Organizational Design and Culture Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Organizational Design and Culture - Essay Example Earlier Home Depot was following decentralized organizational process. Due to increasing competition within the market place the organization decided to bring change in the organizational design. They transformed to centralization process in order to concentrate the decision making authority at the higher levels within the organization. Maintain appropriate balance between the centralization and decentralization process is huge challenge for several leading global organizations. Home Depot is one of the global retail giant. The organization has more than 2000 retail stores across the globe (Griffin, 2007). This centralization process allows the store managers to undertake several decisions independently and autonomously. Therefore, it can be stated that each retail outlet of Home Depot has entrepreneurial work culture. This process helped to save lot of money and increase business productivity. This centralization process helps the company to reduce operational cost as the company ne gotiates effective discounts from the existing suppliers. Home Depot follows flatter organizational hierarchy. The organizational hierarchy of Home Depot consists of few layers. Flatter organizational hierarchy helps an organization to provide its employees huge level of self actualization and greater satisfaction needs. At the same point of time there are several disadvantages too. Due to limited management layers, this organizational structure cannot provide effective advancement opportunity to the employees. Home Depot implemented multidivisional structure in their departmentalization process. This divisional structure helps to represent several unique employees, geographic locations, customers, products and services for the organizations. For an example, a marketing executive within an organization with a divisional organizational structure may be in the charge of promotional planning, and scheduling and executing a marketing research for a particular product line controlled by that executive’s division. Formalization structure is one of the important and effective tools of Home Depot’s organizational design. Formalization structure helps to develop effective rules and regulations. It controls the employee behavior. This formalization structure helped Home Depot to provide the organizational direction to the employees. Due to this structure the employee behavior becomes more predictable. This structure helps the employees to follow the specific guideline or legal organizational procedure of an organization in a critical situation. This strategy is generally utilized in the service industry. Mechanism structure is another organizational design tool of Home Depot. This organizational structural tool is very much centralized and formalized. Home Depot follows formal communication process with the help of this structure. This structure forces the employees to follow discipline and take effective responsibility depending upon the job role. This st ructure helps an organization to maximize the organizational efficiency and minimize the operational cost. Question 2 Home Depot employed an effective corporate culture in order to support the business strategies. The organization follows cluster strategy to utilize the work group in the organization. It helps to accomplish the future goals and objectives of the organization. The managers help the employees to work collaboratively. The store managers divide the