Case Study: The Body Shop

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ANSWER TO QUESTION 5.
In the 90s, due to the progress of business. The Body Shop decided to hire management consultants and to structure their organizational chart. Although they did not knew that hiring a consultant has its downsides too. The Body Shop failed to succeed in the business environment even after hiring the management consultants. This was a very important issue as a person you never know whether the consultant team advice will help you to boast up or will make you fall down. Restructuring an already working system is far more difficult to handle and is itself a disaster due to the already working employees who might take the decision of the consultants as an outsider’s point of view. Also the consultants may not know the procedures
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Decentralization is an organizational setup where by the authority has to make important decisions and to initiates new projects to manage at all levels in hierarchy. The advantages of decentralization are to increase number of potential innovators, relieving the burden, to prepare for emergencies, and to make more efficient decision making.
5. One of the most important challenges was to design a structure that would achieve a right balance between mutual adjustment and standardization. Standardization is referred to as the conformity to the specific example and the modes defined by set of norms and rules. Mutual adjustment is the process through which people use their judgment rather than standardization rules to guide decision making, to promote coordination and to address problems.
Anita Roddrick was all about the friendly environment for the business. She and her husband want the best for everyone like workers, employees, families of employees and communities. While the consultants only want profit for the business and this very difference in opinion could create problems in the business. Anita’s answers show that difference of opinion was one of the many reasons why that management consultant didn’t
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They could structure it in a way that only benefits them; they could also do it wrong so they can fix it later causing the business even more harm. One way a management consultant could cause problems is by structuring the business as a flat one meaning the entire burden will fall on one or few managers; the better option could have been a tall structure meaning the business could have distributed the load using division of labor and become more efficient. The main idea of the owner could be lost which would interrupt the actions of the business and lead to it failing. If I was a customer I would feel lost as I would not know who to go to if I wanted to buy a product or have a complaint because if the business themselves have a messy structure they would have too many internal problems to solve before they could help me. If I was the supplier, I would not know which department to supply to which would affect my own sales and I may have to cancel my contract with that business as an unbalanced structure will only cause me harm. We have to understand that a business should be properly managed to have an optimum working environment in which the employees, customers and supplies are

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