departments (in- and out-side the company) including sales, production, research, advertising, etc. The center of the wheel connects the various parts so they work in harmony. With this analogy, it is easy to see that the main function of marketing is managing relationships in the organization, with outside vendors, and the consumer. Without marketing there is no consumer and without the consumer there is no use for the product or service the company is producing (University of California, 2005).
Standards that are required by the marketing professionals include, caring all stakeholders: customers, employees, suppliers and distributors, local communities in which they do business, society, and the environment. For example, in promotional activities such as advertising, they would respect the host countrys culture. Centralizing and Decentralizing Decentralization refers to decision making at lower levels in the hierarchy of authority. In contrast, decision making in a centralized type of organizational structure is at higher levels. The degree of centralization and de-centralization depends on the number of levels of hierarchy, degree of coordination, specialization and span of control (Luther, 1986).
The main reason that the country as a business unit buys services for villages and families is to achieve economy of scale and to reduce waste. If the villages or the families buy services, it would increase the cost and repetition. To reduce complexity and to make coordination easy, a head office team facilitates HR, IT and marketing services. To follow a certain reporting duty each family is empowered with a manager. It would reduce the volume of day-to-day communication between the tribe and the family and have a clear accountability. Decentralizing the authority to the travel consultants would reduce the probability of information overload and would facilitates rapid response to all customers.
It would also reduce the stress and burdens of senior management. As travel consultants, they would have a better knowledge of local conditions affecting their areas of work. This would allow them to make more informed, well-judged choices. Moreover, motivates travel consultants and can enhance their skill development opportunities.
However, decentralizing would reduce consistency in decision-making and some sometimes customers may perceive it as unfair. Advantages of using metaphors To recognize and cope with the idea that all theories of organization and management are based on metaphors that persuades people to see, understand, and imagine situations in partial ways. Moreover, Metaphors create ways of seeing and shaping organizational life. Any metaphor can be very persuasive (Morgan, 1997). The metaphors that are used at the Flight centre are family, village and tribal country.
As all the retail shops are considered as families, it shows the equality among shops, which would create less comparison and competition among families. Moreover, giving uniform service to the customers. As employees are bonded up in small teams like a families, it gives them identity where they belong. It would also create close relationships within families and also gives the manager a clear picture of the capabilities of individual staff. Moreover, makes decisions more effective.
Creating families, villages and tribes in areas of countries would allow flight centre to adjust their services according to the specific culture of the region rather than generalizing to the whole county or state. For example, in Australia a certain area would dominate Indians, so rather than adjusting their services and marketing strategies to the Australian community they could adjust their services to the Indian market. Conclusion This essay has discussed how flight centre has structured with the four aspects of the organisation structure. At the Flight centre, the operation level involves retail shops.
Each shop involves three to seven people working on one brand which is called a family. All shops of flight centre sell similar services. Flight centre has more than 800 shops spatially dispersed. High-rise of overseas shops would increase the number of tribes, villages, families and employees. Programmed coordination is common in the flight centre.
A head office team coordinates administrative services and marketing. As the flight centre is geographically dispersed, information technology enables them with quicker and more effective communication and customer support. Social specialization that is required by the IT professionals includes attending to faults 24 -hours because flight centre is worldwide organisation where they deal with traveling and ticketing Decentralizing the authority to the travel consultants would reduce the probability of information overload and would facilitates rapid response to all customers. As employees are bonded up in small teams like a families, it gives them identity where they belong. It would also create close relationships within families and also gives the manager a clear picture of the capabilities of individual staff. Moreover, makes decisions more effective.
Reference: Anderson, C. (1988). Management: Skills, Functions and Organization Performance. USA, Allyn and Bacon. Argue, L. (1982). Input Uncertainty and Organizational Coordination in Hospital Emergency Units, Administrative Science Quarterly (27: 3). Beshears, F. (2006).
Mintzberg's Taxonomy of Organizational Forms, Retrieved September 07, 2006, from web Baumard, P. & Starbuck, W. (2006). Where Are Organizational Cultures Going? . Retrieved September 07, 2006, from web Robbins, S & Barnwell, N. (2002). Organisation Theory. (4 th Ed. ). Australia, Pearson HRODC (2006). Organisation structure, Retrieved September 07, 2006, from web Luthans, F. (1986).
Organizational Behaviour. Singapore: McGraw-Hill. University of California. (2005). Public Relations, Advertising & Marketing - What's the Difference? Retrieved September 07, 2006, from web Morgan, G. (1997).
Images of Organization, (2 nd Ed), Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks. Appendix 1 - vertical differentiation of flight centre Appendix 2 - Mintzbergs five main parts of the organisation
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