Effective Management And Organizational Practices At King Digital Entertainment

About the Organization

The report is a discussion on management and organization in reference to King Digital Entertainment Ltd commonly known as King (king.com 2018). The company designs close to over 200 titles and franchises for games like Farm Heroes, Pet Rescue, Candy Crush and Bubble Witch. The report commences with a brief introduction of the company and goes on to describe how the organizational structure has impact on its functionality. There is also discussion about modern management approach that King uses for improving its functionality. The report also puts forward the cultural framework of Handy and the relevance it has on the organizational culture. The report also portrays two strategic management objectives its analysis via the SWOT framework.

About the Organization:

King Digital Entertainment Ltd is a part of the video gaming industry that offers various games for the mobile devices. The popular among them is the Candy Crush Saga. The other games offered by the company include Pet Rescue, Farm Heroes and Bubble Witch (king.com 2018). The company designs games with a broader appeal that allows the people in playing for the moment and then moving on and picking the games later on. Thus, games designed by the company remains synchronized across the platforms thereby allowing the players in seamlessly switching between the platforms and the devices and continuing their game from any devices and any time. The games are free with essential social features embedded for enhancing the experience of the players. The company also tries and builds passionate and unique culture based on the collaboration, respect and humility. King Digital Entertainment Limited tries to make the games a part of the daily entertainment of the players (king.com 2018).

The company found in the year 2003 when it started as the developer of browser-based video games. The company had Melvyn Morris as the chairperson with Riccardo Zacconi and Toby Rowland as the co chairperson. The company generated revenue of $1.88 billion along with a net income of $700 million (king.com 2018).

Organizational Structure and Its Impact On Company’s Functionality: 

Organizational structure helps in determining the manner in which the power, role and responsibilities are controlled, assigned and coordinated along with determining the information flow between various levels of the management (Robbins and Judge 2014).

The organizational structure of a video gaming industry like King comprises of development and publishing. The development in the video gaming industry occurs in three different stages through the involvement of three different parties.  The first party involves the developers who remain internal to the publishing organization. The second party represents those developers like the programmers and the artists who lead to the creation of games. The third party represents the involvement of the outside firms that create games for a platform requiring licensing fee. The publishers represent the right holders of the games who are responsible for the marketing of product launch. The industry also consists of other members like the community managers and the PR directors (Tran and Tian 2013).

Figure: Organizational Structure of King Digital Entertainment Ltd

Organizational Structure and Its Impact On Company’s Functionality

Source: (Robbins and Judge 2014)

The organizational structure can influence the functionality of an organization by following means:

1. The organizational structure facilitates work division as each of the supervisors have specialized knowledge in his area of work
2. A proper organizational structure leads to easier communication between the various departments thereby making the execution of work easier
3. An organizational structure leads to better performance of the employees by enabling them to learn from their own experiences and the supervisors.

Modern Management Approach for Improving Functionality:

The modern management approach that King Digital Entertainment Ltd can adopt for bringing about an improvement in its functionality lies is the contingency approach. Contingency approach also referred as the situational approach refers to the management concept that states that put forward that there is no single universally applicable management principles for the managing organizations (Otley 2016). This is because different organizations faces different situations and thereby requires the adoption of different ways of management.  According to the contingency approach, management has a situational nature and its technique is dependent on the situational complexity. The contingency approach focuses on the instances of ‘if’ and ‘then’ of management. The ‘if’ is the independent variable while the ‘then’ refers to the dependent variable of management or it refers to the technique that needs adoption at that particular situation. For instance, ‘if’ the workers have stronger physiological needs ‘then’ there lies the necessity of adopting financial motivators and ‘if’ the need is of  higher order ‘then’ there should be adoption of non financial motivators. The contingency approach to management put forward the fact that there exists no universal or best style of management principles. Management is more situational and the actions taken by the management depends on environmental circumstances. The adoption of the contingency approach helps an organization in understanding complex organizations since the focus remains solely on the multivariate organizational nature. The approach enables the organization to undergo operations under the environmental conditions.  The contingency approach instead of having specific solutions for solving problems portrays a framework where each of the solution is dependent on environmental conditions. As per this approach, a same problem can have varied solutions at different periods while different problems might have similar solutions at same time. The contingency approach provides insight to the organizational adaptability towards both the internal and the external environment. In other words, the approach tries to fit in the internal environment to the external.

Analysis of Organizational Culture Based on Handy’s Cultural Framework: 

According to Handy’s Cultural Framework, there exist four classes of culture that include power culture, role culture, task culture and person culture (Yancura 2017). Each of the Handy’s culture shoots from different presupposition about the human thought and learning, motivation and the basis of influence and power.

Power Culture: Organizations with this type of culture believes in top down or centralized influence and power.

Role Culture: Organizations with this culture represents the bureaucratic one and run by the strict procedures, precise delineated power and narrow defined roles.

Task Culture: Organizations following this type of culture is based on small team and is mostly solution and result oriented mostly marked by the adaptability, empowerment and flexibility. 

Person Culture: Organizations with this type of culture focuses mostly on individuals. Such organizations are mostly people focused, value oriented and designed towards the meeting of the self-actualization needs of the individuals.

King Digital Entertainment Ltd follows a power culture that is responsible for the ongoing success. Although organizations with this kind of culture responds quickly to the event but depend heavily on people’s ability at centre for determining continued success. In this type of culture, succession is a vital issue. At King, this type of culture makes the individuals rely heavily on the individuals instead of the committees. Organizations with power culture judge performance on results and appear abrasive and tough. Success often accompanied by the higher turnover and the lower morale since the individuals’ fails or moves out of competitive atmosphere(Graham, Ashworth and Tunbridge 2016). Working in organizations with power culture, employees needs to correctly anticipate the expectation from power holders and accordingly perform. Anticipation and understanding the culture results in a satisfied and happy organization that helps in breeding intense commitment towards the corporate goals. While wrong anticipation leads to huge dissatisfaction that not only leads to employee turnover but also leads to the lack of enthusiasm and effort.

Analysis of Two Innovative Strategic Management Objectives:

The two innovative strategic management objectives of the company include:

1. Fostering Creativity through Risk Taking: The organization for streamlining operations should lead to the reduction of the product errors and the elimination of the waste along with the thorough analysis of procedures, processes and policies by the employees (Johnson et al. 2014). Access to the workflow is measured using the tools that include the analysis of the root cause and the process mapping.
2. Maintenance of a Diverse Workforce: Long-term success of organization depends on the robust planning of recruitment, hiring, interviewing and retaining the employees that King does quite diligently (Mullins 2016). Development of the comprehensive program and by using the innovative means like the social media the employers can easily reach to the potential employees along with attracting new talent for solving complicated business issues.

SWOT Analysis:

Conclusion: 

The report ends by providing an insight into the innovative strategic management objectives by King Digital Entertainment Ltd in the context of a SWOT framework. The report also discusses about the organizational cultural and the organizational approach towards the management. There is also discussion on the details of the company. The company represents one of the renowned entertainment companies that offered free games to the individuals and made sure that the games are embedded with social features.

References: 

Graham, B., Ashworth, G. and Tunbridge, J., 2016. A geography of heritage: Power, culture and economy. Routledge.

Johnson G., Whittington, R., Scholes, K., Angwin, D., and Regne?r, P. 2014. Exploring Strategy: Text and Cases. 10th edn Harlow:Pearson

king.com 2018. [online] Available at: https://discover.king.com/about/ [Accessed 7 Jul. 2018].

king.com 2018. [online] Available at: https://discover.king.com/press_releases/king-gives-social-casino-gaming-royal-treatment/ [Accessed 7 Jul. 2018].

king.com 2018. [online] Available at: https://king.com/games [Accessed 7 Jul. 2018].

Mullins L. J. 2016. Management and Organisational Behaviour 11th edn., Harlow:Pearson

Otley, D., 2016. The contingency theory of management accounting and control: 1980–2014. Management accounting research, 31, pp.45-62.

Robbins S. P. and Judge T. A. 2014. Essentials of Organizational Behaviour 12th edn.. FT Prentice Hal

Tran, Q. and Tian, Y., 2013. Organizational structure: Influencing factors and impact on a firm. American Journal of Industrial and Business Management, 3(2), p.229.

Yancura, L.A., 2017. Ho’omana’o: A Cultural Framework for Reminiscence Interventions with Native Hawaiian Elders. The International Journal of Reminiscence and Life Review, 4(2), pp.59-66.

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