Organizational Design

Kellogg Company’s organizational design is International Operations. The three major contingencies that influence structure adopted by Kellogg’s is the type of strategy driving their foreign operations, product diversity and the extent to which they are dependent on foreign sales. As I have mentioned in posts before, Kellogg’s manufactures their products in 18 different countries and sells their products in 180 countries. They also adapt their products to the culture of the country in which they are selling their products. Kellogg’s has a wide variety of products including cereal, pop tarts, breakfast bars, fruit snacks, chips and beverages. International sales account for 1/3 of their 2011 sales, which was $13.2 billion. Unfortunately, I could not find the exact numbers for their foreign sales.  http://www.annualreport2011.kelloggcompany.com/financial2.htm

To manage their international operations, Kellogg’s uses a geographic-area division structure. A geographic-area division structure means that geographic regions group their operations internally. Kellogg’s uses this strategy because their foreign sales are a fair percentage of their total sales.