Staples Organizational Structure

The History of Staples Staples has perhaps been one of the most influential companies of the latter part of the 20th century due to their convenience of service that they’ve offered their consumers. This ease of service seemed to be one of the primary goals for the company’s founder Thomas G. Stemberg. Back in 1986 Stemberg along with his other partners Leo Kahn and Myra Hart opened the first ever office products superstore in Brighton, Massachusetts in 1986 so that they can serve small businesses in their area (“Staples Inc,” n.d.). Back during this time, the office products industry was still a small developing industry that was yet to hit its stride. However, ever since 1986 the office products industry has grown much larger and …show more content…
The organizational structure that’s being followed is called a geographical organizational structure which means that they’re different people in charge of the different locations (“News and Event,” n.d.). This means that all the weight and pressure isn’t just placed on the CEO of the company and can instead be disturbed to others in the company. In this case Shira Goodman is the president of North American operations, second in command Otis Pannell who’s in charge of the retail operations in North America, and finally John Wilson is the president of the international operations for Staples (“News and Event,” n.d.). Staples has always followed this organizational structure simply because they believe in the fact that this structure gives them an advantage over the competition. Staples also uses both an B2B or business to business model and a B2C or business to consumer model the B2B model is used in regards to their e-commerce site while the B2C model is made to be more convenient towards the casual consumer this is done by allowing people to order what they want thru the mobile app and being able to pick it up within two hours, the recently unveiled “Print store,” allows consumers to send in documents to be printed beforehand so that they can pick it up that same day(Denman,2016). Staples has also seen the gradual change in the shopping habits in consumers and has adjusted their online service accordingly. Staples has done this by revamping their Staples Advantage service to have all of the “need-to-information” for their consumers this page would include recent orders, order status, shopping list, products to be resold, the ability to see which orders are pending approval, and the ability to see all of the daily sales and the future sales that will be happening