CASE ANALYSIS

WILDFIRE ENTERTAINMENT:
ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE
ARCHETYPE
Submitted by :
Jeevesh Anand PGPM-20-042
Chayan Narang PGPM-20-030
Arnab Dey PGPM-20-022

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 DESCRIBE THE CONTEXT WILDFIRE FACED IN THE EARLY DAYS OF ITS
DEVELOPMENT. WHY MIGHT A SINGLE ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE
NOT BE EFFECTIVE ?

 Absence of formal structure - founders were working directly in collaboration

with all the employees. There were no formal routines, formal job descriptions or
regular work hours.
 Absence of designated routes of communication - employees usually used to
walk up to the fellow employees directly to discuss and solve their problems. In
case the solution was still not found, the problem would move up one level where
founders themselves got involved to overlook and find a solution to the problem.
 Increased job complexity - sudden increase in mobile app market led to increase
in projects, which led to employees working on multiple projects at the same time,
which left little or no time for them to answer their colleague’s questions.
 Lack of formalized routine – more workload led to more hiring which ultimately
led to more chaos in the company. More time spent on fire-fighting rather than
prioritizing the job. Simple tasks became more complex and time taking.
 Unclear career trajectory – people ,got frustrated and could not handle the
chaos, left the company as they saw no scope of career growth

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 What are the pros & cons of the 3 main organizational
archetypes that Wildfire used: Functional, Matrix/Hybrid,
Divisional?
Functional Matrix/ Hybrid Divisional
Clear hierarchal structure leading to Blend of functional and Increased level of
clear communication channels divisional groups yielding autonomy ensures proper
more productivity resourcing
Pros Increased optimization as groups of Expose employees to cross Increased accountability
professionals with same functional functional knowledge
expertise are set up
Increased career opportunities Increased shared resources Fewer layers between
keeps cost in check. senior management and
people at execution level

Lack of communication & collaboration Unclear reporting line Greater redundancy of

between the units resources leading to
increased cost
Usually, functional groups are found to Increase in sets of leaders Lack of alignment with the
cons be working in silos leads to increase in expenses company’s business goals
Lack of hollistic view obscures Diluted accountability and Each division has an unique
innovation prioritization of job vision, which makes it
and forward-thinking ideas sometimes unmanageable

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 In a context of rapid growth, how can a tech-based start-
up know when organizational structure should be
changed?
 When the employees feel that they are losing their direction of work - As stated at
the initial level, while having the rapid growth in platter, employees were clueless about the
priority of the jobs that needed to be completed.
 Lack of accountability of employees – When employees of the company are not very
aware of the accountability of the themselves, when to perform what action and who will
perform that as with growth the complexity of the project increases.
 Increase in Business Volume – In such scenario it becomes very difficult for an undivided
workforce to perform all the jobs in a smooth way, as it becomes very difficult to co-ordinate
between themselves.
 Lack of dedicated team – Usually with the diversification of the product line, the quality of
the product takes a hit making it necessary for the organization to restructure its hierarchy
 Messy Co-ordination between upper and lower management - Like in this case it
happened when the Matrix structure was revamped, where the resources were shared, and
no one knows their priority and every upper management is trying to use the resources
according to their priority.
 Misaligned business goals – As in this case, different groups such as animation group,
and the learning group were not on the same page regarding the business model(pay-per-
download versus subscription model)

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