Organizational Structure of a Venture HealthPoint - Research Paper Example

Organizational Structure of a Proposed Venture “HealthPoint” Introduction My proposed venture is a healthy food restaurant “HealthPoint” in UAE. Thecompany will be established as a partnership among three investors who will share the equal proportion of ownership in the company. The total number of employees of HealthPoint will be around 25 including General Manager, Assistant General Manager, five functional managers one from each department and other staff. In the following section, the details about the building blocks of the organization, the proposed hierarchy, organizational structure and job descriptions and roles and responsibilities have been discussed. The Building Blocks of Organization The most suitable organizational structure for the proposed venture is Divisional organizational structure. Most of the large companies are shifting from traditional functional structures to product divisional structure such as IBM has reorganized its organizational structure and established a “structure by product” in which each product division has its own marketing, finance and operations department (Chalkface Website). However, the most suitable organizational structure for a restaurant business is functional structure. There is a logical relationship between the departmentalization, division of work, hierarchy and coordination and managers are responsible to make decisions and manage the work based on these four building blocks of an organization (Stoner, Freeman, & Gilbert). In the proposed organization all of these building blocks will be clearly defined to improve the efficiency and transparency of the company. Division of Labor: Division of labor or job specialization is important to improve the productivity of the tasks. Each person responsible for a specific task will be recruited based on his experience and specialization in the particular field for example, in the operations department the cooks will be expert in cooking only and the frontline customer service staff will be experienced in their job area. Departmentalization: The jobs will be assigned based on the departments of the organization. There will be five departments including food and beverage department, marketing, customer service, accounting and human resource departments. In each department there will be only one manager therefore, the span of the department will be according to the feasibility for the departmental manager. In future, if the company expands and span of department increases then more positions like assistant, officer can be introduced, however, at this stage a small team of people headed by the departmental manager is suitable. Hierarchy: The levels and grades of the employees in each department and division will define the hierarchy of the organization. At this stage, five grades will be introduced including A, B, C, D and E in ascending order. The General Manager of the restaurant will have the grade E and the Chefs have the grade A or B depending on the seniority as well. The proposed organization is aimed to have a flatter and horizontal structure rather than vertical structure. The idea of flatter structure is based on the fact that HealthPoint will not promote authoritative organizational culture but a participative organizational culture. Coordination: The division of labor has been clearly defined in the proposed organization and the departments’ span is significantly high therefore, there is a need to promote various communication channels to improve the coordination between the departments. General Manager will head the all departments however; the manager of each function will be responsible for the entire operations. The manager of each department will be also responsible for coordination with the other departments of the same division; however, the manager of one department will be also in strong coordination with the managers of all departments. The Intended Hierarchy of Organization and Departments Organization structure is the ways through which the activities have been organized, divided and coordinated (Stoner, Freeman, & Gilbert). Following is the proposed organizational structure for HealthPoint. On the top of the company, a General Manager will be appointed. Based on three services offered by the company the Men, Women and Kids division will be established. Below General Manager, Assistant Manager will be responsible to look after the operations of each function. The General Manager, Assistant General Manager and Functional Managers will form a team of management and all important decisions will be made by the selected team. Proposed Organizational Chart of HealthPoint In each department there will be only two or less hierarchical levels in the beginning. In each department, there will be a manager who will look after the activities of all the persons below him. For example, in the Food & Beverage Department, below manager there will be a team of cooks. The staff below managers will be encouraged to work in teams as teamwork will be one of the core values of the proposed venture. The hierarchy and departmentalization of HealthPoint shows that the proposed company has a horizontal structure. The aim of introducing horizontal structure is to increase the participative style of management and team activities and to reduce the authoritative culture. The aim of introducing functional organizational structure is to improve the ability of the staff to achieve their goals. Although functional structure appears to be a very suitable structure for the proposed venture however, there can be some major drawbacks of the proposed organization structure. One of the major drawbacks is the interdepartmental conflict which can create huge problems. Secondly, lack of coordination and communication can also impact negatively and it is more visible in the case of independent functions. To avoid conflicts and miscommunications, high coordination and association will be encouraged among the departments. Vision: “HealthPoint envisions becoming the leading restaurant in health and diet food industry” Mission: HealthPoint aims to improve the healthy life style of the people by providing them only healthy and delicious options” The Job Description/Duties and Responsibilities A policy framework will be developed which will contain Human Resource related policies. The Human resource policies will comprehensively cover the job description/duties and responsibilities for each designation defined in the company. A sample Job Description of Operations Manager is as below: Position Food & Beverage Manager Grade C Immediate Supervisor Assistant General Manager Subordinates Cook Team Objective of Position: Food & Beverage Manager is responsible to look after and manage the activities of Food & Beverage department. She/he will be also responsible to manage the job tasks and activities of All Chefs. Job Description: 1. She/he will be responsible to manage the subordinates 2. She/he will control and facilitate the team 3. She/he will be also responsible to coordinate with other departments 4. She/he will ensure the timely and quality performance of the subordinates 5. She/he will control the volume of workload and will also coordinate with HR department to manage the workforce. Qualification Masters in Business Administration or related degree Industry Experience 3-4 years Total Experience 5 or above Other Skills Communication Cooking courses Performance Indicators 1. Timely orders completion 2. Quality and taste of food 3. Good coordination Sign of supervisor Sign of HR Head The job description of every employee will give the details of the responsibilities, roles and objective of the position. It will also highlight the criteria based on which position will be filled by a particular employee. Moreover, job description will also show the performance indicators. The manager of the relevant department will be responsible to develop the job description of all of his/her subordinates and the HR manager will be responsible to approve or disprove the job description, in consideration to the HR policies and framework. In the job advertisements only the qualification and job roles and responsibilities will be shown and after the finalization of the candidates they will be also given a copy of their job descriptions so that they may full understand their roles and responsibilities. Job description will not only play an important role in highlighting the roles and responsibilities of the people but they will be considered important during the performance appraisal process and to avoid the conflicts on tasks-overlapping and division of labor. Bibliography Chalkface Website, n.d.. Structure by Product. [Online] Available at: http://courses.chalkface.com/public_html/encyc/U2M02-04Structure.html [Accessed 16 October 2010]. Stoner, J. F. A., Freeman, E. R., & Gilbert, R. D., 1995. Management. Sixth Edition. India: Pearson Education. Read More