Question

(Note: Do not attempt to solve if you cannot answer all)

Please answer the following discussion questions in detail on company "Vitamin Shoppe":

1) Review the organizational structure for "Vitamin Shoppe" and determine if and how it needs to be adjusted in order to be aligned with the new strategy or strategies.

Answer 1

Vitamin Shoppe is an American retailer of nutritional supplements.

The Organizational structure of Vitamin Shoppe is Functional Organization Structure and is headed by CEO Colin Watts. It has 29 members in its board and top management.

The Functional Organizational Structure is based on an organization being divided up into smaller groups with specific tasks or roles. For example, a company could have a group working in sales, another in marketing and a different one in finance.

The division is based on functions and everybody reports to its immediate boss.

How the organizational structure of Vitamin Shoppe needs to be adjusted to be aligned with the new strategies?

The company Vitamin Shoppe has started its operations in Canada under the brand name of VitaPath and is further looking to expand its operations in other countries. The company knows that the market of health supplements are going to grow in the near future and the strategy is to establish the company in different markets and become the first choice of prospects when they think about purchasing health supplements.

To undertake the strategy stated above the company will have to make a some little changes in its organizational structure as the company is going global it will have a lot of decisions to make and any delay in those decisions may take away an opportunity from Vitamin Shoppe.

The company must implement a Matrix Organizational Structure, which is a hybrid organizational structure; the matrix structure is a blend of the functional organizational structure and the project based organizational structure.

In the matrix structure, employees may report to two or more bosses depending on the situation or the task which is given to them. This would make the decision making process swift and quick.

Since Vita Shoppe is an old company and has a culture at its office the change in organizational structure may not be easy and thus the process should be implemented swiftly and in phases.