Corporate Strategy and Business Competitiveness II Assignment | Get Paper Help

Description

Option #2: Corporate Strategy and Business Competitiveness II For this assignment, you will select a company of your choice. This could be a company where you work currently, or a previous workplace, or a publicly traded company. Another option is to use the company you selected for your final project. Assume you are a business analyst or a corporate strategist for the company you selected. Senior managers at the company believe changes to its organizational structure are needed to improve performance. You have been tasked with preparing a report with recommended changes. In your report addresses the following areas: Describe the current organizational structure of the company you selected and discuss what is strong and what is lacking. Compare the current organizational structure at the company you selected to the organizational structure of competitors. Explain how the current organizational structure reflects the current culture. Discuss what infrastructure components can be used to create a culture of innovation at the company you selected. Explain how the changes you recommend use relationships with stakeholders to enhance organizational and individual performance, competitive advantage, and operational effectiveness within the global marketplace. Your well-written paper should meet the following requirements: Be 4 to 6 pages in length. Be formatted according to the CSU-Global Guide to Writing & APA (Links to an external site.). Include at least five scholarly or peer-reviewed articles. The CSU-Global library (Links to an external site.) is a good place to find these resources. Include a title page, section headers, introduction, conclusion, and reference page

Corporate Strategy and Business Competitiveness II

            Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) is an Italian American multi-national organization that has established itself as the eighth largest automobile manufacturer in the world (fcagroup.com, 2019). FCA now operates in 140 different countries and employs more than 236,000 people all across the globe. FCA’s numerous brands are as follows: Abarth, Alfa Romeo, Chrysler, Dodge, Fiat, Jeep, Maserati, Mopar, Ram, Comau, Magneti and Teksid brands (fcagroup.com, 2019). All of these brands have come to be through their aggressive strategic planning throughout their rich history of acquisitions and mergers. The most notable acquisition and merger in the last ten years has been between the Fiat Group and Chrysler Group, which actually started out as a simple global strategic alliance during the middle of 2009. This alliance rocketed such a profound change in both organizations. By the end of a 19-month period both groups “Fiat and Chrysler have achieved full integration at the industrial and cultural level and have created an organization that is truly unified in practice, even if not yet on paper” (fcagroup.com, 2019). The main goal of this alliance was to create synergy and optimization between their respective manufacturing footprints and sharing of technologies (fcagroup.com, 2019). Fast forward to January 2014, Fiat Group took 100% Ownership of Chrysler Group and ten months later the two companies finally merged to create FCA company (fcagroup.com, 2019).

Throughout we will describe and discuss the following: Describe the current organizational structure of FCA and discuss what is strong and what is lacking. Compare current FCA’s organizational structure to organizational structure of a competitor. Explain how current FCA organizational structure reflect their culture. Discuss what infrastructure components can be used to promote a culture of innovation at FCA. Explain recommendations or changes to promote individual and organizational performance, operational effectiveness, and competitive advantage in the global marketplace.

We will better understand how FCA organization has benefited from their organizational structure and culture expertly by their acquisitions, mergers, and costs reductions to increase their substitutions and competitive advantage or rivals, while becoming the world’s eighth largest automobile manufacturer employing hundreds of thousands of people all across the globe, and being a multi-national corporation. FCA organization is truly a forward thing company and is well positioned for future long-term success for many years to come.

Current Organizational Structure

When Fiat acquired ownership of most of Chrysler Group LLC, they reorganized their management structure that enhanced integration of Fiat and Chrysler. This streamlined or optimized the process of managing business activities, strategic decision making, target setting, and investments. Additionally, facilitating sharing of best practices to include key developments in human resources (Marchionne, 2011). Is it hard to imagine any multinational and multi-product company in the automobile industry to implement a matrix management? There have been several automobile companies that have tried to implement and failed miserably (Workiewica, 2015). However, there is one such company that has done so successfully, and that is FCA. A matrix organizational structure allows a company “to pursue multiple goals and better able to adapt to challenges to the local markets, while maintaining effective coordination on the global level” (Workiewica, 2015). FCA has successfully made the matrix management structure work for their organization. Which has made FCA to be more competitive, achieve their goals, and have top notch incredible performance being in a tough market. The current Chief Executive Officer (CEO) is Mike Manley whom succeeded Sergio Marchionne. The matrix management organizational structure has become a huge strength for FCA to be successful within the automobile industry worldwide.

FCA Organizational Structure vs Competitors

FCA has successfully made the matrix management structure work for their organization. Which has made FCA to be more competitive, achieve their goals, and have top notch incredible performance while being in a tough market, with many different competitors. Even though many of FCA’s competitors have tried to implement the matrix management structure, but have failed miserably in trying. FCA’s two biggest competitors in the US Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Co. Ford Motor Co. has an organizational structure is primarily based off of a need to control operations accordance within regional conditions of a market; their main features are corporate hierarchy, regional geographic divisions, and global functional groups (Smithson, 2018). As their organizational structure. General Motors Co. for example, primarily uses a regional divisional organizational structure and “involves grouping business activities according to geographical segments or areas of operations” (Kissinger, 2018). Even though Ford Motor Co. and General Motor Co. are one and two in the US automobile industry respectively. However, it seems like Ford Motor Co. and General Motor Co. are reactive with their organizational structure; this is where FCA differentiates from there competitors by having a proactive approach instead of being reactive. This give FCA the upper hand with there competitors in this market.

FCA Organizational Structure Reflects Culture

CEO Mike Manley predecessor Sergio Marchionne drove culture changes throughout the organization, since Marchionne is the one who had the idea to implement a matrix organizational structure. This culture has resonated throughout the organization from the top down. Some examples include but not limited to these. “Numerous executives described working for Fiat Chrysler as a philosophy, almost a passion” (Wayland, The Detroit News, 2015). Another example, “There are a lot of people that are very personally invested,” (Wayland, The Detroit News, 2015) and not just due to money they get paid. Yet another example, most employees describe it as a “sense of belonging to something and this notion of making history” (Wayland, The Detroit News, 2015). This creates an atmosphere of continuing collaboration across different teams throughout the organization. It does not matter of its called culture or something else, but it is what holds the organizational structure together and creates an organization that employees want to work for.

FCA Infrastructure Components Create Culture of Innovation

One of the biggest infrastructure components is what was pointed out in the former paragraph, and that is people want to be there, to be apart of something bigger than themselves. In other words, most employees describe it as a “sense of belonging to something and this notion of making history” (Wayland, The Detroit News, 2015). This creates an atmosphere of continuing collaboration across different teams throughout the organization. Even though this has absolutely nothing to do with tangible things someone can touch like better computers, production lines, or other such items. Another, that doesn’t rely on tangible things is one of FCA’s cornerstone of having an innovative spirit, this is seen in technological quality within their products (Cammarata, et al, 2006). An organization doesn’t necessarily need all the fancy tangible infrastructure components to have a culture of innovation. Sometimes all an organization needs are employees that want to work for and a sense of belonging is better. This goes along the saying of take care of your people and genially care for them.

Recommendations

Changes for this organization for improvement would be nothing. Here’s why? Because they have differentiated themselves over competitors by having a matrix organizational structure. That have given them a huge competitive advantage over their rivals in the US market. FCA also has created the culture that their employees want to work for them instead of another organization. This has made their infrastructure components innovative, even though they are not tangible things someone can touch. Because of these reasons reasonably cannot make changes to this organization. However, a recommendation can be made for FCA. That is keep doing what they are doing and will continually have a competitive advantage over their competitors within the US market.

Conclusion

Throughout this we described and discussed the following: Described the current organizational structure of FCA and discuss what is strong and what is lacking. Compared current FCA’s organizational structure to organizational structure of a competitor. Explained how current FCA organizational structure reflect their culture. Discussed what infrastructure components can be used at FCA to formulate a culture of innovation. Explained recommendations or changes to promote individual and organizational performance, operational effectiveness, and competitive advantage in the global marketplace. FCA organization is truly a forward thing company and is well positioned for future long-term success for many years to come.

References

Fcagroup.com, 2019, History, retrieved from https://www.fcagroup.com/en-US/group/            history/Pages/default.aspx

Cammarata, Vincenzo, Kurucz, Veronika, Maj, Valentina, Pavlovic, Aleksandra, Portman,            Katherine, February 07, 2006, The FIAT Case: a Therapeutical Crisis, retrieved October          20, 2019 from http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.524.7987&rep=

rep1&type=pdf

Marchionne, Sergio, 2011, Meritocracy, Leadership, Competition, Best-In-Class Performance       and Delivering on Promises: These Are the Five Core Principles, The Five Fundamental            Pillars Behind the Profound Cultural Change That Has Taken Place at Fiat, retrieve     November 2, 2019, from https://www.fcagroup.com/en-US/group/FiatDocuments/

BRO_SPA_ENG34.pdf

Workiewicz, Maciej, July 2, 2015, The Matrix Organization Behind the Success of Fiat Chrysler            Automobiles, retrieved November 2, 2019, from       https://www.maciejworkiewicz.com/single-post/2015/07/03/The-matrix-organization-

behind-the-success-of-Fiat-Chrysler-Automobiles

Smithson, Nathaniel, September 8, 2018, Ford Motor Company’s Organizational Structure           Analysis, retrieved November 2, 2019, from http://panmore.com/ford-motor-company-

organizational-structure-analysis

Kissinger, Daniel, September 8, 2018, General Motors’ Organizational Structure for Flexibility     in Regional Markets, retrieved November 2, 2019, from http://panmore.com/general-

motors-organizational-structure-flexibility-regional-markets

Wayland, Michael, The Detroit News, July 1, 2015, Marchionne at center of complex, successful  FCA, retrieved November 2, 2019, from https://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/

autos/chrysler/2015/07/01/marchionne-fca/29597865/