“Dingdong Dingdong”, the first year of university is coming to an end, three more years to go, and we will all dive into the pool of labor workforce, how exciting is that? Nevertheless, which company would you choose? A large corporation or a small company? Goldman Sachs, a dream workplace for business school students according to the survey from COMM 291, 36% of us chose to work for Goldman Sachs. Sandstorm Gold, a small-cap gold royalty company with a positive prospect. However, I have been thinking, if I got the chance, what would I choose?

The key difference between larger corporations and small companies is the organizational structure.

For large corporations like Goldman Sachs, the organizational structure is mature and often comes with a long chain of command. The structure of the corporation is hierarchical where each level of employees report upwards through many different management levels. Within this structure, a large number of skilled managers are employed and the delegation between each level is reasonably low. However, this comes with an advantage of narrow span of control, which provides good opportunities for promotion. Employees can see clearly of their career path, and they know they will be promoted as long as they achieve some specific pre-set goals. A clear career promotion path is especially crucial for ambitious employees like us, and this can be a constant motivational drive. Nevertheless, the communication process might be slow and not flexible since information needs to be passed through layers and layers of management levels. However, a potential attitude of “ THEM AND US” can be formed and employees might be demotivated since they rarely see senior management on the top. Beside organizational structure, the working experience in large corporations is certainly going to be the stepping-stone to any company you apply for.

For small companies like Sandstorm Gold, the organizational structure has fewer hierarchies and wide span of control. The structure enables employees to communicate with managers more easily and quickly. It also enables the company to work as a team since the wide span of control give employees the feeling that they are equally important, and they are motivated to work together. Cooperation between departments is always important since the synergy power enables the company to achieve higher goals. Moreover, the large of delegation encourage employees to be highly motivated since their belongingness to the company, and they are more willing to take responsibilities. Nevertheless, it is obvious that comparing with large corporations, the salary or bonus might not be as attractive as large firms. However, the working experience might be much valuable since small companies require their limited number of employees to be multi-skilled and broaden their views of knowledge like knowing mining process is essential for Sandstorm Gold.

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Goldman Sachs: http://www.goldmansachs.com/worldwide/brazil/

Sandstorm Gold: http://www.sandstormgold.com/