Business Analysis Report - Flight Centre Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Business Analysis Report - Flight Centre - Essay Example Current paper focuses on the culture and structure of a well-known Australian company, the Flight Centre. The firm is based on a unique principle: the establishment of small operational centers is preferred instead of large departments; autonomous and flexible small units are used for developing the firm’s operations worldwide. At this point, the firm is strongly differentiated from its rivals – which are likely to use large operational units which can handle a high volume of work but which are characterized by lack of effective communication among their members. Despite its success until today, as explained in the case study, the firm needs to update its culture and structure in order to respond to the challenges of its external environment. The key elements of the firm’s culture and structure are critically evaluated in this paper using relevant literature; the choices available to the firm in terms of culture and structure are also presented, taking into consi deration the conditions in the global market but also the firm’s existing resources and characteristics – meaning its current culture and structure. 2. ... that should be used for managing the various business activities; from this point of view, culture can promote ‘integration and cohesion across the organization’ (Nickson 2007). From a similar point of view, Deal and Kennedy (1988) note that organizational culture indicate ‘the way we do things around here’ (Deal and Kennedy 1988, p.4, in Nickson 2007). Robbins (2009) refers to a quite common definition of culture, which is based on the view that culture, as an element of modern organizations, is ‘a system of shared meaning held by members, distinguishing the organization from other organizations’ (Robbins 2009). Moreover, Dessler (1976) uses three different approaches for defining culture: ‘the structural, subjective and synthetic approaches’ (Dessler 1976, in Dwivedi 1995). The above approaches could be analyzed as follows: the structural approach perceives culture as ‘a set of characteristics which differentiate an organiza tion from another one’ (Dessler 1976, in Dwivedi 1995). At the next level, the subjective approach refers to culture as ‘the view of employees on their organization’ (Dessler 1976, in Dwivedi 1995). Finally, the synthetic approach is based on the combination of the two previous approaches for defining organizational culture (Dwivedi 1995). On the other hand, Schein (1992) describes culture as the ‘perception of a group of individuals/ employees on their organization’ (Schein 1992, in Miller 2008). In the context of the above definition, organizational culture can be successfully defined only if the communication across the organization is satisfactory. The close dependency of culture on communication is also highlighted in the study of Inceoglu (2002); in the above study, reference is made to the sharing of beliefs and