What is the structure of a business organisation? International Racecourse Management

company. I.R.M needs to market and advertise their product - horse racing - in such a way that it appeals to the public. There is no point in having the track, fixtures and horses if no one comes to the course, resulting in little or no turnover. It could then be considered that I.R.M are not undertaking their responsibilities - successful management of racecourses.The BHB are the governing body of horseracing in the U.K. As far as racecourses are concerned the BHB have rigorous constraints that every course must adhere to in order to attain a racing licence. Should any of the conditions not be met then the BHB have the power to authorise an immediate closure of all the facilities until the criteria is met. It is therefore vitally important that I.R.M is constantly aware if the latest regulations issued by the BHB.The last two stakeholders, shareholders and management, don’t hold such an important key to the success of I.R.M as the others do. The shareholders are important to some extent, as they are the capital behind I.R.M, but could easily want to sell their shares at any minute. Fortunately this is not a major issue because someone else will purchase the shares and come into the company. The management is a similar situation as most people work at their best when they feel secure and content with their pay and conditions. Should an employee not be happy with any aspect of their job and feels it is best if they leave the company then a replacement is found and the company will continue towards its objectives with the minimum amount of disruption.Environmental Factors There are a number of external influences that I.R.M are affected by in there everyday existence. These can range from Political through to social issues. The following are the five most important issues that affect I.R.M.· Employment· Legislation· Local geography· Investment Performance· LifestylesEmployment, or lack of it, has great influences on the racing industry as a whole. During the last recession when unemployment was at its highest, racecourse attendance generally dropped to its lowest levels in the post war era. This in turn meant the racecourse’s income fell which in turn lead to lower prizemoney levels, which meant a lower number of runners in each race. This didn’t look appealing to those customers who still came to races, so they didn’t come and so on. It became a viscous circle that came close to closing several small courses.Government legislation has a big impact on I.R.M and horse racing. The most recent example of this is the ban on cigarette advertising in sport. Over 30% of races were sponsored by tobacco firms. I.R.M runs 78 fixtures a year, with a minimum of 6 races per day. I.R.M run at least 468 individual races a year. Several of these are sponsored by tobacco firms which now leaves I.R.M in a situation where they’ll not loose revenue from lost sponsorship, but they’ll have try and recruit new sponsors - an expensive process.Local geography is vitally important to any business, but for a sport like horse racing where you only have a selective market, your location is essential. I.R.M are fortunate that they have three courses as this maximises the number of customers that they get each year. A recent survey stated that people are quite willing to travel up to an hour and a half to go racing. Doncaster is fortunate to have a potential market of around 10 million people within this limit. Whereas Catterick and Redcar is slightly less. This shows that your local geography is an essential factor, if I.R.M ran a racecourse in the middle of the countryside then the chances of success would be minimal from the outset.Investment performance for I.R.M mainly consists of sponsors. Sponsors are only willing to sponsor a race if they can get value for money. They’ll require a big on course attendance, lots of coverage at the track, racecard adverts, national papers using their name on the sports pages and a big incentive is television coverage on either BBC or Channel Four. I.R.M must be able to offer all the basics if they are to attract new sponsors and should they have T.V coverage then there chances will be greater.Lifestyles is the environment factor that has the least impact on I.R.M. Horse racing is a specialised industry, it is something that you like because you’ve grown up with it. I.R.M are currently trying to promote racing to youngsters who have no knowledge of the industry at all, in the hope that it’ll become an interest that they wish to pursue in the future.FunctionsI.R.M has five main departments within the organisation. Each department has many aspects within it that contributes towards the running of the company and enabling it to achieve its aims and objectives. The departments and the tasks that they undertake are as follows:1. Racecourse Management · Run administration offices· Attract sponsors· Run overall maintenance of course and buildings· Promote racedays· Sell corporate hospitality· Utilise buildings for non-raceday events2. Clerks of the Course· Control and supervise each raceday· Prepare the race programmes, fixtures and prizemoney· Liase with the groundsman to prepare the running sufrace3. Accounts· Send invoices to clients· Pay invoices from suppliers· Prepare monthly salaries· Issue weekly pay packets· Pay prizemoney to owners4. Media Sales· Buy and sell horse racing from overseas countries· Negotiate contracts for U.K racecourses with T.V companies5. Consultancy· Working in partnership with overseas racecourses in Vietnam and Czech RepublicEach department contributes greatly towards I.R.M achieving their desired objectives. The management department is the main contributor but it relies greatly on the Clerks of the Courses because without them the racedays wouldn’t take place. The media sales and consultancy departments work well together as these are mainly activities that take place overseas which help promote I.R.M in foreign markets. Finally the accounts department is relied upon greatly by all the other departments for payment of bills and employees wage payments.Elements of Organisational StructureWhen any organisation is set up a structure of some sort is put in place. There are several elements that contribute to the structure of an organisation. These are that they must work with a system that contains a structure of some sort. They must make a conscious effort to plan which then enables the workforce to apply a co-ordinated and co-operative approach to achieving their goals. For any organisation to succeed there must be evidence of some, if not all, the above elements in the business. If these don’t exist then there’ll be no systematical way of dealing with everyday issues. There will be no structure, so no-one will know who has authority and responsibility. Without a plan the company loose direction, whereas with a plan the company will have small amounts of co-ordination and co-operation so people know whose doing what and when. Finally, goals are one of the most important aspects of business, because without these nobody has anything to head towards. There would be no incentives to work and achieve satisfaction. It is widely known that the bigger the firm the more co-ordination is present. When a firm comes into fruition with only a few departments, there won’t be a formal structure. As the company grows so does its structure, new departments are created . There are several factors that each department has to have to function, not just the whole organisation. These are the division of labour within the department - who does what, when and how? There also needs to be a hierarchy within the department where issues like the span of control, authority, responsibility, accountability and the number of hierarchical levels must be addressed. All these contribute towards good co-ordination of departments. Organisational Structure of I.R.MBoard of DirectorsChief ExecutiveCatterick Redcar Marketing Media Accounts Manager Manager Manager Sales H&S Admin H&S Admin P.A. Accountsofficer assistant officer assistant assistantI.R.M relies on a more formal or hierarchical structure. The lines represent a downward line of communication, i.e. Chief Executive receives his instructions from the Board of Directors. He then passes on his commands to each department, where the manager then delegates the tasks effectively within the department. This is known as Line management. Everyone in the structure has an aim or objective, from doing the filing to attracting a new sponsor. The former objectives are usually delegated quite low down the structure whereas the latter are normally found at the top of the pyramid.Types of Organisational StructureThere are a number of different types of organisational structure. The following are the four main types associated with businesses today:· Functional structure· Product organisation· Holding company· Matrix organisationFunctional organisations are usually organised through the specialist functions that each department has to offer. This type of structure is seen most often where there is only a single product or service on offer by the company. A good example of a company that is organised to this style is British Airways. They would be a centralised organisation that has several hierarchical levels within the company. The first level would be broken into departments like finance, personnel, marketing and so on where other levels would then be identified.Product or market organisation is very similar to functional organisation as it is based around lines of authority, but the difference is that the first level is divided into geographical locations rather than departments. Then within each geographical location you then begin to find the more traditional lines of authority. Marks and Spencer is a good example of this structure. All the stores in a certain region will report to the area manager, who then reports to the head office. Yet within each store the department managers still have to report to their store manager.A holding company is very similar to that of a market structure, also known as divisional structure. A good example of this was British Rail before privatisation. British Rail was the main company, but there were several internal departments within the main one, e.g. Network South-East, Cross Country Sprinters services, main line routes up the east coast and the west coast. These were all independent divisions of the same overall company.The matrix structure is the final organisational structure. This is associated to a company that produces many different products, but each product has to be managed simultaneously. Cadburys Schweeps is a good example of this as they produce many products. The distribution manager, maintenance manager, quality manager, sales and marketing manager all must communicate with the manager for each production team at the same time, not just one product at a time. The lines of command go from one department to several others, up and down, not just downward.Authority, Responsibility and Accountability Authority is defined as the right to influence others and request action. In a business situation a manager has been given the authority from the organisation and ahs the power to tell his employees what to do. For which he expects a positive response. Authority can also be passed from the manager to one of his subordinates if it helps the employee complete the task and improve the company.Responsibility has been defined as the obligation to perform a task, function or assignment. A manger is unable to discard his responsibility of a certain situation by delegating tasks to others, it just means that he increases his levels of responsibility. Although, the employee to whom the task is delegated to now has certain responsibilities that they must adhere to. Yet the overall responsibility still lies with the manager.Accountability is the obligation to report back results of the responsibilities undertaken. This is very similar to responsibility in the way that although it is possible for managers to delegate tasks to employees, they are still accountable to their superiors about the situation in hand. If a problem occurred the manager is still held accountable for the task even though he didn’t do it.ControlControl is defined as the process of ensuring that actual activities conform to planned activities.1. Control is needed by organisations so that they can measure the effectiveness of their business. After a plan has been set up, control is used to see if the output is up to the standards that have been set. If things aren’t up to standard then it’s up to the management to decide whether appropriate action should be taken. Control is used to enhance products or services. Organisations must be aware of the level of control implemented in the company, too much can cause low morale. Two major types of control are:1. Financial control2. Quality controlFinancial control is an analysis of all the major financial statements that every company has to produce at the end of each year. This is items like the balance sheet, profit and loss account and cash flow statements. These statements provide the company with a picture of their current financial situation, whether they make a profit or a loss, where the money has been spent and so on. These are the advantages of financial control. Its disadvantages are that they generally only cover one year and for many external reasons that year could have been a poor year performance wise. Therefore any perspective investors might think twice before deciding whether to invest in the company. Yet in previous years the finances could have been excellent but this information isn’t known because the statements only show one year.Quality control is the process where tests are made on the products to check that they reach recommended standards, set by either the company or the by legislation. Any manufacturing company, for example Mars, does hundreds of test a week to make sure that the product is fit for sale. Tests done at Mars would involve things like the chocolate taste, quality of the fillings, size and shape of the product. The advantages are that it manages to highlight any problems or defaults that occur before the product gets into the market. Disadvantages appear though, for example a constant defect will usually mean an employee is not doing the tasks he/she were set. This leads to dissatisfaction amongst the employees. Also too many tests make the employees feel that they are always being watched, which also can lead to dissatisfaction.