Valerie Li

The advantages and disadvantages of centralized versus decentralized organizational structures lies greatly in the inherent qualities and effects of the structures themselves. Robbins and Coulter describe this very well, “If top managers make the organization’s key decisions with little or no input from below, then the organization is centralized.” Companies which wish to consolidate power and decision-making abilities at the top of the organizational chart, tend to be centralized organizations. If the CEO of a corporation has a particular vision and wishes for it to remain pure to his/her perspective, he/she will centralize the organization so that he/she is able to control as much of the company as possible. As the textbook states, this is helpful for companies who need to be stable or are facing a crisis and need one source of decision-making to lead them. These sort of organizations are becoming more rare, as employees become smarter and organizations become larger, however a few do still exist. Centralized structures are becoming rare because of their many disadvantages. Due to power being consolidated at the top of the organization, risk is great if the top of the organization becomes incapable of leading the organization (death, illness, or massive organizational size causing a weak span of control). Employees also will feel less motivated to perform for the organization as they will not have an avenue for sharing their ideas on how to improve the organization.

Decentralized organizations are becoming more popular as the ability for organizations to decentralize increases. Decentralization allows organizations to take advantage of division of labor by sharing decision-making across the organization. It also empowers employees and allows them to improve their performance by being able to act to improve deficient or inefficient areas immediately without approval from the top of the organization. Another advantage of decentralization is allowing for the managers of business areas to actually use their first hand knowledge and experience to improve their areas. Consider the Dallas Cowboys of the early 90′s, where Jerry Jones the owner had final say over all personnel decisions to the New England Patriots of today, where numerous individuals throughout the organization have an input on personnel decisions. By trusting the individuals within the organization to obtain accurate information and use their minds to provide appropriate analysis, the Patriots are able to take advantage of division of labor and allows for multiple individuals to give input on players. Decentralization has proven so successful for the Patriots (via seemingly always finding cheap players to replace expensive stars) that the Cowboys have now moved toward a more decentralized structure.

In this generation, healthy living has been incorporated in everyone’s lives. This industry has become a multibillion dollar industry, reason being is because items at placed in higher price category. A local commerce student, Annalea Krebs, who graduated in 2008 from Royal Roads University, believed that she can serve consumers are often overwhelmed with green choices and don’t know how to start. They think green choices and services are too expensive, and often aren’t sure where to find them.

“I consider myself a social entrepreneur,” Krebs said. “I’m on a mission to make green mainstream. With ethicalDeal, we want to make it easy and fun for people to try out the best green stuff their city has to offer.”

Link to website: www.ethicaldeal.com

Right now, I am blogging. It is the new generation’s way of communication to the public. Why do we do it? To express our feelings and try to “share” our knowledge with the world. Unfortunately, it is not always positive, multiple bloggers share their negative experiences.

But what does google have to do with blogging ?

How does Google search work?

Well the algorithm pulls up a multiple of searches on how frequent they find the terms on the internet. It was discovered a problem, when Vitaly Borker, a Brooklyn-based online seller of eyeglasses, realized that when he searched for sunglassses, online complaints actually showed in Google search results.

e.g. Negative blogging on Decor My Eyes — http://forum.purseblog.com/the-wardrobe/dont-buy-from-decormyeyes-com-148293.html

It came apparent to Google that this was a problem they had to fix. Efficiently, Google made the change right away, and altered the search algorithm. There are brilliant election wizards, who always try to cheat the system; but Google has shown that, they will continue to try to better their system.

“We can’t say for sure that no one will ever find a loophole in our ranking algorithms in the future,” Amit Singhal, a Google fellow, wrote on the blog post.

The Google brand have made such an amazing reputation for itself, with their prompt respond. Their approach on public criticism is handled so well, which is why Google has such good PR.

“I feel like my life has been a series of miracles,”

“I was in every sense a lost cause.”

The typical American dream we watch in movies, the poor girl living in a broken family. With her parents being hard drug addicts and every month waiting for the welfare cheque. And in these movies, there will always be a special person, who sees the potential in this girl and help her turn her life around.

Does that happen in real life?

Well …. yes! Liz Murray, living the American dream. Everything described above, she went through. But when she was 16, she mother passed away tragically. But that was what triggered something inside of her to turn her life around. No one except herself saw her ability.

She was able to put herself through school and graduate with flying colours, and beat out thousands of applicants to win a $12,000 New York Times scholarship and got into Harvard.

She has become so successful with her life, and is so amazing how she completely turned her life around. She has discovered how important education is. She has started her life over and all because she put herself through education. She has found the value of life through education.

“I’ve learned in my life that you really don’t know what’s possible until you’re already doing it” — Liz Murray