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Clarifying Organizational Structure for Jiuyi Advertising

Chen Su

Johns Hopkins University

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Executive Summary

Organizational structure is not only essential but also

critical for a company. Jiuyi Advertising doesn’t have a clear

organizational structure, which could cause many problems such as

buck-passing, obstacle in cross-area communications, and

subsequently efficiency decreasing and customer dissatisfaction

according to related literature. Thus I propose to clarify the

organizational structure, and this report provides specific

method.

Before searching for these literature, I interviewed some

employees to confirm that not only I, a new employee, but also

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others have difficulties in daily work because of unclear

organizational structure. By reviewing literature, I also found

the advices to rebuild the organizational structure.

Instead of simply imitating successful structures of

successful companies, we should analyze the situation of Jiuyi

first. The main problem of our company is the efficiency of

cross- department and cross-office projects. Thus I propose a

four-step plan which includes unifying job titles in different

offices, making job duties clear to everyone, and monitoring the

effect of the change in organizational structure. I made a

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schedule based on theories related to project management to

ensure that the whole plan goes well.

The obstacles of this plan may include conflicts in work

allocation within departments, dissatisfaction about titles among

managers, resistance to the plan and delay of each step, but

these obstacles can be overcome by effective communication.

This plan was expected to improve inside and outside

awareness, work efficiency, and employees’ satisfaction of Jiuyi

Advertising.

Background

Jiuyi Advertising was established in 1995 in Guangzhou,

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China, headquartered in Beijing, and now has 6 offices around

country. The main services of Jiuyi are advertising designing

and integrated marketing communication. People from different

departments and offices are always gathered as a team to conduct

a project. Jiuyi has won a lot of awards for the past few years,

including Mobius Awards, one of the most important awards for

advertising in the world. China Mobile, one of the biggest

telecommunication companies in China, is a long-term customer of

Jiuyi. .

I found an organizational chart in company’s website, which

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is also the one used to train new employees (Figure 1). I

couldn’t figure out Jiuyi’s organizational structure with this

chart. Account department and creative department are core

departments in our company, but they can’t even be found in

figure 1.

Furthermore, there are no uniform job titles among offices.

It’s hard to know who is at the same level as my manager. Clear

job descriptions are missed too, so I don’t know what I should

do, what kind of authority I have, and whom I should cooperate

with during the daily work.

I am so confused about the organizational structure of the

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whole company, which I suppose would lengthen the time I need to

get adapted to routine jobs and contribute to our company. In

order to make sure that my colleges are facing the same

difficulties and that a bad organizational structure would truly

hurt our company. I did some research which includes

interviewing my colleges and studying related literature.

Figure 1. Jiuyi’s organizational chart

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Note: Anonymous, Organizational Structure of Jiuyi Advertising,

Retrieved October 6, 2013, from http://www.jiuyiad.com/goujia/

Research Process and findings

First, I interviewed some employees in different departments.

Mrs. Zhu, Director of knowledge management department, said that

“I can find the right person because I’ve work for Jiuyi for a

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long time, but I think this is impossible for a new employee. It

seems that everyone in our company decides the job title by

himself/herself because the same positions in different offices

always have different titles.”

Ms. Yang, account manager in Beijing office, said that “once

I needed to talk to the account manager in Henan office about a

project, but I can find him/her. Then I found that Mr. Li, the

account director, is the person I’m looking for. I thought he is

at a higher level than me before. It’s weird that we are at the

same level but he is called a director and I am a manager.”

Mr. Zhang, an employee in account department in Beijing

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office, said that “Last time, when I needed to make a decision, I

reported to the manager of our project and also the account

manager in Beijing office. Unfortunately, they had different

views. I tired to harmonize their ideas and wasted a lot time,

but it didn’t work. With help of a higher level manager, I could

finally make this decision.”

The problems above are agreed by some other employees and

supported by related literature. For example, Cooke (1996)

mentioned the problem of cross-area communication and multi-

manager problem in her research. LaZara (1999) claimed that with

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a clear organizational chart, “Members of the organization, as

well as people outside of the organization, gain an insight into

how that organization operates.”

Furthermore, Cooke (1996) claimed other problems with

organizational chart. “One example would be a created position

that began as an effort to ‘take care of someone who didn’t fit

elsewhere’ but provide no real value to the organization.” This

problem would increase the cost of company but can’t increase

profit at the same time. Buck-passing is a similar problem.

Without clear job description and responsibility assignment,

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people won’t take responsible for their jobs, because if there is

a mistake, company won’t know whom to blame. Besides, employees

may think it is unfair to finish the work not listed on their job

description.

For the long run, the efficiency of our company would

decrease, along with satisfaction of our employees. Subsequently,

customer satisfaction would be influenced too. Maybe it is hard

to believe such severe consequences, but there is already a sign.

Besides China Mobile, Jiuyi hardly cooperate with a big company,

and can’t attract new customers effectively. What’s more, Jiuyi

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just ruined the relationship with China Mobile in Guizhou

province because of low efficiency.

These problems could be caused by various reasons, but with

clarifying organizational structure, at least we could solve part

of them. Thus it’s time for Jiuyi to make the organizational

structure and job description clear.

Recommendation

There are two ways to redesign the organizational structure.

First one is to imitate the organizational structure of a

successful company. For example, Haier become a well-known home

appliance brand in China by changing its organizational structure

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(Anonymous, 2013). In 1984, Haier was a small, unprofitable

company. However, they gradually changed the centralized

structure to a flatter, decentralized division structure, and

each business division is responsible for the production and

sales in certain area. Business divisions are relatively

independent.

Can we copy this division structure? Flat organization could

benefit Jiuyi because the communication efficiency between

headquarter and branches would increase. However, as I mentioned

in last part, there are so many cross-office project in Jiuyi

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Advertising. If offices are more independent, which means more

decentralized, it will be more difficult to gather people from

different offices to form a team. Thus the organizational

structure of Haier can’t be used. In fact, I’ve analyzed some

other successful case of organizational structure, but they are

all not suitable for our company.

The second method, which I recommended, is to clarify our

organizational structure based on the reality. “The traditional

universal theory that one best organizational design fits all

organization” is out of date (Salas, 2009). Different choices

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bring different advantages. For example, less rigid

organizations “generally have greater level of adaptability to

the environment” (Galetic, Nacinovic, and Klindzic, 2012). Thus

when managers want to design or redesign an organizational

structure, they should focus on the objective of whole company

(Epure, Lupu, Herghiligiu, 2012)

The work pattern of Jiuyi Advertising is project team. For

each project, people from account department, creative

department, sometimes from different offices would be formed as a

project team to provide service to customers. Thus our

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organizational structure should be designed to make the process

of forming team more smoothly and effectively. According to the

result of my research and the reality of Jiuyi, I propose a four-

step plan to clarify our organizational structure.

The first step is to notice the plan and communicate with

objectors. An overview of the whole plan should be posted on

company’s website several days before the plan starts to let plan

manager find dissatisfied employees and persuade them. I made a

brief schedule for the plan, and the time period can be adjusted

based on present workload of whole company (Table 1).

The second step, the real start of the plan, is to unify job

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titles. We may have difficulties in satisfying all managers who

are at same level. Some managers may prefer the old titles

because of existing awareness among customers, or the social

status presented by these titles. Thus our new titles should

sounds great, and we should help employees prepare their business

card as soon as possible.

The third step is to confirm routine jobs and responsibility

assignment of each department. Each department could choose a

way to confirm it. For example, managers could hold a meeting to

discuss, or draft one and collect advice to adjust. Managers of

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departments should guarantee each specific job was assigned to a

certain person, who will also responsible for mistakes in this

job. Because this step would last for 5 days, we have to remind

each department before the deadline.

Table 1

Ste

p

Relevant

departme

nt

Details Outcomes

Time

peri

od

Deadli

ne

1Human

Resource

• Post plan on

website

• Persuade

objectors

• Permission to start2

days10/9

2Human

Resource

• Unify job

titles

• Job titles for each

position

2day

s10/11

3 All • Confirm

routine jobs

• Report of routine

jobs and

5day

s

10/18

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• Assign routine

jobs

responsibility

assignment

4Human

Resource

• Posted final

version

• New organizational

chart

• New job description

1day 10/21

Suggested schedule

The fourth step is posting the new organizational chart and

job description. We should make every employee clear about the

new organizational structure by holding meeting or making

brochure. The introduction of our organizational structure

should be added on the training for new employees. New job

descriptions should show with the recruitment information.

After finished all steps above, Jiuyi should continuously

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monitor the effect of new organizational structure. Epure et

al.,(2012) provided some indexes of a successful structure

reform. They are “a better organization of management, a good

structure of departments, a better implementation of activities,

a better realization of organizational objective, better

communication between management stages, better cooperation

between departments, a better functioning of the entire

organization, increasing human performance, reducing the workload

of the management department, and increased employee

satisfaction”. We can use these indexes to design the

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questionnaire for our employees to test the efficiency of our

organizational structure. Besides, we could hold a survey among

our customers to test whether they feel better when cooperating

with Jiuyi Advertising. With monitoring, we can further revise

our organizational chart and job descriptions.

Conclusion

A clear organizational chart and a clear job description are

important for Jiuyi Advertising. My proposal takes the reality

of our company into account, combines the results of previous

literature, and provides solutions for possible obstacles. Jiuyi

Advertising could benefit from this proposal.

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References

Anonymous, Organizational structure adjustment of Haier,

Retrieved October 7, 2013, from

http://www.cs360.cn/renliziyuan/zzjg/glal/2119611/

Anonymous, Organizational structure of jiuyi advertising,

Retrieved October 6, 2013, from

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http://www.jiuyiad.com/goujia/

Cooke, R (1996). Structuring your ‘org’ chart. Credit Union

Management. 19(9), 28-29. Retrieved September 15,2013, from

ProQuest Central database

Epure, S. P, Lupu, L. M, Herghiligiu, I. V (2012). Contributions

to the organizational structure analysis methodology.

Managerial Challenges of the Contemporary Society. Proceedings. 3, 143-147.

Retrieved September 14,2013, from ProQuest Central database

Galetic, L, Nacinovic, I, &Klindzic, M (2012). Transforming the

organizational structure and culture to sustain long-term

competitiveness. An Enterprise Odyssey. International Conference

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Proceedings. 911-924. Retrieved September 15,2013, from ProQuest

Central database

LaZara, V. A (1999). Put the customer on top: updating your

organizational chart. Manage. 51(2), 28-30. Retrieved

September 14,2013, from ProQuest Central database

Salas, C (2009). The influence of organizational structure on

customer issue resolution: a phenomenological study. UMI

Dissertations Publishing. Retrieved September 14,2013, from ProQuest

Central database