Noopur Naik

Started in 1947 by Doug Cummins and Bob.

Serve the customer attitude

Over 200 stores by 1997

Central office was in Atlanta handled
It was a standard physical layout
Head office in Atlanta handled: Personnel,
merchandising, financial, purchasing, real estate
and legal affairs i.e Functional Grouping
Individual stores: organization divided into
regions- southern, south-eastern and north eastern
regions i.e. Divisional Grouping
Each region was divided into 5 districts with 15
stores
A district director for them
District further divided into 4 lines of authority
i.e again Functional Grouping



The proposed design is Divisional Grouping:
This will solve the problem of slow adaptation to
change since each division will be dedicated to a
particular type of work, while the middle levels were
reduced. It provides flexibility and change since
each unit is smaller.
It will decentralize the decision making

It is also a Horizontal structure
Every manager would report to store manager so
he would be incomplete change of the store
Hence the district supervisor can expand his role
from supervising to training and development
There will be a direct contact between managers
and employees in various departments i.e. liaison
role created



The creation of a single store manager role
will give him complete control
Hence cooperation would improve


They could expand their line to non grocery
items
For each line they add, a separate department
manager so as to maintain horizontal structure
The should also use new technology. An IT
coordinator can be employed for each district
to help its implementation



Thus C & C needs to focus more on the liaison
roles between departments
Employ a decentralized structure
Improve the horizontal linkages