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Project: Organizational Management and Structure Changes

Rocio Cruz

South Texas College

Dr. Benavidez

Sep 8,2020
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Project: Organizational Management and Structure Changes

Feed My Starving Children (FMSC) is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to

providing food to children from less privileged countries. The foundation relies on donors

and volunteers to raise funds to carry out the daily activities in its facilities. The meals

prepared and packed in the organization are distributed to children in Asian and African

countries. The organization relies on volunteers and charity organizations in the recipient

countries to distribute the food (Feed My Starving Children, n.d.). It, however, has few

employees in each of the nations. The centralized organization structure has been successful

for the company, which mainly relies on the efforts of its employees, volunteers, and partners

to provide meals to starving children successfully.

However, due to the centralized structure, decision making in the organization takes a

nondemocratic approach as most decisions are made by top management, considering that the

company does not aim to make any profits. All meals are prepared in the US and shipped to

different locations in Asia and Africa. In this case, I would first introduce a strategy-

controlled decentralized system. Although the top management makes all significant

decisions, employees and lower-level management can make critical decisions. Pertusa-

Ortega et al. (2010) stated that centralized systems negatively impact on knowledge

performance. Therefore, a decentralized system would increase knowledge sharing and

performance in the organization.

In addition, such systems make employees more productive and comfortable,

especially when accompanied by democratic decision making (Carpenter et al. 2012).

Employees play a critical role at Feed My Starving Children, thereby requiring operational

and strategic level control. This calls for a charismatic leadership approach where employees

feel comfortable and attracted to working in the organization. Therefore, as a leader, I would

use charisma and servant leadership to balance strategic and operational leadership. Servant
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leadership is appropriate for operational level control to ensure that operations in the

organization meet the objectives. Valuing employees and helping them achieve their goals

can be relevant in encouraging them to participate in decision making, which, according to

Mosley (2016), is appropriate for non-profit organizations. For this organization, the

leadership strategy and style would attract volunteers and donors who are crucial for the

organization's success.

Plan of Action

The main objective is attracting more donors and volunteers while maximizing the

organization's output to provide more meals per day through a strategy controlled

decentralized organization structure with employees participating in decision making. The

first step would be to decentralize the organization structure. At Feed My Starving Children,

all meals are prepared and packed in the US, which increases the shipping costs to other

countries. Decentralization of the organization could promote creativity among managers in

other countries who can develop ideas of preparing and packaging the meals in countries

closer to recipient countries.

Secondly, introducing charismatic and servant leadership is likely to increase

employee comfort and productivity (Carpenter et al. 2012). This is likely to attract more

volunteers, thereby decreasing human resource costs. Decreased human resource costs shall

significantly reduce the organization's expenses, considering that a large amount is spent on

management and other workers. Comparably, the production and packaging of meals in

countries closer to the recipients will decrease the shipping costs, which shall also reduce

expenses. These anticipated changes are illustrated in figure 1 below. As the figure shows,

the total revenue and expenses are almost equal, which could limit FMSC from increasing its

output capacity to reach more children. Reducing cost can allow the company to increase

production.
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Figure 1

Projected changes in total contributions from donors, total revenue and total expenses.

Projected Changes in 3 years

100,000,000
90,000,000
80,000,000
70,000,000
60,000,000
50,000,000
40,000,000
30,000,000
20,000,000
10,000,000
0
2019/2020 2020/2021 2021/2022 2022/2023

Total Contributions Total Revenue Total Expenses

Therefore, reduced costs arising from decentralization and attracting more volunteers

would ensure that revenues are directed towards producing more meals annually, as

illustrated in figure 2 below. As the figure indicates, the HR costs would decrease

consistently and save more money for the organization to produce more meals per day.

However, the shipping costs may not decrease immediately, considering that FMSC would

have to purchase new facilities to produce and package the meals in different countries.

Nonetheless, the organization would be able to make more meals and reach more children

using proceeds not spent on expenses. Additionally, as Rothschild (2018) notes, participatory

decision making in organizations can considerably increase productivity. Similarly, Pertusa-

Ortega et al. (2010) state that it increases knowledge sharing and employee comfort, reducing

the possibility of employee turnover. The increased productivity ensures that the organization

maximizes output.

Figure 2
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Changes in the costs of shipping and human resource, and output (meals produced and

number of kids fed)

Changes in Output and Costs

14,000,000

12,000,000

10,000,000

8,000,000

6,000,000

4,000,000

2,000,000

0
2019/2020 2020/2021 2021/2022 2022/2023

Human Resource Costs Transport and Shipping Costs

Meals Produced Number of Kids Fed

Conclusion

The organizational structure changes can significantly impact the production, revenue,

and cots at FMSC. As illustrated in figures 1 and 2, introducing a decentralized organization

structure with participatory or democratic decision-making systems is likely to increase

production by promoting employee comfort and productivity. Additionally, charismatic

leadership can attract donors and volunteers to the organization, thereby saving costs and

raising more capital. More volunteers would imply that the organization spends less on

human resources, while more donors would bring more revenue to the organization. This

would be useful in increasing the production and packaging of meals, thereby reaching more

vulnerable children, which is the primary goal and mission of FMSC.

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References

Carpenter, M., Bauer, T., & Erdogan, B. (2012). Management principles. Creative Commons.

Feed My Starving Children. (n.d.). About us. FMSC. https://www.fmsc.org/

Mosley, J. E. (2016, January). Nonprofit organizations’ involvement in participatory

processes: The need for democratic accountability. Nonprofit Policy Forum, 7(1), 77-

83. De Gruyter.

Pertusa-Ortega, E. M., Zaragoza-Sáez, P., & Claver-Cortés, E. (2010). Can formalization,

complexity, and centralization influence knowledge performance? Journal of

Business Research, 63(3), 310-320.

Rothschild, J. (2018). Creating Participatory Democratic Decision-Making in Local

Organizations. In Handbook of community movements and local organizations in the

21st century (pp. 127-140). Springer, Cham.