Research Paper on Facebook PDF

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Facebook Inc.’s mission and organizational structure Facebook Inc. is one of the largest online social networks in all around the world. The mission of the Company is to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. Its top priority is to build useful and engaging products that enable people to connect and share with friends and family through mobile devices, personal computers, and other surfaces. Facebook also help people discover and learn about what is going on in the world around them, enable people to share their opinions, ideas, photos and videos, and other activities with audiences ranging from their closest friends to the public at large, and stay connected everywhere by accessing its products, including: • Facebook. Facebook enables people to connect, share, discover, and communicate with each other on mobile devices and personal computers. There are a number of different ways to engage with people on Facebook, including News Feed, which displays an algorithmically ranked series of stories and advertisements individualized for each person. • Instagram. Instagram brings people closer to the people and things they love. It is a community for sharing photos, videos, and messages, and enables people to discover interests that they care about. • Messenger. Messenger is a simple yet powerful messaging application for people to connect with friends, family, groups and businesses across platforms and devices. • WhatsApp. WhatsApp is a simple, reliable and secure messaging application that is used by people and businesses around the world to communicate in a private way. • Oculus. Its hardware, software, and developer ecosystem allows people around the world to come together and connect with each other through its Oculus virtual reality (VR) products. Facebook generates substantially all of their revenue from selling advertising placements to marketers. Its ads enable marketers to reach people based on a variety of factors including age, gender, location, interests, and behaviors. Marketers purchase ads that can appear in multiple places including on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and third-party applications and websites (Facebook, Inc. – Form 10K). The company is also investing in other consumer hardware products and a number of longer-term initiatives, such as connectivity efforts, artificial intelligence (AI), and augmented reality, to develop technologies that we believe will help us better serve our mission to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. The following are Facebook’s main strengths include strong

brand image, large consumer base, high revenues (being 55,838 mln USD) and innovative workforce (JUSTIN YOUNG, 2018). Through consistent focus on the corporate mission, the company uses its strengths to support business leadership in the global market for online social networking and related Internet advertising services. According to yearly 10-K statements of the Company: The mission in 2017 was… The mission is now… to give people the power to share and make to give people the power to build community the world more open and connected. and bring the world closer together.

In this regard, the new corporate mission shows that the company now focuses on making its social networking web site an important part of community development. The following are the major components of Facebook’s mission: - Empowering people. This signifies the company’s goal of making its online social networking service a means to make users more capable online - Enabling community building. This means people can use the social network to facilitate communication and information sharing among members of communities. - Connecting the world. Connections are created when users communicate through the social media website and its corresponding mobile apps. In relation, the company enables businesses to connect with their customers. The approaches successful companies have taken to structuring themselves during growth provide two major lessons. First, a vision is needed of how the increasingly complex organization can coordinate people around a common strategy. Second, management must ensure that organizational structures and reporting relationships don’t become so restrictive that they undermine the creative passions that made the company successful in the first place. As you can see, organizational structures set up a company for future success. The pattern of the Facebook organizational structure is vertical-based as shown below. The key departments including the Information Security; Business Development; Marketing Center; Finance Center and Engineering. All of these main divisions have a number of sub-groups. For example, for the Marketing department roles cover the advertising team, the global marketing group, marketing communications team, consumer analysis team and public relations. For the engineering part of the Facebook organizational structure, you can find software development, research and analysis and so on.

An organizational structure defines how job tasks are formally divided, grouped, and coordinated. Managers should address seven key elements when they design their organization’s structure: - work specialization, -departmentalization, -chain of command, -span of control, -centralization and decentralization, -formalization, -and boundary spanning. Due to the influx of technology and a highly competitive workforce, the nature of the tech job market is fundamentally changing, migrating away from full-time generalists into part–time specialists. Facebook’s organizational structure is a variation of the traditional organizational structure of businesses. The company’s structure is adapted to suit the needs of operations involving information technology and the Internet. A company’s organizational or corporate structure defines the composition and design of the organization to meet its needs. Firms have different corporate structures based on the nature and goals of their businesses. In this business analysis case of Facebook Inc., the corporate structure is a response to the dynamics of the global online social media market. The nature and characteristics of the company’s social networking website and apps, and business goals (see Facebook Inc.’s Corporate Vision and Mission Statements) partly dictate the company’s needs. These needs are translated to the features of the organizational structure that Facebook Inc. uses to support its business. The

appropriateness of the corporate structure facilitates the company’s growth and development. Facebook Inc. has an organizational structure that enables the social media business to expand and diversify. This corporate structure also yields competitive advantage to make the company’s online social network resilient against competition. Even though the Porter’s Five Forces analysis of Facebook Inc. shows that the force of competition is moderate, measures are needed to address the aggressiveness of competitors in the international online advertising market. These competitors include Google LLC, Snap Inc. (Snapchat), and Twitter Inc. Facebook must continue enhancing its corporate structure to counteract the negative effects of competition. Facebook’s Organizational Structure & Its Features Facebook has a matrix organizational structure. The key characteristics of this structure address the company’s organizational needs, especially the need for creativity and innovation. The following main features of Facebook’s corporate structure are notable: 1. Corporate Function-Based Teams 2. Geographic Divisions 3. Product-Based Divisions Corporate Function-Based Teams. Facebook Inc. maintains corporate teams based on their business functions in managing operational activities throughout the organizational structure. This structural characteristic is based on the various needs of the online social media business. For example, the company needs technology research and development. Because of the matrix corporate structure, some function-based teams have blurred boundaries with geographic and product-based divisions in the company. A senior manager or executive heads each team. The following are the main corporate function-based teams in Facebook’s organizational structure: • Chief Executive • Finance • Operations • Information • Technology • Accounting • Privacy • Security • Marketing • Legal • Business & Marketing • Global Public Policy • Investor Relations • Product Management

• Human Resources Geographic Divisions. Regional divisions are another major feature of Facebook’s corporate structure. Geographic location is a determinant of this structural characteristic. The company uses these divisions in light of the differences in social networking and online advertising market dynamics. This organizational structural characteristic addresses differences among the behaviors of people and advertisers in using Facebook Inc.’s social networking website and apps. For example, Latin American advertisers tend to use the company’s social media services differently, compared to European advertisers. Human resources are also managed regionally. Geographic factors are included in strategic management to address the external factors in the remote or macro-environment of the business, as shown in the PESTEL/PESTLE analysis of Facebook Inc. Because of the company’s matrix structure, some of these geographic divisions share resources and managers with function-based teams. The intersections between geographic divisions and function-based teams determine many aspects of Facebook Inc.’s operations management strategy and productivity measures. Even with these geographic divisions in its corporate structure, the company does not have senior corporate executive teams for each and every region. Instead, regional management teams are used. Facebook Inc.’s organizational structure includes the following geographic divisions: • North America • Latin America • Europe, Middle East & Africa • Asia & South Pacific Product-Based Divisions. Facebook Inc. employs product-based divisions in its organizational structure. This structural feature involves corporate or global teams that manage operations pertaining to specific products. Such global or corporate scope is a consequence of the digital and online nature of the social media business. While most of the company’s operations are focused on its social networking services, potential expansion and diversification are also considered. For example, the business is headed toward changing or adding more productbased divisions in its corporate structure, as new products or ventures are made. Such changes influence Facebook’s marketing mix or 4Ps. Marketing strategies and tactics are based on products and their management. Facebook’s organizational structure includes the following product-based divisions: • Family of Apps • New Platforms and Infrastructure • Central Product Services Facebook’s Corporate Structure: Advantages & Disadvantages The matrix organizational structure provides flexibility to Facebook Inc. and its multinational operations in the social media and online advertising market. This flexibility is a structural advantage that enables the company to easily respond to

market changes and trends. Another advantage of this corporate structure is significant corporate control. For example, corporate function-based teams are a characteristic that allows Facebook Inc. to maintain control and direction on its operations worldwide. Moreover, the product-based divisions support creativity and innovation in product development. Despite its advantages, Facebook Inc.’s organizational structure has the disadvantage of possible difficulty in implementing directives throughout the corporate structure. This difficulty is due to variations in regional management initiatives, based on the company’s geographical divisions. Still, these divisions are necessary to ensure that the business satisfies sociocultural and political variations among countries and regions. Example (Economictimes.com by Gaurav Laghate, January 17,2019). The Facebook Company has made a new organizational structure for its India unit in which the functionality heads will report to the country-managing director instead of the regional heads. In the new structure, the functional heads for public policy, global, market solutions, communications, and newly formed verticals of partnership and strategy will report to Facebook’s India managing director, and not to their respective regional heads in Asia-Pacific. This change is an example of decentralization, which is important for large companies in terms of local accountability, faster decision-making process, and having a closer connection with its headquarters. References  Stephans P.Robins and Timothy A.Judge (2019) ‘Organizational Behaviour’  JUSTIN YOUNG (2018) ‘Facebook Inc. SWOT Analysis & Recommendations’  NATHANIEL SMITHSON (2019) ‘Facebook Inc.’s Mission Statement & Vision Statement’  Facebook, Inc. – Form 10K.  Facebook, Inc. Investor Relations – Corporate Governance....