5.3 Break-even analysis - Screencast

The following videos are recorded by: Samantha Lee and Emily Cheng

Part 1:



Part 2: Limitations and Assumptions, Calculating output level for target profit/revenue




Total length of the two videos: 4:54

Organizational Charts Assignment - Crocs

The above diagram is found on http://www.theofficialboard.com/org-chart/crocs. This diagram shows the levels of hierarchy of the company Crocs. Like the following diagram.

As the levels go upwards, the responsibility and authority that the people in the level hold, increases. For example, the CEO, Ronald Snyder, who is at the top level in this company would have the greatest responsibility and authority. There is also a chain of command that goes from the top level to the bottom level. What the chain of command means is that decisions or orders being made by the top level would be passed on downwards level by level.

You can also see the span of control by looking at the diagram of Crocs’ organizational structure. Ronald Snyder has the greatest span of control because everybody is under him.

The following diagram can explain “span of control”.

Everybody under Managing director is his span of control. As the level goes up, the span of control increases.

Because there is no other organization’s structure to compare with the Crocs’ organizational structure, you can’t tell whether it is a tall of flat structure. One thing that can be seen is that Crocs definitely does not have a circular/flat structure, since there are so many levels of hierarchy.

It is also impossible to tell if Crocs has a centralized, decentralized structure or matrix structure with only that diagram. That is because the diagram only tells us the levels of hierarchy and how people at each level work together can’t be seen through that diagram.

NewsBlog - Can Amazon Be Wal-Mart of the Web?

Link to the article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/business/20amazon.html?ref=business

Summary:
This article talks about the rapid growth of Amazon in the market. Amazon is being compared to Wal-Mart because of the big market share they both have. It also describes the rate of Amazon's growth by giving their sales revenue of each year which is a way of determining the growth of a firm.

The article covers the following topics from our syllabus:
1.7 Growth, 3.3 Cause of cash flow problems - overstocking (Amazon does not have this problem, so one less cause to cash flow problems), 4.1 Market Share, 4.5 Promotion, 4.6 Place

One business tool/theory/technique to the organization:

1.7 Growth

This article compares sales revenues of Amazon and Walmart of each year to provide the reader the sense of the rate of their growth in market share. Amazon's market share and size is increasing rapidly for the past few years. It shows that the ratio it has in the market is getting larger and larger. To continue this trend, Amazon can look at a few strategies. For internal strategies, they can lower their prices, and do more advertising. For external strategies, they can merge or takeover other bookstores, have joint ventures, or strategic alliances.