In: Operations Management
How large is FedEx as measured by the number of its employees?
How many levels in the
hierarchy does it have from the top to the bottom? based on these
two measures and any other
information you may have; would you say FedEx operates with a
relatively tall or flat structure?
Does FedEx have a centralized or decentralized approach to decision
making?
A) The Employee base of FedEx Corporation is very high and it has more than 2,80,000 employees worldwide operating at 5 global regions as Asia Pacific (APAC), Latin America and Carribean (LAC), Canada, United States, Europe, Middle East, Indian Subcontinent and Africa (EMEA).
B) Though employee base of FedEx Corporation is very high, it has only six levels in the hierarchy of management from top to bottom where CEO/ Board of directors on the top and Employees on the bottom at level 6. Hierarchical organizational structure of FedEx is given below.
Where,
DSM= Departmental Senior Manager
Team Lead= Supervisor of FedEx small operational teams.
C) If we consider the facts from A abd B part of this answer, we can observe that with such a hude employee base worldwide FedEx has very limited management levels in the organizational structure i.e. just six levels in which CEO being on the top and Employees being on the bottom level of hierarchy. From this we can say that FedEx has Flat organisational structure as compare to other tall structure organizations where responsibilities are distributed widely in the hierarchy of organization.
D) When we say that organizational structure followed by FedEx is relatively Flat then we must understand one of the characteristic of Flat Organisational structure that decision making is quick because there are very few levels of management who have given wide span of control and responsibilities. Hence we can conclude that FedEx has decentralized approach of decision making where responsibilities are delegated widely down the hierarchy to the low level of management.