Western Union Case Study

In May 2002, Christina Gold joined Western Union as the chief executive officer. In early 2003, Gold has started implementing a new organizational structure, the aim of the restructure is to unify the company's U.S operations with its international division. Instead of having a U.S. centric product line, it will change to a regional structure with three main division: Asia-Pacific, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and South Asia; and the Americas. Gold has also made it clear to the employees that the company`s revenues should not decrease during the change.
It is very important for businesses to be sensitive to the cultures and people of the concerned countries in which they operate. This is because each person's and each culture`s needs are
in a way that is similar to how it operates in the U.S. This is one of their limitations that needs to be overcome. Thus, there are no other options other than restructuring and decentralization. Decentralizing means that there will be an increase in number of Western Union offices. Hikmet Ersek, the VP of Europe, Middle East, Africa and South Asia division, wants to have more than 35 offices around the world as opposed to the current 5 offices, which can provide extra services and support to the international Western Union agents. In order for Western Union to act locally and think globally, the company needs to change the way it did business. It is common business knowledge that for a company to succeed, it needs to satisfy the needs of the customers, and to do that, business needs to act locally no matter how big the organization is. Therefore, one main reason for restructuring the company is that it needs to think like a global brand while acting locally, the company needs to shift some of the decision making power from the main headquarter to the staff who are working in those specific regions so that they can give exactly what the customers really want. The way the company decides to do that is to have extra offices around the world as well as keeping some major aspects of the business centrally organised, including the creations of brand and network
Internationalization alone is not enough to become successful. Each region would have its own culture and customs that need to be understood. Therefore, to provide quick and transparent services, Western Union should delegate the decision making power to lower level management within the regional or functional unit, they need to restructure the entire company so that they can decentralize power to a more local