Mission “Improvisable”

A mission statement tells customers, employees, and stakeholders why the organization exists—its purpose. It can be concise, like the one from Mary Kay Cosmetics—“To enrich the lives of women around the world”—or it can be more detailed, such as the following from FedEx:

Mission statements are typically constructed to communicate several pieces of information: what the company strives to accomplish, what it’s known for, and how it serves its customers (and perhaps its employees and shareholders as well). Here are a few examples:

Assignment

To Manage or Not to Manage?

Sugarcoating the News at Krispy Kreme

According to Krispy Kreme’s “Code of Ethics for Chief Executive and Senior Financial Officers,” the company’s top executives are expected to practice and promote honest, ethical conduct. They’re also responsible for the health and overall performance of the company. Recently, however, things have gone wrong in the top echelons of the doughnut-shop chain.

Assessing Your School’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats

How can you and other members of your team help your college or university assess its fit with its environment? For one thing, you could apply SWOT analysis.

Begin by picking a member of the team to write down ideas generated by the group using brainstorming (a technique used to generate ideas that have no right or wrong answers and are accepted by the group without criticism). Pick a different member of the team to complete the SWOT analysis in the format listed below. Then follow these steps:

The Art and Science of Organizational Evolution

A company’s organizational structure defines the formal relationships among the people in it. It also reflects an arrangement of positions that’s most appropriate for the company at a specific point in time. As the business expands or changes directions, its organizational structure should also change.

With these principles in mind, let’s trace the evolution of a hypothetical company called High-Tech Cases, which manufactures and sells DVD cases made out of a special high-tech material.

Stage 1

When the company was founded, it operated under a functional organizational structure, with the following key positions and reporting relationships:

In addition, two salespeople reported to the director of sales. The directors of advertising, operations, and engineering each had two assistants, as did the treasurer and the controller.

Stage 2

About three years after the company’s founding, the management team decided to expand sales into Asia. The director of sales retained responsibility for the United States, while a new director was added for Asia. The two salespeople who had been with the company since its beginning focused on U.S. sales, and two new salespeople were hired to handle Asia. No other position changed, and for the next two years, all personnel worked out of the U.S. headquarters.

Stage 3

By the beginning of the fifth year of operations, Asian and U.S. sales were about the same. At this point, management decided to set up two separate operations—one in the United States and the other in China. A senior VP was hired to head each operation—senior VP of U.S. operations and senior VP of Asian operations. Both would report to the CEO. Each operational unit would run its own production facilities, arrange its own financing, and be in charge of its sales and marketing activities. As a result, High-Tech Cases almost doubled in size, but management believed that the restructuring was appropriate and would increase profits in the long run.

Assignment

Create three organization charts—one for each stage in High-Tech’s development. Ideally, you should make your charts with some type of organization-chart software. To use the tool available in Microsoft Word, go to the Standard Toolbar in Microsoft Word, click on “Help,” and type in organization chart. Then select “create a chart.”