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Mrs Fields Cookies

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Situation: In 1977, Debbi Fields opened her first Mrs. Fields ' store in Palto Alto, California. The Mrs. Fields store concept quickly expanded to a national and international level. With more than 500 Mrs. Fields ' cookie stores in 25 states and five countries on four continents, Mrs. Fields ' Cookies was dependent on a corporate structure that was technologically advanced. The company 's organizational strategy included a flat organizational structure feel and a management control system that "put as much decision making and intelligence into the store level PC as is necessary to free the manager to do those things that uniquely people do" (HBS, p.6).
Critical Issue #1: A Flat Organization In a flat organization structure, …show more content…

The system also allowed for more timely decision making as attested by Tom Richman:

[e]ven when she isn 't there, she 's there...in the standards built in the scheduling program, in the hourly goals, in the sampling and suggestive selling, on the phone...technology has 'leveraged ' Debbi 's ability to project her influence into more stores than she could ever reach effectively without it. (HBS, p.9)

In a networked organization, "extensive use of communications technologies and networks ...renders it easier to coordinate across functional boundaries" (Pearlson, p.68). This is evidenced by the MIS organization at Mrs. Fields '. The MIS organization was divided into financial, sales, micro-systems and operations. It can also be argued that when Mrs. Fields ' Holdings, Inc. purchased La Petite Boulangerie and reduced their administrative staff from 53 to 3, this was made possible by absorbing the majority of the functions, including accounting, finance, and human resources into their existing organization. This was undoubtedly made possible by there is evidencing the importance of communication. Critical Issue #2: IT and Management Control

According to Pearlson, IT "profoundly affects the way managers control

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