Introduction
Running a multinational internet firm necessitates a clear understanding of increased existence of values within the diverse cultures involved in the online business.
The subsystems of the firm have to adjust to an effective organizational structure in order to facilitate different values in the organization. Effective integration of values can be achieved by increasing knowledge in leadership, as this helps in highlighting the changes that are taking place in a given segment.
This goes along with creating competent staff as well as evaluating the structure used in relation to the organizational culture. But what type of structure best suits multinational internet retailer? How can someone build a diverse culture that creates room for creativity amongst the technical staff? And how would someone evaluate the success of organizational structure and culture?
Type of Structure That Would Best Suit Multinational Internet Retailer
In the recent past, it has come to the attention of multinational internet retailers that a number of cultural practices affect their business operations, namely, language used, religion, laws and politics, the level of education, social organizations, and technology, among others (Weitz, 2002).
And in this regard, a vast majority of the multinational internet retailers has taken the initiative of evaluating organizational structure that would best suit multinational organizations. The fact that understanding customers’ needs enhances productivity and better management of a given firm makes regionalized organizational structure best suited to a multinational internet retailer.
This emanates from the fact that a regionalized organizational structure creates an avenue for corporate culture, thus facilitating decision-making process for each segment.
More so, a regionalized organizational structure is in a position of recognizing synergies, and this makes it easier to reform them. It works under the platform of midway between the centralization and decentralization, thus facilitating local operations that are based on a global framework.
In addition, a regionalized organizational structure suits a multinational internet retailer because, despite the fact that it would want to operate under a centralized structure in a bid to retain the company’s values and standards, it is extremely hard to achieve organizational goals due to differences in culture and economic status between diverse countries across the globe (Weitz, 2002).
Hence, a multinational internet retailer can only acquire speed and comprehensive information of diverse cultural practices and economic capabilities of different regions by strategically placing several regional headquarters, especially in areas characterized by diversity.
How Would You Recommend Building a Culture That is Inclusive of Diverse Cultures and Accommodates Highly Creative Technical Staff?
In order for an organization to achieve long-term benefits and survival, it must learn how to build a culture that accommodates diverse cultures and highly creative technical staff. However, even though diversity is characterized by innovation, it does not mean that any organization characterized by diversity has creative technical staff (Mead, 2005).
Therefore, it is of utmost importance for multinational companies to not only entertain diversity but also acquire knowledge on how diversity can lead to creativity. This knowledge should involve two major factors: accommodating core beliefs of workers and formulating global goals.
In accommodating core beliefs of workers, the management should highlight workers beliefs with regard to performance achievement, enhance their faith in education by revealing perseverance, exhibit equal value for each worker, and encourage collaboration through promoting inquiry and teamwork that facilitates implementation of new practices (Mead, 2005). global goals, on the other hand, can be achieved by enhancing an effective leadership program that promotes diversity in workplace, increasing the level of engaging employees in the decision making process, increasing the level of challenges in the multinational firm, offering bonus for challenging jobs, and enhancing technology in the operations of the multinational organization (Mead, 2005).
How Would You Measure The Success Of Your Organizational Design In Structure And Culture?
It is of utmost importance for the management of multinational firms to note that even though cultural diversity is closely associated with performance improvement, it is also faced with a number of challenges.
With this is mind, the measurement of success of an organizational structure and culture should emanate from assessing the impact of culture on the organizational structure adapted, assessing the impact of culture while adapting to a new organizational structure, and assessing the impact of culture on performance of the organization (Mead, 2005).
It is a fact that multinational organizations are greatly influenced by the culture of people within a given locality. For instance, developed countries are more inclined to coming up with products that take due diligence in environmental conservation than the developing countries.
Therefore, the structure adapted by a multinational organization can be termed as successful if it takes consideration of people’s culture living in a particular locality.
The impact of culture while adapting to a new organizational structure should also be measured since cultural diversity without innovativeness does not amount to profitability (Mead, 2005). The multinational organizations are normally characterized by changes, and therefore they change their vision and mission overtime.
In this regard, the structure adapted by a multinational organization can be termed as successful if the workers are ready to approve the innovative ways of carrying out business operations.
Culture plays a crucial role on performance of an organization, and this necessitates coming up with an organizational structure that shares a common organizational culture.
This emanates from the fact that organizations that lack a discernable culture are characterized by unpredictable performance (Mead, 2005). Therefore, the structure adapted by a multinational organization can be termed as successful if workers from diverse cultures are able to resolve their differences to a level where they can achieve a common ground.
References
Mead, R. (2005). International management: Cross-cultural dimensions. Malden, Mass: Blackwell.
Weitz, B. A., & Wensley, R. (2002). Handbook of marketing. London: SAGE.