My company provides comprehensive credit card processing solutions to merchants across the United States. The company specializes in credit card processing solutions, merchant solutions, and POS system. The company was founded in 2000 and has over 14 years of experiences in the payment processing industry. The company is a privately held company with 30 employees. There are only 2 layers of management. The graph below is the simplified organization chart which shows positions that are related to this article.
There are two merits to being a flat organization: 1. The company can respond more rapidly and more flexibly to changes in the markets. 2. The company can monitor activities more quickly and adjust accordingly. The achievement of these merits depends on the how effectively the front line employees implements management’s decisions. Often times, the C.E.O. would identify a problem and implement new changes. These changes would sometimes change the flow for its employees and eventually be ignored by the employees. The managers of the “front line” employees are not enforcing these new policies as well and eventually, these changes would never last. Therefore, the competitive advantage that my company should have as a flat organization loses its merits.
All of the employees understand one thing about the company. As long as employees do not violate company policy, they will not lose their job. The employees do not need to worry about job security. There is a lack of motivation for the employees to take the extra step to improve the company as a whole. Most will just focus on his or her own task at hand. If these tasks are completed, then their job is done. The lack of motivation is evident when the C.E.O. tries to implement changes. Employees begin to pick and choose which changes he or she should utilize. If they do not like the change, they will just go back to the old way of