Organizational Structure Paper: Bank Of America

Submitted By sipsipsip25
Words: 936
Pages: 4
Open Document
Organizational Structure Paper: Bank of America
June 9, 2014
MGMT 230
Instructor: Yvette Mack

Emerging of Bank of America
Bank of America is one of the largest financial institutions around the world. The institution actually began and existed solely to service those that were turned away from other banks; mostly farmers who had come from Italy. Its humble beginnings, a small bank called Bank of Italy that was established by Amadeo Peter Giannini and his son in San Francisco, California in 1904 (Bank of America Heritage., 2012). Today, Bank of America provides services for over 57 million consumers its new headquarters is now in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Corporate Structures
Considering the different types of organizational structures; vertical structures and horizontal structures, with the vertical structure consist of a hierarchically structured organization where all management activities are controlled by a centralized management staff (Bateman, Snell, 2011). Bank of America encompasses a more traditional type of organization such that it has develops strong bureaucratic control over the organizational activities. A horizontal structure is one of decentralized power and control. Leadership is often shared among team leaders and members shifting to the person with the most knowledge or expertise in the matter. Within the horizontal structure there are also other types of sub-organizational structures; The Functional Organization (Departmentalization around specialized activities), The Divisional Organization (units around products, customers, or geographic regions), The Matrix Organization (managers report to two superiors) and The Network Organization (independent mostly single-function firms that collaborate on a good or service), (Bateman, T. S., & Snell, S. A., 2011). Bank of America is a company that needs to continually determine whether they implement the appropriate structure by reviewing the organizations accomplishments and how well they are expected to meet their goals.
Bank of America Structure The initial structure for Bank of America (The Bank of Italy) in 1904 was comprised of its CEO (Amadeo Peter Giannini) and a small board of directors. The top managerial level also included a board of directors without any additional management. When the bank expanded and merged with other financial corporations, the merging of Bank of America with other corporations i.e. Nations Bank, Fleet Boston and Merrill Lynch among others had different organizational structures created the need for the new bank to restructure its own organization (Bank of America Heritage 2012).
The current structure is comprised of a CEO, CFO, COO, a board of directors and an international operations team amongst others that report directly to the CEO. Although the CEO is the leading executive; the functional organization uses a divisional structure because of its departmentalization of groups around products and geographic regions. This kind of organizational structure has several advantages. One major advantage is that this particular structure has been adapted by Bank of America which has now incorporated other multinational companies. This type of organization can be best described as a matrix organizational structure (Joseph, 2012).
The Matrix structure is a combination of both functional and divisional structure. This structure is probably the most effective because it incorporates both of the above. The advantage is a higher degree of flexibility and adaptability. The matrix structure can speed decisions and cut costs. Many of the disadvantages stem from the matrix's inherent violation of the unity-of-command principle, which states that a person should have only one boss (Bateman, Snell, 2011). A con to the matrix structure is that reporting to two bosses can create confusion and a difficult interpersonal situation, unless steps are taken to prevent these problems from arising. A
Show More

Related Documents: Organizational Structure Paper: Bank Of America

Dilemmas For Sister From Abuse

months to leave NZ say they've made a contribution to the community. Sacked CEO's compensatiocollision Girl tried to save sister from abuse 2:24pm Elder daughter allowed her father to continue to sexually abuse her in the hope that he would leave her sister alone. 'There's more to this than a profit' Scottish family given six months to leave NZ say they've made a contribution to the community. Sacked CEO's compensatiocollision Girl tried to save sister from abuse 2:24pm Elder daughter…

Words 1357 - Pages 6

CEO COMPENSATION Essay

Is CEO Compensation Justified by Performance? The salaries of CEO’s today are very high compared to what it was back in the day. In economic booms, the salaries of CEO’s have skyrocketed and when the economy goes down the salaries of the CEO’s attracts the public’s attention. CEO pay is a controversial issue in the Unite States especially after the Financial Crisis of 2008. CEO’s are definitely getting paid too much for various reasons stated by former CEO Edgar Woodard Jr. There are four myths…

Words 428 - Pages 2

Income Inequality

Now the question is at what level is this payment fair and reasonable? We may argue that defining a CEO’s compensation is an internal decision made within a company but we should not forget that the consequences of this decision affect not only the company’s business practice but also external society (Beal & Astakhova,…

Words 648 - Pages 3

Causes Of The Credit Crisis

volatility makes the CEO’s interests better aligned with the interests of shareholders would seem to depend on many considerations. For example, if the CEO’s holdings of stock make him more conservative, greater sensitivity of his wealth to volatility would help in aligning the CEO’s incentives with those of shareholders. For given asset volatility and expected cash flows from A bank’s stock return performance in 2007–2008 is negatively related to the dollar incentives derived from its CEO’s holdings of shares…

Words 747 - Pages 3

Discuss The Legal Relationship Of Corpo Essay

are legal concepts that form the basis of a CEO's legal relationship with his company's owners. The shareholders' relationship with the CEO entails both a binding contract and the trust of that CEO in controlling the shareholders' property. A CEO's legal responsibilities to his company's shareholders are broken down into three distinct fiduciary duties: the duty of care, the duty of loyalty and the duty of disclosure. The duty of care refers to the CEO's responsibility to consider all of the available…

Words 390 - Pages 2

Neville Alzheimer's Management Style

public, something most companies need. Nevertheless, we all agreed if a company isn't adored or cared about by the public, why would people want to work there? Why would people want to buy from them? In our discussion as a team, we focused on why these CEO's did what they did. The idea that was brought up is they cared about the company. Neville cared enough to come back after all these years as well as Anne cared enough to cut her own projects and even cut jobs to protect the company. These are large…

Words 462 - Pages 2

Pbl Excersise Essays

is the number of unions visiting to the CEO’s office has increased. Bray says that the main purpose of a trade union is to manage the welfare of the employee. Especially union provide an essential way for employees to make more interests in the regulation of the employment relationship. (Bray et al. 2011) Employees who are not satisfied with their working condition can request for unions to fix the working conditions. Overall, the number of visiting CEO’s office is related to the employees’ dissatisfaction…

Words 1311 - Pages 6

Legal and Ethical Issues in Management Essays

decided upon by the government and paid with tax dollars (Halbert and Ingulli, 2012, Chapter 1, p. 11). However, the goal of a business is to be profitable for the shareholders, and not to simply pay the CEO. He would not have felt that providing the CEO’s with large compensation was acceptable because the shareholders were not benefiting from these pay packages. Friedman would have evaluated the legality of the incident (Halbert and Ingulli, 2012, Chapter 1, p. 12). If the financial institutions hadn’t…

Words 393 - Pages 2

Standard Deviation and Square Footage Essay

large corporations’ CEOs in general. 16a. Governors - M = 43.00 SD = 6.83 CEO’s - M = 44.00 SD = 12.65 16b. Explain your answer below: Mean is the average of all the sample values. So, here on an average 43 square footage is the area of the desks of the official office of US governors. Whereas 44 square footage is the average office area of CEOs of major US corporations. As expected not all the governor’s or CEO’s office has the same value of 43 or 44 square footage. Some will be more or some…

Words 1087 - Pages 5

Fin301 Case Assignment Essay

Finance October 31, 2011 Introduction For the following Case Assignment, I will investigate if the finance departments are the best place to train future CEO’s. In addition, I will include a discussion of the pros and cons of hiring a CFO to be CEO. Also, I will provide two actual examples of CFO’s of publicly-traded companies who became CEO’s of publicly-traded companies within the past 5 years. Furthermore, I will research if those individuals have a CPA and/or CFA designations. I. Do you…

Words 1002 - Pages 5