Departmentalization Works for Starbucks

To continue off of the centralizing of decision making, the company should also consider a more mechanistic organizational structure. This is a setup that is used effectively by companies such as McDonald’s as the company has a process in place to generate just the right amount of burger patties, fries and soda syrup for each branch to run smoothly. With Starbucks implementing a structure such as this, it would allow for each manager to have a centralized oint of contact for all goods. This, in turn, will lessen the burden for each branch to find their own product vendor. It will

Starbucks has always had a strong history of demonstrating some of the strongest instinct of organizational design; that's no surprise as much of the success of the company has been built on this practice. However, Starbucks needs to continue to adapt with the changing times and environment and can do this more readily by applying the four lessons that Nadler and Tushman specify in regards to organization design. As Nadler and Tushman point out, "The environment drives the strategic architecture of the enterprise, either through

Starbucks current structure is categorized as a mechanistic organization, which is comprised of highly vertical and horizontal complexities, highly formalizations, highly centralizations, tapered lengths of control, and highly standardizations. The CEO of Starbucks, Howard Shultz, has worked to create a more efficient and streamlined structure where information can flow freely

Starbucks is no doubt a phenomenon in the United States, but the brand wants to expand globally. Opening chains in various global locations such as Japan, Vienna, England; Starbucks wants to reach out to the coffee loving fans everywhere. Nevertheless opening chains globally is not that simple. There are many uncontrollable factors Starbucks need to focus on to make sure they are making profit as well has abiding by the country’s laws and regulations. Going global takes a lot of market research to make sure that the brand will be successful even with uncontrollable factors. Controllable factors can be tailored to fit the needs of each country. Starbucks has to find the happy medium so they don’t lose their identity overseas.

Many multinational corporations in the coffee industry have succeeded tremendously such as Starbucks. Each of these corporations has strategies that helped them continue to expand to nations of different cultures, ethnicities, governmental practices, and locations.

Starbucks is a matrix organizational structure where a business is split into different divisions of whatever functions needed and then has multiple managers for each division and finally the lower tier members. This organizational strategy allows information from the customers to travel up to the lower-tier of employees and to the corporate levels are more streamline in a flat organizational structure. This helps as it ensures that Starbuck’s culture of family is communicated. (Starbucks

“We are not in the coffee business, serving people. We are in the people business, serving coffee”, Howard Schultz’s philosophy has shaped and continues shape Starbucks, the world’s number one specialty coffee retailer with over 21,000 outlets in more than 65 countries nowadays (Starbucks, 2011). Starbucks was founded in 1971 and Howard Schultz joined Starbucks in 1982. In 1987, Howard acquired Starbucks and changed the name to Starbucks Corporation.

Even so, just two weeks earlier Howard Schultz announced that the company will be expanding internationally. The plan is to open more than 1500 stores in Germany, France, and Britain over a 3-year span (Forbes, 2008). It is estimated that this expansion will boost revenue by more than 20 percent (MSN Money, 2008). In spite of Starbucks’ struggle among its love-hate relationship between customers and protesters, one thing that Starbucks

In general the coffeehouse industry in the United States was experiencing an increase in coffee consumption per capita due to the “Starbucks effect”. At this time Starbucks was operating approximately 20,000 stores in the United States and was living a fast expansion strategy worldwide.

The company overview is made to deliver an overview and structure of Starbucks Corporation. In addition, the company overview contains timeline of Starbucks, business segments, leadership organizational chart, products, legal entities, success factors, and risks that Starbucks face.

Starbucks dates back from 1971 and is based in Seattle, Washington. The company was founded by Gordon Bowker, Jerry Baldwin and Zev Siegl and it

Raw Materials (Coffee Beans): Coffee bean farming is not vertically integrated into Starbucks; the company purchases coffee beans from farmers. Starbucks choose to outsource farming due to the low potential hold-up problem. For its coffee, Starbucks uses only high-quality Arabica beans, instead of regular commodity and lower quality robusta beans. Since there are a lot of market participants trading Arabica beans (i.e. farmers & Arabica beans buyers), there is an established market price. Moreover, farm land has a low degree of asset specificity, and therefore farmers’ investments do not depend only on Starbucks as

There are plenty of opportunities which exist for Starbucks in the international markets. In countries with growing economies, such as the BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India and China), there are growing upper and middle classes that want to spend money on specialty coffee. Some of these countries are traditionally “Tea Drinkers” that are expanding their tastes to include coffee.

Starbucks uses a matrix organization structure similar to most big corporations. The functional feature of Starbucks’ departmentalization is having an HR department, finance department and a marketing department. These departments are only utilized at the top levels of Starbucks’ organizational structure, mainly its headquarters. For example, the HR department would typically implement a new policy and that policy would apply to all Starbucks cafés. This facilitates top-down monitoring and control with the CEO at the top. Doing this helps the company maintain consistency throughout its stores and allows for employees to know what is expected of them. Starbucks also involves geographic divisions, which are mainly in the Chinese, American and European markets with each division having a vice president. This allows for each manager to only have to report to two superiors, the geographic CEO and the functional CEO. This helps for closer geographical needs and each division is given a high degree of flexibility in strategy and policy. Next, Starbucks uses product-based divisions that address product lines such as coffee, baked goods, merchandise, etc. Starbucks is a brand and they market their own merchandise with supports from its organizational structure. Finally, teams are also used with its most notable team structure being the baristas. They work together to make the product which are given to the customer that can watch it being made. It takes a team to provide top notch

Starbucks’ retail entry model in the United States does not have the same strategy as their international model. In the states Starbucks holds great control as a corporation, but in international territory, country partnerships, cultural, government laws and politics play a very important role in Starbucks’ entry strategy. Starbucks has set it sights globally since the coffee market has come close to saturation in the U.S. which will give them the opportunity to continue to expand without fierce competition. Starbucks has looked to countries like India and other emerging markets with great growth potential to set down new roots. Starbucks recognizes India as a great choice to expand business internationally but also recognizes the complexity in the same market after several attempts to enter without success.