abhishreshthaa
Abhijeet S
Organisational Structure of Activision Blizzard : Activision Blizzard, Inc., formerly Activision, Inc. (NASDAQ: ATVI) is the American holding company for Activision and Blizzard Entertainment. The company is majority owned by French conglomerate Vivendi SA and was created through the merger of Activision and Vivendi Games, announced on December 2, 2007[4], in a deal worth USD$18.8 billion.[5] The deal closed July 9, 2008. The company believed that the merging of the two companies would create "the world’s largest and most profitable pure-play video game publisher".[6] It believes that it is the only publisher that has "leading market positions across all categories" of the video game industry
CEO
Robert Kotick
9
Chairman of the Board
Jean-Bernard Levy
Vice Chairman of the Board
Michael Griffith
Director
Richard Sarnoff
3
Director
Douglas Morris
6
Director
Philippe Capron
Director
Robert Corti
Director
Robert Morgado
Director
Frédéric Crépin
2
Director
Stephane Roussel
4
Director
Regis Turrini
4
Co-Chairman of the Board
Brian Kelly
Customer
BH
Activision Publishing
EH
Human Resources
AW
Legal
CW
Mergers & Acquisitions
JFG
CFO & COO
TT
4
Public Policy
George Rose
Publishing of Activision Pub...
RK
Blizzard Entertainment
MM
Mintzberg offered comprehensive and lucid explanations on how organisations evolve to reach certain form and shape. Mintzberg claim that the structure of an organisation is an adaptive mechanism that allows the organisation to function in its surrounding and those organisations which posses maladaptive structures will eventually cease to exist. Taking this matter, various types of structure are possible and that organisation continuously seeks to find the structure that is an optimal match to its environment (as cited in Muchinsky, 2005, p. 255). Dubbed as the paradigm proliferation (Robbins and Barnwell, 2006, p. 59), among the notable changes is the flattening of the organisation structure basically because practitioners believe that compared to centralised and hierarchical and decentralised and flat, centralised and flat structures encourage direct communication between and among all staff and shorten turnaround time. In global contexts most specially, the flat structure is increasingly becoming superior to other structures because of its egalitarian nature. Flat organisation structures too are likely to be conducive to deeper integration between superiors and subordinates as what Graen and Graen believe (2005, p. 24).
This is specially true to unintentionally generating complexities within various structures. Facilitated by the degree of differentiation within organisations, Robbins and Barnwell (2006) stress that because of either horizontal or vertical integrations and/or spatial dispersion, organisations are ‘creating organisational silos’ (p. 105). Horizontal integration is the functional nature of the organisations while the vertical integration is structural, and that spatial dispersion is the gap between these functions and internal structures. The changes that are experience in one of these aspects has rippling effect to other factors making the organisations a breeding ground for complexities, making the organisation more vulnerable of the emergent ‘silos’ and therefore blurring the span of control (p. 107) especially in an organisational set-up where units/departments are geographically-scattered (p. 109).
Changes to organisation structures are most apparent on multinational enterprises as there is the necessity to carefully align organisational design with management ability (Robbins and Barnwell, 2006, p. 61). These private institutions that organise one or few industries across many countries have weakened corporate control since they span many countries and cultures. Provided that they should adapt local circumstances that call for decentralised decision-making, in paradox, they are also required to coordinate activities in various parts of the world and stimulate the flow of ideas from one part to another but, nonetheless, the illogicality is that organisation structure varies from organisation to organisation (Robbins and Barnwell, 2006, p. 137). The requirement for organisation structure is to balance the need for coordination with a need for adaption while also patch-working languages, laws and customs. In light of globalisation, in addition, the organisations, apart from the multinational ones, are forced to reorganise the structure so as to facilitate the actual and emergent changes on the administrative, technical, operational requirements especially in face of the growing battle for competitive advantage (Inkpen and Ramaswamy, 2006, p. 78).
For instance, the challenges of innovation for organisation structure, management and operation are immense. These are due to two basic reasons. First is that the innovative process involves the coordination and integration of specialised knowledge and that second, it necessitates the learning in face of uncertainties. As Lazonick (2005) argues, learning is “a social activity that renders the innovative process uncertain, cumulative and collective.” To wit, organisations, in itself, are social entities that are composed of two or more persons who work together towards the achievement of a common goal. With respect to organisation structure, companies, firms or business enterprises can be innovative. Despite the inherent risks delivered by the emerging technologies, the competitive advantage of organisations could be achieved by changing the skill base of organisations in terms of both function and hierarchical integration (Castellacci et al, 2005). Though lacking in evidence-based accounts, the authors pointed that organisation structure is more than about power and its distribution instead also on expanding the competencies and technical requirements of the roles and functions explicitly presented in organisation structures. Robbins and Barnwell (2006) also point out that technology plays an important role in determining the appropriate structure for organisations
CEO
Robert Kotick
9
Chairman of the Board
Jean-Bernard Levy
Vice Chairman of the Board
Michael Griffith
Director
Richard Sarnoff
3
Director
Douglas Morris
6
Director
Philippe Capron
Director
Robert Corti
Director
Robert Morgado
Director
Frédéric Crépin
2
Director
Stephane Roussel
4
Director
Regis Turrini
4
Co-Chairman of the Board
Brian Kelly
Customer
BH
Activision Publishing
EH
Human Resources
AW
Legal
CW
Mergers & Acquisitions
JFG
CFO & COO
TT
4
Public Policy
George Rose
Publishing of Activision Pub...
RK
Blizzard Entertainment
MM
Mintzberg offered comprehensive and lucid explanations on how organisations evolve to reach certain form and shape. Mintzberg claim that the structure of an organisation is an adaptive mechanism that allows the organisation to function in its surrounding and those organisations which posses maladaptive structures will eventually cease to exist. Taking this matter, various types of structure are possible and that organisation continuously seeks to find the structure that is an optimal match to its environment (as cited in Muchinsky, 2005, p. 255). Dubbed as the paradigm proliferation (Robbins and Barnwell, 2006, p. 59), among the notable changes is the flattening of the organisation structure basically because practitioners believe that compared to centralised and hierarchical and decentralised and flat, centralised and flat structures encourage direct communication between and among all staff and shorten turnaround time. In global contexts most specially, the flat structure is increasingly becoming superior to other structures because of its egalitarian nature. Flat organisation structures too are likely to be conducive to deeper integration between superiors and subordinates as what Graen and Graen believe (2005, p. 24).
This is specially true to unintentionally generating complexities within various structures. Facilitated by the degree of differentiation within organisations, Robbins and Barnwell (2006) stress that because of either horizontal or vertical integrations and/or spatial dispersion, organisations are ‘creating organisational silos’ (p. 105). Horizontal integration is the functional nature of the organisations while the vertical integration is structural, and that spatial dispersion is the gap between these functions and internal structures. The changes that are experience in one of these aspects has rippling effect to other factors making the organisations a breeding ground for complexities, making the organisation more vulnerable of the emergent ‘silos’ and therefore blurring the span of control (p. 107) especially in an organisational set-up where units/departments are geographically-scattered (p. 109).
Changes to organisation structures are most apparent on multinational enterprises as there is the necessity to carefully align organisational design with management ability (Robbins and Barnwell, 2006, p. 61). These private institutions that organise one or few industries across many countries have weakened corporate control since they span many countries and cultures. Provided that they should adapt local circumstances that call for decentralised decision-making, in paradox, they are also required to coordinate activities in various parts of the world and stimulate the flow of ideas from one part to another but, nonetheless, the illogicality is that organisation structure varies from organisation to organisation (Robbins and Barnwell, 2006, p. 137). The requirement for organisation structure is to balance the need for coordination with a need for adaption while also patch-working languages, laws and customs. In light of globalisation, in addition, the organisations, apart from the multinational ones, are forced to reorganise the structure so as to facilitate the actual and emergent changes on the administrative, technical, operational requirements especially in face of the growing battle for competitive advantage (Inkpen and Ramaswamy, 2006, p. 78).
For instance, the challenges of innovation for organisation structure, management and operation are immense. These are due to two basic reasons. First is that the innovative process involves the coordination and integration of specialised knowledge and that second, it necessitates the learning in face of uncertainties. As Lazonick (2005) argues, learning is “a social activity that renders the innovative process uncertain, cumulative and collective.” To wit, organisations, in itself, are social entities that are composed of two or more persons who work together towards the achievement of a common goal. With respect to organisation structure, companies, firms or business enterprises can be innovative. Despite the inherent risks delivered by the emerging technologies, the competitive advantage of organisations could be achieved by changing the skill base of organisations in terms of both function and hierarchical integration (Castellacci et al, 2005). Though lacking in evidence-based accounts, the authors pointed that organisation structure is more than about power and its distribution instead also on expanding the competencies and technical requirements of the roles and functions explicitly presented in organisation structures. Robbins and Barnwell (2006) also point out that technology plays an important role in determining the appropriate structure for organisations
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