The Internet has created new ways to do business for organizations with much less capital planning as opposed to the high capital needs of traditional brick and mortar organizations. Based on this, answer the following questions:
How should management and leadership address each type of business?
Describe the organizational structure of 1 traditional and 1 online retailer, identifying a management or leadership challenge for each type of retailer.
Are the challenges basically the same or different? In what ways are they the same, or how are they different?
Student’s main post meets or exceeds the following requirements:
Responds completely to all of parts of discussion question (4 points)
Communicates content information accurately and/or logically (4 points)
Delivers a thoughtful response demonstrating insights and reflections (4 points)
Connects to both key content concepts and personal experiences (4 points)
/16 pts.
Unit 1 – Discussion Board Management and Leadership
The world of business has dramatically evolved thanks to the gradual growth and infiltration of the Internet in firms’ operations. Most notably, unlike before, where entities solely operated on a brick and mortar basis, most businesses today are Internet-facilitated. Both physical and online retail enterprises present growth opportunities for firms, yet, they still expose the latter to management challenges such as planning digital strategies and managing personnel, which require strategic leadership such as active management and hiring the right staff to foster business success.
Management and leadership should address online and brick and mortar stores through active management and hiring the right staff, respectively. Most notably, the management of a business may not have all the required expertise to operate an online retail store. Thus, outsourcing may be a better opportunity to acquire the needed skills. Nonetheless, the management should be actively involved in all the operations to keep pace with new developments in their online businesses. On the other hand, the success of most physical stores depends on the employees’ performance. Therefore, the management should address such types of enterprises by targeting all employee-related aspects such as hiring and training.
Organizational Structures
Both traditional and online retailers, such as Walmart and Amazon, have distinct organizational structures that present different management and leadership challenges. For example, Amazon, an online retailer, operates under a hierarchical organizational structure, although the firm’s system is quite flexible compared to the typical hierarchical corporate system. Three CEOs head Amazon at the top of the hierarchy, followed by their vice presidents and subordinates who report to their supervisors. One of the management challenges that face Amazon is planning digital strategies. Most notably, the firm deals solely with online consumers who have access to several online stores, which implies that structuring an ideal communication channel that surpasses that of its competitors may be a challenge.
On the other hand, Walmart operates under a hierarchical functional-organizational structure that is characterized by vertical lines of command and function-based systems such as marketing and sales departments. One of the management challenges associated with Walmart is dealing with the firm’s personnel. As noted, the success of traditional retailers depends on their employees’ performance. Therefore, acquiring the right combination of highly motivated and skilled employees may be a significant challenge for the retailer.
Fundamentally, the two retailers face different management challenges. On the one hand, Amazon faces challenges associated with information technology. On the other hand, Walmart faces challenges related to human resources.
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