Overview of King Digital Entertainment Ltd and its revenue generation
The report focuses on providing an overview on management and organizations of video gaming industry, King Digital Entertainment Ltd popularly known as King. The company generates huge revenue of £3.35 billion through its offerings in the United Kingdom (king.com 2018). The King Digital Entertainment Ltd ensures the development of games for web, mobile, windows and social media platform, Facebook. They are in fact the founders of one of the financially successful games Candy Crush Saga that utilized the Freemium model. There were close to 200 fun titles and games developed by the company enjoyed across the world.
King Digital Entertainment designs and distributes games with a broader appeal in various platforms in United Kingdom. Thus, the company represents an interactive entertainment company offering games for mobile world and has close to 285 million active users across social, web and mobile platforms. The primary offerings of the company include the Candy Crush Saga, Pet Rescue, Bubble Witch and Farm Heroes (king.com 2018). However, the games offered by the company remains synchronized across the platforms thereby allowing the players in seamlessly switching between the platforms and the devices and continuing the game from wherever they left thereby allowing them in playing anytime, anywhere and on any of the devices.
King Digital Entertainment Ltd logs revenue through micro transactions of the virtual items that provides the players with boosters, extra lives and better game content. The company has a net income of $575 billion and revenue generation of close to $1.59 billion. The company was found as the developer of video games in Sweden in the year 2003. The video games developed have been primarily browser based. Melvyn Morris was the serving Chairperson with Riccardo Zacconi and Toby Rowland as the co- chief executive officer.
Organizational Structure and the way It Facilitated Functionality
The organizational structure represents a system outlining the fact as to how some activities remain directed towards the achievement of the organizational goals (Ashkenas et al. 2015). The structure of an organization also helps in determining the flow of information from one level to another within an organization.
The organizational structure of King Digital Entertainment Ltd is designed in a manner that the primary motive for the creation of user-friendly games with the help of expert graphics and latest technology. Therefore, in addition to game designers there exists a lot of job description and positions that accounts for all operations for successful outcomes. This includes the company owner, game designers, programmers and the artists (Tran and Tian 2013).
Primary offerings of the company
The organizational structure improves the functionality by the following means (Camison and Villar 2014):
- Helps in Streamlining Operations:The organizational structure ensures effective completion of the business functions in an effective manner.
- Improvement in the Business Decision Making: The companies can use the organizational structure for improving the decision making process.
- Improvement in the Performance of Employees:Organizational structures help in outlining the task of the employee and the manager responsible for overseeing every employee
- Increased Focus on Customer Sales and Services: Organizational structure enables the firms in focusing extra time on the customer servicethan on the operational issues.
- Enables Operation in Multiple Locations: Organizational structure enables the business owners in creating management chain for ensuring that all the business locations operates as per the standard procedures of the company.
Modern Management Approach in Improving Functionality
King Digital Entertainment Limited can adopt the contingency approach for improving its functionality. This approach focuses at the integration of the theory with the practice in the systems framework. The contingency approach represents an approach where the behaviour of a sub unit remains dependent on the environment and the relationship it has with the other units or the sub units that has some amount of control over sequences desired by that particular sub unit (Wu et al. 2014). Thus, the behaviour inside an organization remains contingent on the environment and if the manager seeks to bring about a change in the behavioural aspects of the organization then he must focus on changing the situation that influences it.
The contingency approach is different from the system approach in the sense that it leads to recognition of the fact that the organizational system acts as the product of interaction of the environment and the sub systems. In addition, the approach seeks in identifying the exact character of the inter relationships and inter actions (Stock, Six and Zacharias 2013). Thus, the contingency approach leads to the identification of the external and the internal variables that helps in critically influencing the organizational performance and the managerial revolution. This approach stresses on the fact that there does not exist any ideal means of doing things. Management refers to the situation and managers should align objectives, prepare strategies and design organizations in accordance to the prevailing circumstances. The approach also provides an insight to the fact managerial policies must adjust with the environmental changes to become effective. Further, the approach also puts forward in improving in the diagnostic skills for anticipating the environmental changes
The contingency approach helps in designing of the organization, developing the communication and information, following the appropriate leadership approaches and the preparation of the suitable policies, strategies, objectives, practices and programmes (Miner 2015).
Charles Handy’s Cultural Framework and Its Relevance to Organizational Culture
The four types of culture followed by the organization as per Handy’s Cultural Framework include (Hays 2016):
Power Culture: In this of culture, the subordinates do not have an option but to strictly follow the instructions of the superiors. The employees do not possess the liberty of expressing their views or sharing ideas on open forum and follow the instruction of the supervisor. The managers belonging to such kind of culture can act partial towards someone that might be a reason for unrest amongst the others.
Organizational structure and its significance
Task Culture: In this culture, there are close to four or five members in each of the team. This is a culture where each member needs to have equal contribution in accomplishing a task in the most innovative manner.
Person Culture: The organization with this type of culture eventually suffers. This is because here the employees develop no attachment towards the office and only works for the sake of money. They hardly remain loyal towards the management and take a decision in support of the organization.
Role Culture: In this type of culture, each individual remains accountable for some activity and takes ownership of the assigned work. In such type of culture, power comes to visibility with responsibility.
Kings Digital Entertainment Limited follows a power culture where only few individuals spread across the organization is responsible for determining its success holds the power, for determining its success. There exist few rules and regulations in the company as it follows a power culture. Here the employees remain judged by their achievement instead of their way of doing things. The quick decision making process in this culture drives an organization towards its success. The decisions in this type of culture are taken irrespective of the interest of the organization (Berkenkotter and Huckin 2016). This type of culture portrays a stronger culture that can quite easily turn toxic.
Two Innovative Strategic Management Objectives of the Company
Innovative strategic management refers to the objectives that help in determining a company’s competitive advantage. Two innovative strategic management objectives of King Digital Entertainment Limited include (Wheelen et al. 2017):
- Inspiring people through creation of value since King Digital Entertainment Ltd represents the one of the most successful social game developing company for mobile devices. Presently the company boosts of having three amongst the top ten available games on the App store with 356 million users monthly and a profit of $1 billion.
- Providing direction to the company in becoming a winner through offering games like Bubble Witch, Candy Crush, Pet Rescue and Candy Crush that have synchronization across various platforms thereby portraying the idea of the bite-sized entertainment.
SWOT Analysis
Strengths · Possession of a dedicated fan base · Holding a position in global market · Acting as leader in response to the demands of the customer · Using discrete campaigns for focusing solely on research and development · Extreme popularity of the games like Candy Crush Saga |
Weakness · Lack of innovation in relation to current internet protocol · Narrowing of the competitive base · Having prolonged release window for achieving newer titles and further expansion · For determining the growth, increased dependence on other brands · Existence of streamlined market with nearly 75 percent of revenue from the mobile channels · Increased stagnancy in the sales taking place globally |
Opportunities · Enhancement in the uptake of online and mobile gaming · Expansions in the various mediums for the purpose of entertainment · Developments taking place in the gaming and mobile facilities · Initiation of the means of pay games available through mobile · Getting hold of the smaller and popular internet protocol |
Threats · Change in demand of the customers for newer games · Presence of other competitors who adopts the blending of different genre of games · Prevalence of illegal, pirated and private servers |
Conclusion:
The report ends by highlighting the strategic management objectives through the SWOT framework. The report also puts forward discussion on the cultural aspect of the company based on Handy’s cultural framework. The report also discusses how the contingency approach improves the functionality of the company. There is also discussion about the organization along with a brief introduction of King Digital Entertainment Ltd. The company offers games for mobile devices. One of the most successful amongst them is the Candy Crush with embedding of special features for enhancing the experience of the players. The company also has a passionate culture based on the humility, respect and collaboration
References:
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Hays, P.A., 2016. Addressing cultural complexities in practice: Assessment, diagnosis, and therapy. APA Books.
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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.
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