Preview

Psy/230 Organizational Structure

Better Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1089 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Psy/230 Organizational Structure
MANAGEMENT 230
WEEK 6
ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE

An organizational structure refers to the way that an organization arranges people and jobs so that its work can be performed and its goals can be met. When a work group is very small and face-to-face communication is frequent, formal structure may be unnecessary, but in a larger organization such as Barnes and Noble, decisions have to be made about the delegation of various tasks. Thus, procedures are established that assign responsibilities for various functions. It is these decisions that determine the organizational structure.
In an organization of any size or complexity, employees ' responsibilities typically are defined by what they do, who they report to, and for managers, who
…show more content…
A structure depends on the organization 's objectives and strategy. In a centralized structure, the top layer of management has most of the decision making power and has tight control over departments and divisions. In a decentralized structure, the decision making power is distributed and the departments and divisions may have different degrees of independence. Barnes & Noble, Inc. is the largest book retailer in the United States, operating mainly through its Barnes & Noble Booksellers chain of bookstores headquartered in lower Fifth Avenue in Lower Manhattan, New York City. Barnes & Noble also operated the chain of small B. Dalton Booksellers stores in malls until they announced the liquidation of the chain. The company is known for large, upscale retail outlets, many of which contain a café serving Starbucks Coffee, and for competitive discounting of bestsellers. Most stores also sell magazines, newspapers, DVDs, graphic novels, gifts, games, and music. Video games and related items were sold in the company 's GameStop retail outlets until October 2004, when the division was spun off into an independent company. Barnes & Noble is also known …show more content…
The company operates 658 retail stores (as of August 2, 2014[update]) in all 50 U.S. states in addition to 705 college bookstores that serve over 5 million students and more than 250,000 faculty members across the country. Barnes & Noble also operates BN.com. In a move to stay on top of their competitors, Barnes and Noble have teamed up with Samsung to invent a new product called a Samsung Galaxy Tablet for Nook. This will further Barnes and Noble’s goal to be the leading vendor combining technology with reading

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    Barnes & Noble is a company that was founded and owned by actual booksellers. To this date, they are the nation 's largest bookseller and employ more than 50,000 booksellers in the 800 stores around the nation. Leonard Riggio is the founder and chairman with a vision that bookstores could be the place where people could be and become (www.barnesandnoble.com). In this paper I will look at Barnes & Noble 's vision, goals and objectives as well as their strategic plan and will give a SWOT analysis of the company.…

    • 429 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    Barnes and Noble is a Fortune 500 company and is the leader in the bookselling arena operating 1,341 storefronts, 636 operations on college campuses servicing over 4.6 million students and faculty, and operates one of the largest ecommerce sites on the World Wide Web. Barnes and Noble employs over 35,000 full and part time employees across the United States (www.barnesandnoble.com, 2011). Barnes and Noble and Microsoft joined strategically to develop the digital platform known as NOOK, a digital book providing customers a multitude of books, magazines, newspapers, and other content via downloads from the Barnes and Noble site. Barnes and Noble provides the customer base with over 6,000 publications of various materials…

    • 2174 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Barnes and Noble Case Study

    • 3518 Words
    • 15 Pages

    Barnes and Noble (B&N) bookstore was started as a student book-exchange store. It later evolved into book retail superstores, and also incorporated online retailing, college bookstores and an ebook store. With more than 600 stores today, B&N is the largest bookstore in the nation. As large as they are, they have faced a lot of challenges as well. B&N started as a very innovative business. In fact, they were the first bookstore to air television ads. They were very memorable and still remain in the heads of truly loyal customers even 40 years later. They were also the first bookstore to sell best-selling books at a huge discount in order to sell more and get their name out there. They expanded throughout the country and it was almost as though they became an instant favorite overnight. They made their stores friendly with cafes and comfortable seats to sit in, so one could enjoy a book without the hassle of everyday life to get in the way. They tended towards the slower lifestyle and wanted their customers to be able to have a place they could escape to with their story and enjoy.…

    • 3518 Words
    • 15 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Barnes and Noble

    • 1030 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Barnes & Noble does business -- big business -- by the book. As the #1 bookseller in the US, it operates about 650 superstores throughout 49 states and the District of Columbia under the banners Barnes & Noble, Bookstop, and Bookstar, as well as about 200 mall stores using the names B. Dalton, Doubleday, and Scribner's. The company's GameStop subsidiary is the #1 US video game retailer with about 1,500 stores under the names Babbage's Etc., GameStop, and FuncoLand. Barnes & Noble owned about 75% of online book seller barnesandnoble.com after purchasing Bertelsmann's interest in 2003; Barnes & Noble then purchased all remaining shares and took the company private in May 2004.…

    • 1030 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Barnes & Noble, Inc. operates as a content, commerce, and technology company in the United States. It provides access to books, magazines, newspapers, and other content through its multi-channel distribution platform. The company sells its products directly to customers through its bookstores and on barnesandnoble.com. Barnes & Noble conducts its online business through Barnes & Noble.com, one of the Web’s largest e-commerce sites, which also features more than 3 million titles in its eBookstore. Through Barnes & Noble’s NOOK eReading product offering, customers can buy and read eBooks on the widest range of platforms, including NOOK eBook Readers, devices from partner companies, and hundreds of the most popular mobile and computing devices using free NOOK software.…

    • 1177 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Barnes and Noble Case Study

    • 7043 Words
    • 29 Pages

    Barnes & Noble was acquired by Leonard Riggio in 1971, who oversaw the growth of the business. Leonard Riggio, the company's chairman, began his bookselling career while attending New York University in the early 1960s. Working as a clerk in the university bookstore, he became convinced that he could do a better job serving students, and he opened a competing store of his own. With a small investment, Mr. Riggio established the Student Book Exchange (SBX) in Manhattan's Greenwich Village in 1965. The store quickly became one of New York’s finest bookstores, known for its knowledgeable staff, wide selection and great service.…

    • 7043 Words
    • 29 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    5th Sense of Cool

    • 435 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Barnes and Noble, along with countless bookstores around the world, act as a social hub. It has magazines, different types of books, a coffee house and people. While my friends try to look for another sequel to a book, I notice different types of people in the store. Some are there with their families to buy Burt’s Bees while others are looking for different translations of the bible. Each person at Barnes and Noble is part of one of the groups of cool.…

    • 435 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The company has been selling direct to consumers for over 25 years, beginning with its mail-order catalogue in the 1970s. In the late 1980s, Barnes & Noble tested selling books online in an early generation venue called Trintex, a joint venture between Sears and IBM. In the mid-1990s, it sold books on CompuServe and later opened a full-fledged book superstore on America Online in March 1997. The company’s Web site, Barnes & Noble.com (www.barnesandnoble.com), was launched in May of that year.…

    • 351 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    Economic Research

    • 1797 Words
    • 8 Pages

    2. "Barnes & Noble - Books, Textbooks, EBooks, Toys, Games & More." Barnes & Noble - Books, Textbooks, EBooks, Toys, Games & More. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Feb. 2013.…

    • 1797 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Until the mid 1990s, there were two major bookstore chains: National Bookstore and Goodwill Bookstore. That's not to say there weren't independent bookstores at the time: La Solidardid Bookshop is an old independent bookstores, going as far back as 1965. Popular Bookstore is also one of those legacy franchises that didn't quite transition into a major chain. But let's go back to the two prominent bookstores of the time*.…

    • 1207 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Companies Mission

    • 653 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Barnes & Nobles, Inc is one of the major bookstores in the USA with over 665 branches all over 49 states. Aside from this, Barnes & Nobles…

    • 653 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Strategic Alliances

    • 1000 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Coffee shops and bookstores are completely different from one another. They have entirely different markets. Coffee shops sell various caffeinated beverages such as lattes, cappuccinos, and macchiato (as well as various pastries)… and bookstores sell books. So what is it that brought these two big players, Starbucks and Barnes & Noble, together to make such a huge impact on both the book and coffee shop industries?…

    • 1000 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    CEO work idea

    • 2590 Words
    • 8 Pages

    Barnes & Noble is a $6.8 billion company with 675 carefully selected locations in every state in the country. It also operates 686 college…

    • 2590 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Word

    • 3261 Words
    • 14 Pages

    * “Companies utilize organization structure to create their business hierarchies. Each company determines the staffing levels that it needs to operate efficiently, and organization structures play an important role in this determination. In addition to delineating company levels, organizational structures assign clear roles to departments and individuals to provide them with a sense of purpose and responsibility. While organizational structures can be unique to different companies, there are several distinct and commonly used types of organizational structures.…

    • 3261 Words
    • 14 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    organizational structure

    • 557 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Organizational structure is a system used to define a hierarchy within an organization. It identifies each job, its function and where it reports to within the organization. This structure is developed to establish how an organization operates and assists an organization in obtaining its goals to allow for future growth. The structure is illustrated using an organizational chart.…

    • 557 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays