Case Study

Case Study

Part 1

1)

MRA Associates uses the geographic organizational structure in order to maximize its efficiency. The nature of the business conducted by the organization is such that it has to cater to customers dispersed over a wide area and the services offered should be similar throughout. Using other models would lead to inefficiencies as technicians and experts would have to be called from the home office. However, in this model, every local office has all the requirements and expertise required in order to fulfill the objectives of the organization (Maguire, 2003).

The organization is at a point of maturity as it previously enjoyed a high growth rate which resulted in the current position where it has a strong cash reserve. However, since it has just entered the maturity stage, the organization is still growing and its operations have been streamlined with it gaining a competitive advantage in customer satisfaction due to the expertise in the business it operates (Gitman & McDaniel, 2009).

The advantage of the current organizational structure is that it can easily cater to the needs of the customers without having to spend a lot of time contacting experts in the head office. The geographical model also allows the organization to capture a larger share of the market as new branches can be formed almost anywhere in the country. Such a model allows for aggressive expansion without undergoing major structural changes. For instance, it the organization wishes to add one more office to its existing 18 local offices, all it needs to do is to form the new branch and link it to the home office. Since each local office is separately responsible for its own profitability, they are accountable to the home office and have to continuously provide a report on their performance. In this way the home office can meet its targets without having a lot of control over the local offices and thus save on their expenses due to a flat hierarchy. However, this model also has some disadvantages such as a limited control over the local offices.

Since the local office have to report to the home office and prove that their business is profitable, they will go through any means in order to increase the profitability of their respective local office. This can result in the decrease in customer satisfaction and therefore a further reduction in the profitability of the organization as a whole. This type of structure also results in the duplication of resources and therefore additional expenses have to be borne. This duplication occurs because each local office operates as a separate entity and therefore requires every resource that is required by an organization as a whole. For instance in the case of MRA, every office have at least one technician in every area of operation.

There may be suggestions that a matrix model might work better for the organization. However, the work this organization conducts is of a very technical nature due to which a matrix model will decrease the quality of service ...