A geographical organizational structure organizes people within an organization by geographic location. This structure creates specific divisions for each location. Each division acts as if it is its own company, combining different types of personnel for various business functions. For example, each division may have its own marketing department, production department, sales department, distribution department and more. Geographic organizational structures often provide local divisions with the autonomy to operate as they would like. Divisions can understand and respond to local preferences and demand but still follow the overall business policy. Businesses with these structures are often better equipped to develop efficient regional, national and international operations.

A geographical organisational structure suits businesses that have offices or units in different regions or geographical areas. This form of structure enables businesses to have a reporting and functional system across multiple locations. Amazon’s organizational structure  incorporates geographic divisions. The company establishes groups on their physical geographic locations and related business goals. It’s the best example of geographic organization.

Amazon is particular about its organizational structure. They were the very first type of organizational structure and most big businesses still use them today, especially those with a global reach. In Amazon.com, the hierarchy is expressed in terms of a global system of clear lines of authority that heavily influence the firm’s operations.

For example, Jeff Bezos sits at the top exercising ultimate control over all senior executives and managers, who in turn apply directives through the sectors under their control either at their own discretion or at the direction of Jeff Bezos. These directives impact all relevant offices of the company all over the world.  

It is central hierarchies like this that enable complete managerial control over entire organizations, even where there are multiple product lines, services, and divisions.

The strongest part of Amazon’s org structure is its function-based global groups. Each major business function has its own dedicated group that is headed by an executive-level manager, such as a CEO or SVP. By structuring the company in this way, Amazon can efficiently and successfully manage its e-commerce operations throughout the entire organization. This structure also enables Amazon to more easily establish operations in new and emerging markets.

Geographic divisions and their sub-divisions

A geographic group company bases groups on their physical geographic locations and related business goals. For example, Amazon.com Inc., the e-commerce arm of the company, uses these divisions to make it easier to manage the e-commerce business based on the distinctions of these regions, their regulatory framework, and any challenges such as logistics. The strategic advantage of splitting elements of the company into geographic divisions is that it enables Amazon to better and more accurately address issues or problems relevant to each region, and to do so efficiently, considering the regional markets themselves. Despite Amazon’s size, however, the company only has two geographic divisions: 1) North America and 2) International.

Amazon’s org structure works because it is highly effective at supporting international growth in a variety of different markets. The company’s continued success in expanding and growing its many areas of operation are testament to it working well. close communication with local customers, Amazon has been successful in creating strong collaborative teams at each location and the company can better serve local needs and tailor their approach to the local market.

The major advantage to Amazon of its overall hierarchical structure is that it enables Amazon.com, Inc. to quickly and effectively address and implement directives from senior managers, executives, and stakeholders’ business extensively. At the same time, global and geographic divisions are advantageous in supporting the focus on different the many different facets of the business and geographic locations come with their own challenges and economic conditions which Jeff Bezos handles efficiently. The culture of employees is respected by the management. In my opinion the key to success of geographic structure of organization is respect the local culture. 

Strong leadership is when you can encourage, motivate, inspire and challenge your team to produce their best work. Strong leadership connects a team together through a common purpose and builds relationships in the workplace that allow for effective communication, more creativity and better problem-solving skills.

Geographic organizational structures work best with strong leadership. The leader needs to be a visionary and good in decision making. Geographic organizations are far and wide therefore the entire organization sharing the same vision is most important. Daimler AG, for instance, has its headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, and has manufacturing facilities in several European locations, and has sales divisions all over the world. Daimler AG promotes equal opportunities and a culture of appreciation and respect. They believe that people are more motivated and productive when they can bring their whole selves to work

A geographical structure can offer several operational and strategic advantages, including close communication with local customers, strong collaborative teams at each location and the ability to better serve local needs and tailor their approach to the local market.

Here are few world famous brands and their hidden meaning.

The name Adidas is derived from that of its founder, Adolf Dassler. The company’s logo has changed over time, but it’s always included three stripes. The current configuration is three stripes at an angle which together form a triangle. It symbolises a mountain, which in turn represents the challenges which all athletes need to face and conquer.

Rob Jenoff the designer who created with the world-famous Apple company logo, has explained how he came up with the idea: he bought a whole bag of apples, placed them in a bowl, and spent time drawing them for a week, trying to break the image down into something simple. Taking a bite out of an apple was part of the experiment, and completely by coincidence he realised that ’bite’ sounded exactly the same as the computer term ’byte’. A byte is considered as a unit of memory size of computer. Wow!! What a coincidence, and creativity that is.

Amazon has been using its current logo for 18 years. The logo illustrates that company sells everything from A to Z. The arrow in the logo points from the “A” to the “Z”.  The arrow at the bottom also symbolizes a smile, portraying that their customers are happy after using their service. The logo shows that Amazon can get anything for you at your doorstep; all you need is to log on their website.

The white and blue checker boxes represent a white/silver propeller blade spinning against a clear blue sky which portrays a happy drive on bright day. BMW logo also symbolizes the Bavarian flag colors which represents their origin. Also, it’s often supposed that the central part of the BMW logo symbolizes the rotating blades of an airplane, which are in line with the company’s earlier history of aviation technology.

The iconic Coca-Cola logo has changed many times over the past 126 years in design; however, you may be surprised to know the brand’s world-famous font of script and wave have always looked exactly as they do now. In the world-famous logo of the Coca-Cola Company, in the space between the letters ’O’ and ’L’, one can clearly see the Danish flag. The company has nonetheless used this as part of its marketing campaigns in the Scandinavian country. Just for the sake of the history of this brand, when it was introduced in 1885, it was marketed as a health tonic to cure a range of ills, including headaches, low sex drive and addiction. Coke started out with coca which is the extract of cocaine as a key ingredient, along with the kola nut. Hence it was named as Coca-Cola.

The FedEx logo was designed in 1994 by Linden Leader & Landor Associates, at first appears simple and straightforward. However, if you look at the white space between the “E” and “X” you can see a right-facing arrow. This “hidden” arrow was intended to be a subliminal symbol for speed and accuracy. FedEx assures on time and safe and sound delivery of courier.

The logo of Hyundai appears as “H” the first letter of the brand name. But, the South Korean conglomerate Hyundai’s logo symbolises two people: a client and a representative of the company shaking hands. People shake hands in contentment.

The logo of the South Korean electronics company LG portrays a person’s face, which is the central body region of sense. According to the company, the logo represents its aspiration to maintain everyday human relations with its customers intact. It believes in nurturing relationships with its customers which is a crucial part of growing a successful business.

The Pepsi logo portrays the globe with twirling red, white, & blue color design in a sphere-like shape. It is considered one of the world’s most recognizable corporate trademarks. It’s hard to believe, but Pepsi paid over a million dollars to create this special logo with its secret meanings. The new special design hints at mysterious and secretive themes, such as the Earth’s magnetic field, Feng shui, Pythagoras, geodynamics, the theory of relativity, and the golden ratio. The designer has explained that this logo also makes reference to the Mona Lisa, the Parthenon, and even René Descartes. The red, white and blue colors have always represented the American flag.

In 1990, Toyota debuted the three overlapping Ellipses logo on American vehicles. The Toyota Ellipses symbolize the unification of the hearts of our customers and the heart of Toyota products. The background space represents Toyota’s technological advancement and the boundless opportunities ahead.

I am sure many people like me must have wondered what the logo of Wikipedia means. Each piece bears a glyph (a character or a sign) symbolizing the multilingualism of Wikipedia. As with the Latin letter ‘W’, these glyphs are in most cases the first glyph or glyphs of the name “Wikipedia” rendered in that language. The empty space at the top represents the incomplete nature of the mission of Wikipedia; there are more articles and languages yet to be added. I find this logo most interesting. There are currently 301 language editions of Wikipedia. It is owned by Wikimedia Foundation.

We are seeing that eBooks are in vogue. Kindle is frequently seen in hands of people; instead of carrying bunch of books one just needs to carry kindle and the person can read loads of books at his/her convenience.

In 2013, Flipkart had teamed up with Smashwords to distribute eBooks on their platform. Smashwords is World’s largest distributor of eBooks written by independent authors, worldwide. In the month of November 2015, Smashwords announced on their blog that Flipkart is terminating their contract with them. Reasons being Flipkart cannot service its clients in terms of pricing and little problems in software.

I don’t think the paper can be replaced by e-books because problems occur when people depend on digital sources. Digital systems can crash and can get corrupt. And, people like to possess things physically. Some things are irreplaceable, reading a print book is easier. Humans will always have an affinity for physical property and a digital version of a favorite story just doesn’t satisfy the same needs that a bound, uniquely pictured, individual, and colorful copy does. There are millions of avid readers who have stock of great classic books which are highly priced than gold and diamonds. They will never give up priced property of their books and they will pass it down and habituate their children and loved ones to this form of entertainment.

I am sure; countless people in this world will never give up pleasant experiences related to buying books and visiting book fairs and book stores. The entire experience which includes visiting the store, sitting in a corner, picking books, reading reviews, feeling them in hand, looking at the pictures, feeling the leaves, making note on a piece of paper is awesome. And while reading a paper book – writing all over the pages, folding the page corners, the unknown surrounding a beaten-up used book, trading with your friends, easily sharing with others, the smell of a new book versus a muskier old book. No, this cannot change. It’s just priceless.

Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited – the eBook service claims to offer over 600,000 titles in an all-you-can-read format for $9.99 a month. Such subscription services are not new; we have Scribed and Oyster which have been around for a while. But, each person has his/her own speed of reading. One of the books might be so good that you may read its pages again and again to get newer insights.

In 2013 according to a survey conducted by Pew Research in America, 28% of adults agreed to have read an eBook in past 2-3- years, but 69% reported reading a print book. More than 54% of adults visited the library for one reason or another. So while e-reader use is on the rise, and eBooks are becoming more popular, a large number of readers prefer print.

Without books there wouldn’t be librarians, library staff, or bookshops and salesmen. These are such affectionate people to be around with. There are so many eco-libraries who plant trees after they cut them down and that solves the tree problem.

You just don’t get the pleasure of reading e-Books because it’s all technical. Technology is going far, far ahead in each business segment not sparing even books. The fact is that eBook lack soul. You can hardly connect with it. It is like you trying to connect with your dear one on Skype. I think digital channels including eBooks have their many uses; but people like to develop an emotional attachment with their possessions. These attachments always have to be real and tangible! Our perception of ‘digital’ is in transitional mode. From being hailed as innovative and cutting-edge, it is sliding to the triviality of being just another utility.

It is said that e-books are environment friendly, they are green. But, it requires battery and the battery needs to be charged. For charging the battery we need electricity. If we use paper books we can cut back the use of electricity. Another good thing about paper books is people absorb more information in them. Paper books are much more portable and can be taken anywhere, and do not rely on power. You can read them in more places and the information is always easier to flip between. It’s much more natural and after having read both paper and digital, our bodies and minds are more inclined towards natural paper books.

 Libraries play a pivotal role in knowledge development:

Funding: Philanthropists and business houses fund libraries, and therefore essentially they are available at a lower cost to the public. Even calculating in the costs of property tax levies, libraries charge their patrons hardly any cost. And, they stack number of copies of each title, at any time few readers can borrow same title.

Preservation of knowledge: In fact preserving knowledge is a huge part of any library’s mission. Digital reservation is already happening worldwide of books, journals, historic record, science fictions, research etc. etc. The preservation of print materials, and the digitization of other parts of library collections, is a regular priority. So while libraries wrestle with publishers, subscription services face many similar obstacles. All content readers want is available in digital format in most of the libraries in the cities. Many institutions are juggling with technology and investment in it for making their libraries more relevant to public.

Patrons seek variety of services: Patrons count on libraries to do more than just lend books. They visit for free Wi-Fi or even computer use and research assistance from knowledgeable staff. Often such services include assistance with job searches, especially for those who do not have reliable internet service at home.

So while libraries wrestle with publishers, subscription services face many similar obstacles. Each content or let’s say most of the content readers want will be available in digital format.

While reading eBooks, we spend quite a lot of time moving, pushing, linking, scrolling, and jumping through text that when we sit down with a novel, once the matter is touched, scrolled and jumped off, we lose interest of getting back the page. We are in this new era of information behavior, and we’re beginning to see the consequences of that. There are too many interruptions on the digital platform – the hypertext, emails, videos and popup advertisements. These are terrible interruptions to readers.

Some other consequences consist of how e-books, computers, and tablets reduce our reading speed and comprehension. Researchers found people understand the material they read on paper better than they do on e-books. Even though today’s children and college students are computer savvy, the majority of them prefer printed versions of text over e-books.

Cognitive reasons score higher in case of paper books: Do you know this? Cornell University researchers found that both users and non-users of eBooks generally preferred using printed versions of textbooks, because they are convenient to use and handle.

Anne Mangen, literacy professor at Norway’s University of Stavanger, explains this fact:  “Reading is human-technology interaction. Perhaps the tactility and physical permanence of paper yields a different cognitive and emotional experience; reading that can’t be done in snippets, scanning here and there, but requires sustained attention.”

For most of us, feeling pages and smelling the book awakens interest to read in the subconscious. Marilyn Jager-Adams, literacy expert and cognitive psychologist at Brown University, offers this explanation: “All those cues like what the page looks like, what the book felt like, all those little pieces help us put together the whole thing. And they are just lost or impecunious on a Kindle or tablet.”

Lots of readers have a habit of scribbling their thoughts and opinions in the margins or some readers have habit of underlining some important lines while reading books: e-Books do not allow this happiness. For many people this is essential to understand a book deeply. There’s nothing much tangible to engage our other senses in eBook.

E-books do have comparable elements, like percentage-remaining figures or symbolic progress bars, to mimic this experience. However, rather than tangible incentives, these elements are merely visual (or illusory). Additionally, rather than pages coming in pairs, e-books and tablets are apt to be displayed individually, which limits spatial representation. E-books and tablets offer just a single page, which is re-written constantly, over and over.

Textbook makers, bookstore owners and college student surveys all say millennial still strongly prefer print for pleasure and learning, a bias that surprises reading experts given the same group’s proclivity to consume most other content digitally. A University of Washington pilot study of digital textbooks found that a quarter of students still bought print versions of e-textbooks that they were given for free.

I would sum it up this way: the distinction between e-books and paper really comes down to personal preference. Some people prefer reading on a computer screen, whereas others rather prefer to read from the printed versions. It’s too difficult to predict whether people will choose to read paper books for deep reading and tangible reasons or favor e-books in the future. In my opinion eBook cannot replace paper book.