Adidas as a Multinational Company: Strategic Planning (Essay Sample)

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Adidas Management
Adidas is a multinational company based in German that produces shoe and clothing products. In sportswear industry is the largest company in Europe and second largest after Nike globally ("Adidas History"). The firm has maintained its strong market share and growth through effective management. The discussion below focuses on evaluating how the firm accomplishes the four core management functions.
Planning
The first management function involves setting goals and developing the course of action for attaining them. Planning requires managers being well knowledgeable about conditions facing the company or institution and predicts future conditions. As such, they must be god decision maker (Dessler 2). It consists of first studying the environment where managers evaluate and understand important contingencies that affect an organization regarding customers, competitors, and economic conditions. After an exclusive analysis of environmental factors, planners are required to develop appropriate goals for the firm and course of actions. This is followed by identifying several action plans and evaluating every alternative before picking the best means of achieving the goals set (Dessler 2). Next, managers must formulate essential steps that will assist in implementing the idea effectively. Finally, constant evaluation of the strategy success is needed to ensure effectiveness and efficiency in the organization during the implementation process.
There different ways of planning which include operational, tactical and strategic. Adidas uses strategic planning to compete effectively with companies such as Reebok, Puma, Asics and Nike in sporting goods industry. Currently, it has initiated its strategic plan for the next five years called “Creating the New” ("Planning | ADIDAS"). The plan targets at catering the needs and desires of more customers in the market than any other competitor company. To attain this, the company has set three strategic choices, which include speed, cities, and open sources. Speed is a strategy of becoming the fastest sports product company in satisfying the consumers need and making decisions. On the other hand, cities entail identifying the six main cities, which the firm wants to grow and share minds, market, and trend. Lastly, open source strategy focuses on becoming the first sports brand that invites, partners, consumers and athletes to become part of its brand. This strategy is a realistic plan that provides a layout for Adidas to accelerate growth both on top and bottom line from now up to 2020.
Organizing
It involves developing organizational structure and allocating human resources with an aim of ensuring goals are attained. The structure of an organization is a framework in which efforts are coordinated and is represented by a company’s chart that provides a graphic representation of command chain within the firm (Dessler 3). Organizing also entails designing of individual work in a company by making decisions about responsibilities of every job and the manner in which duties should be done. Organizing and firm level consist of deciding best ways of departmentalizing for proper and effective coordination of jobs. The company uses a vertical organization structure where duties of individual job at every hierarchy are described. In this regard, decisions come from management down to workers at the lowest level.
Adidas has tried to loosen the hierarchical structure by use of three other kinds of structures which include functional, matrix and divisional for effective management purpose. Functional structure assists Adidas in separating functionally based on are of specialization. The main reason for applying this structure is because different employees have varied skills such that some have different knowledge about sports, others are experts in designs while some are incapable of research and development. On the other hand, divisional structure assists the company to run its operation in different geographical areas such as America, Asia, and Europe. Lastly, matrix structure facilitates communication between employees and management. Workers report to functional managers, which enhances their capability of making decisions about resource allocation. They also report to product managers, which facilitates the latter in deciding how to produce new products.
Leading
It involves social and informal sources of influence used by managers to inspire actions taken by their team of employees with an aim of increasing productivity level. These include methods of motivating employees through communication and rewards among others. In Adidas, employees are motivated using different approaches that ensure that they are satisfied at places of work (Dessler 4). First, the company is helping employees achieve work- life integration through continued engagement with them. Also, the company has also developed programs to support their new ways of...