Учебно-методическое пособие по обучению профессиональному общению. Коровина Н.А - 21 стр.

spective franchisees should ask the franchiser to be realistic when        ments cannot take financial decisions without consulting the finance
explaining what is required to operate the business.                       department.
                                                                                   Functional organization is efficient, but there are two standard
                       Managing the Business                               criticisms. Firstly, people are usually more concerned with the success
       Some individuals are more prepared to manage a business than        of their department than that of the company, so there are permanent
others. They have some business experience and have learned to get         battles between, for example, finance and marketing, or marketing and
along well with people. Others may find that managing a franchise is a     production, which have incompatible goals. Secondly, separating func-
burden. Prospective franchisees must honestly assess their ability to      tions is unlikely to encourage innovation.
run a business. If they find they have little or no experience, they can           Yet for a large organization manufacturing a range of products,
seek special help from the franchiser in business management.              having a single production department is generally inefficient. Conse-
                                                                           quently, most large companies are decentralized, following the model
      Answer the questions:                                                of Alfred Sloan, who divided General Motors into separate operating
      1. Where can you come across the operation of franchising?           divisions in 1920. Each division had its own engineering, production
      2. What does the word “franchise” mean (literally)? What do          and sales departments, made a different category of car (but with some
you understand under this meaning?                                         overlap, to encourage internal competition), and was expected to make
      3. What are two types of franchise arrangements?                     a profit.
      4. What are the roles of franchisee and franchiser? (Give as                 Businesses that cannot be divided into autonomous divisions
much information as possible).                                             with their own markets can simulate decentralization, setting up divi-
                                                                           sions that deal with each other using internally determined transfer
               TOPIC 7. COMPANY STRUCTURE                                  prices. Many banks, for example, have established commercial, corpo-
                                                                           rate, private banking, international and investment divisions.
       TEXT 1                                                                      An inherent problem of hierarchies is that people at lower levels
       Most organizations have a hierarchical or pyramidal structure,      are unable to make important decisions, but have to pass on responsi-
with one person or a group of people at the top, and an increasing         bility to their boss. One solution to this is matrix management, in
number of people below them at each successive level. There is a clear     which people report to more than one superior. For example, a product
line or chain of command running down the pyramid. All the people in       manager with an idea might be able to deal directly with managers
the organization know what decisions they are able to make, who their      responsible for a certain market segment and for a geographical re-
superior (or boss) is (to whom they report), and who their immediate       gion, as well as the managers responsible for the traditional functions
subordinates are (to whom they can give instructions).                     of finance, sales and production. This is one way of keeping authority
       Some people in an organization have colleagues who help them:       at lower levels, but it is not necessarily a very efficient one. Thomas
for example, there might be an Assistant to the Marketing Manager.         Peters and Robert Waterman, in their well-known book In Search of
This is known as a staff position.                                         Excellence, insist on the necessity of pushing authority and autonomy
       Yet the activities of most companies are too complicated to be      down the line, but they argue that one element – probably the product
organized in a single hierarchy. Today, most large manufacturing or-       – must have priority; four-dimensional matrices are far too complex.
ganizations have a functional structure, including (among others) pro-             A further possibility is to have wholly autonomous, temporary
duction, finance, marketing, sales, and personnel or staff departments.    groups or teams that are responsible for an entire project, and are split
This means, for example, that the production and marketing depart-         up as soon as it is successfully completed. Teams are often not very

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