All businesses have varied cultures and dissimilar business types mainly cause this, as the practice of work may be more professional than others or more laid back. Rolls-Royce is a business employing people of a high expertise and high quality production they are trying to make their culture open to encourage employees in working in a two way communication, consulting, motivating and to be supportive of one another rather them working in fear.
Business structure:
The functional areas within Rolls Royce are work closely together; each area contains different experts with different qualifications, experience and training to do their necessary job. Although the areas have different rolls in the company they all work together so the company acts as an integrated entity.
The structure of Rolls Royce is relatively heretical with its directors at the top, then down to junior managers for each department, then to the supervisors and finally down to the employees (staff). It supplies jobs for over 40,000 people in over 30 countries so it is very important for Rolls Royce to get their layers of management as small as possible because of communication can be very fragile in a workforce of this mass and also the cost of paying for unnecessary layers.
Functional Areas
Rolls Royce has about nine functional areas. This is to divide the company into smaller functions. Each function contains a set of experts within that particular part of the company. They each work closely together so that the company acts as an integrated entity. Each function specialists in its own area to enable us to move from initial design concepts through to the finished product. Each functional area has a particular job within the company and helps the company to achieve their objectives.
Research and Development
This functional area consists of the objective to meet the customer’s needs by using the information given by the marketing department. The research side is important to Rolls Royce because they have to stay on top of the rapid growing technology, to keep up with their customers need, if not they will lose out on all sales. That’s why Rolls Royce needs to keep a highly trained workforce to carry out research to be the number one choice for their market. Human Resources make sure all staff in this section is informed with new technology by sending them to of the job training and also on the job training depending on the immensity of the teaching
The design is equally important because this determines how the product will look and work helping. The marketing department gives pointers to this area of what the market wants and needs in the new product.
E-Business
This is the most rapidly changing area in any business today. This means computers installed in one year they will be out of date in three more years and will have to be update once again, this costing the company thousands a time. This functional area role is to control all the electrical equipment and maintain it to a respectable standard. This is due to new software and hardware coming out each day and the company will need to be up to date with things in order to achieve their objectives. This functional area is also the only area that can change or add to the existing electronically equipment within the company. This functional area helps the company with objectives by keeping all the computers and other electronically equipment up to date with the right software. In the worst scenario for Rolls would be for their computer network crashed and losing all records, e-mail capitulates, Internet and every thing else computer orientated. It would be this department’s job to fix it and get it running again.
Manufacturing
This is the reason for Rolls Royce’s existence as it is a manufacturing base company and all the other departments all tie into this department in one-way or the other. The main objective of this sector is to produce the certain amount of a certain product in a certain time.
Marketing & Sales
This functional area stores all the customer details, produces invoices, receives and logs customer orders. This is just the sales part of the functional area; the marketing part carries out the market research. It also records market trends, analyses any competition and conducts all promotion campaigns The marketing functional area also informs the customer that a product is on sale and deals with persuading the customer to buy the product. This functional area helps the company with objectives by taking care of the advertising of any new products made by the company.
Finance
This functional area deals with credit control. Accounts, the pay role and historical financial records Historical financial records are there for people to look at if needed e.g. the taxman. The functional area also deals with payments in and out of the company. This functional area helps the company with objectives by dealing with all the money in and out of the company.
Customer Service
This functional area is where any complaints from the pubic come to or any inquiries come to as well. This functional area helps the company with objectives by dealing with the public and any problems they might have.
Purchasing
This functional area is where the company buys any raw materials or any thing else such as parts for machinery that the company might need. This functional area could deal with millions of pounds in just one day. This functional area helps the company with objectives by purchasing the materials needed within the company.
Human Resources
The human resources functional area deals with personal issues e.g. sickness, time off, pay etc, it also deals with recruitment, training, dismissal and redundancy. This functional area helps the company with objectives by all the staff and their problems e.g. sickness.
Quality
This functional area is in charge of quality control. This is probably the most important functional area out of them all. This is where all the final products come to, to be checked over for quality. If the product is not up to the right mark is will be scrapped. This is the most important functional area because if the product is not checked fur quality before the end, the company might have to chuck away the particular product and lose millions of pounds. This functional area helps the company with objectives by checking the quality of the final product before they are sent out to the customer, which could save millions of pounds in the long run.
With large companies like Rolls-Royce if the structure is too tall communication can become very hard within the management and down, The communication within Roll Royce are very important both internal and external, because their goods they are selling are worth millions and they cant afford to produce to many or too little at a time, external communication must be kept with the buyer even after the trade to keep in good terms with them to maintain business in the future as stated in their Quality policy "we will satisfy our customers through teamwork, which means everyone acting in the best interests of the customer and the company". The methods of communication they us are;
* Email and Video conferencing: used to instantly inform customers/departments across the world.
* Memoranda: for internal use, for example summons to a meeting.
* Face to face: common in most businesses
* Meetings: Used to discus downward for what each department is required to do.
* Phone/fax: also common way to communicate horizontally and vertically.
Rolls Royce is a Plc (public limited company); this means that anyone can buy shares of the company. This helps them raise more capital also can help they expand and diversify as they have done over the past century. This also brings some dilemmas. As if more that %50 of the company's shares are bought the company can be over taken and run by some one else, also unlike a private limited company Rolls Royce has to sacrifice all profit into its sated objectives.
