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In today's competitive atmosphere, where people can buy books without ever leaving their homes, Barnes and Noble offers human assistance. The employee structure in stores is geared toward customer service. You do not see B & N. employees so tied up with shelving books that they cannot help a customer. They are encouraged to leave that task and see if they can help any customers in the vicinity. They have computer kiosks where employees can rapidly help a customer find a book either within the store or online through Barnes and Noble. This requires a centralized organizational structure so all stores will conform to the company's standards. However, each store will also have books of local interest, and the feedback of local employees facilitates the decisions regarding which of those books to stock.
4. Describe the organizational structure in your organization...
Does the organization's current structure support its competitive position? If so, why? If not, what changes would you recommend (and why)?
Barnes & Noble is organized in a highly centralized way, with the country divided up into regions. This seems appropriate for such a large retail operation. Individual employees may think they know a better way to track inventory, or even to tally daily receipts, but the company needs consistency from store to store, both in its business practices and in its approach to marketing its products and serving its customers. If there's a law in this, it may be in the sameness from store to store. People who buy books choose them carefully. They're highly selective, and stores whose internal decorative architecture vary a little from place to place might have appeal. Or,
Aristotle began as the student of Plato, but a reader is hard pressed to find any particular similarities between the worldviews of the two. In fact, if we have studied Platonic Dualism and Plato's accompanying Theory of Forms, it starts to look like Aristotle's philosophy is based upon the attempt to be as un-Platonic as possible. Plato believed in a double nature of reality -- the real physical world that
leader within the educational sector, it is critical that that qualities of good leadership be reflected upon the entire course of ones career.The management and leadership of academic institution is in deed a challenge that often results in poor performance in our contemporary schools (Schmoker,2001). In this paper, we present an elaborate reflection of my views on educational leadership principles that I have explored in the context of your
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