Today Dell holds the status of being one of the major software companies across the world. Even though so popular in market, very less is known about the internal functioning of this ace computer and software giant. The organizational structure followed in Dell is similar to the functional decentralization followed in many other corporate houses. This type of structure not only helps in improving the efficiency of people in general but also ensures long term success for the company.
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Top level
The CEO or the chairman of the board resides at the top of the system with his board of advisors present to advise him on various matters. Currently there are 11 board members apart from the CEO himself. The board is responsible for supervising, managing and assisting all other departments in the company.
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Support level 1
- Directly under the CEO comes the Vice-Chairman who is also the President of Global Operations and End User Computing Services. He is further supported by 4 other Presidents of Enterprise Solutions, Chief Commercial services, Services and software. All of them act at the same horizontal level and have equal powers over different departments they are heading and are directly answerable to the CEO with his board of directors.
- There are also 4 other Senior Vice Presidents holding the departments of General Counsel, Marketing, Finance and Human Resources. These members although hold the same level position and privileges as that of presidents but are comparatively more accountable since they deal directly with the people involved in market.
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Support level 2
Each department is further divided into 25 departments each of which is controlled by the presidents at level 1. None of them can directly contact the top level unless there are some exceptional circumstances; therefore the presidents maintain a complete authority in their function.
These are the managerial levels that handle all the first hand executions of the company.
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Three other divisional characteristic
All the departments can basically broadly be classified into three other levels;
- Technical level which includes all that relates to Pc’s and tabs. They are the pioneers of all research and development programs and are also responsible for introducing innovations to improve sales in the market.
- The administrative level deals with all internal matters including the core operations of various departments. It is also the media link for the company.
- And finally the institutional level that acts as a link between the internal departments and external social environment. They deal with customers on a day to day basis and therefore perform functions like marketing, selling, exchange, etc. This is the most managerial level whose functioning in turn determines the objectives for technical departments.
It is through these structures present in the system and an extremely efficient manner of proper decentralization of power that a company like Dell has been able to perform actions so successfully in the market and that too at such a huge level on a regular basis.