Organizational Structures: Ford Motor Company

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Organizational Structures: Ford Motor Company

The organizational structure of an enterprise can be affected by a great number of factors, such as marketing strategies, operations, human resources, and others (Bateman& Snell, 2008). Provided that we are speaking about Ford Motor Company we should first speak about operations. As a representative of the automobile industry, Ford has to adopt the approach which is called Total Quality Management (TQM). In other words, the company wants to take control over all production processes (Kenji, 1995; Bateman& Snell, 2008). This eventually impacts its structure. First, Ford has several subsidiaries which specialize in the manufacturing of various spare parts, customer support, repair, research, and development, etc (Ford Motor Company, 2009). Thus, they are more or less independent of external suppliers.

When speaking about the companys operations as well as human resources, we need to say that Ford Motor Company is a matrix organization (Needle, 2004, p 204). First, the employees, working for this firm are people majoring in different areas: engineering, design, manufacturing, marketing, and so forth. Thus, it is necessary to establish good coordination within the organization and integrate the skills of these people. For this purpose, the management creates joint departments working on the same task (Bateman& Snell, 2008). Apart from that, each participant may be subordinate to several managers. The key objective of such a policy is to allocate costs, time, and human resources in a more effective way. Such a policy is adopted to improve the process of communication among different sections of the enterprise.

Another organizational function that influences the structure of this enterprise is its marketing approach. First, it should be pointed out that Ford is a customer-driven organization, which means they try to adjust their products to the needs of their clients. This is one of the reasons why Ford integrates the customers into the production process. This means that their feedbacks and recommendations are taken into account during the stages of design and production (Ford Motor Company, 2009). In addition to that, they try to simplify the organizational hierarchy. In other words, the customer does not have to pass through cumbersome bureaucratic procedures. This helps to ensure a higher degree of their satisfaction and gain a competitive advantage over other car manufacturers operating in the US and other countries.

Finally, we should not overlook such factors as the finance of this enterprise. Overall, Ford is reluctant to deal with outside firms. Therefore, it has a separate division Ford Motor Credit which is responsible for giving loans to people and issuing commercial papers. It can be observed that this firm is not willing to collaborate with other banks. For this purpose, the company has created its division which practically fulfills the functions of the bank. This is another example of Total Quality Management.

Therefore, we can conclude that the development of such a firm as Ford Motor Company is shaped by different internal and external forces. As it has been mentioned earlier, the firm has a matrix structure due to the peculiarities of its human resource and operation standards. Its management gives preference to matrix structure to integrate the knowledge and skills of various employees. Secondly, the firm adopts the TQM approach to its production standards. Hence, they are practically independent of outside suppliers. Overall, their strategies yield results as Ford is now one of the largest cars manufactures in the world.

Reference

Bateman T. S. & Snell S. A.(2008). Management: Leading and Collaborating in the Competitive World. New York:McGraw-Hill Higher Education.

Ford Motor Company.(2009). Official Website.

Kanji. G. K (1995). Total quality management: proceedings of the first world congress. New York Springer.

Needle D.(2004) Business in context: an introduction to business and its environment. New York: Cengage Learning EMEA.

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