ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR
EXTRA CREDIT ASSIGNMENT
ZHONGYI ZHANG
ID:31062818
25 JAN 2011

A discussion about organization chart features in EVA AIR Corporation

Here is the Organization Chart about the EVA AIR Corporation. I have worked in the Cargo Operation Department in EVA AIR Corporation for about one year. As we all know, each air corporation has strict articles and rules. They are made for the safety for each flight procedure. The whole company cannot make any mistakes. If it made, there may cause the death of hundreds of lives and the waste of billions of dollars. So one of my supervisor even told me that the working in the air corporation is not only for economic interests but also for conscience. Let me get down to discuss the features of some key elements in the EVA AIR that the managers use to design their organization chart. The Departmentalization is the first element I want to explain. The EVA AIR is an multinational air corporation in the world. It has three types to departmentalize their division and dept. One is the most popular way by functions performed. In most people's view, air corporation make profits by the passenger services. Before I joined the EVA AIR group, I also believed that it was true. However, after I worked in EVA AIR Cargo, I found that air corporation makes its profits mostly from their cargo services. In order to make the maximum profit of each flight, i.e.,let the plane to carry the maximum weight to begin its flight, the cargo division has two Dept to make their more efficiently. One is called business department and another is cargo operation dept. The business department is in charge of connecting with the customers of cargo agency. They bring customers and shipment of commodities to our corporation and negotiate with them to place an shipping space order in each flight. Employees in Business Dept are all good at business negotiations. They use their talent to express what advantage the EVA AIR have and then advise the customers who use other Airways shipping their cargo switch to EVA cargo. Owning to their hard-work, EVA cargo can have continuous business. Then Operation Dept take the mission and then to operate a flight including space booking, balance, inspect the leftovers in warehouse, supervise air-unloading and air-loading, write the NOTOC, manage the ULDs and so forth. In EVA AIR , we do have work specialization but work is not subdivided into separate jobs. The EVA AIR is not like the company like McDonald's. If we subdivide the work into highly sophisticated, what shall an employee do if his or her colleague is sick and cannot come to work? Also, an work in air corporation meet emergencies very often, so how can an employee solve an emergency who is always doing an specialized work? We cannot deny sophisticated work specializaition can save the time and money for the company to train an employee. The result is not worth the company to do it. Less work specialization may raise the level of accommodation of work efficiently, yet the productivity can be increased by enlarging, rather than narrowing, the scope of job activities. Our HR in EVA AIR find the advantage of their employees and then put them into the Dept which is most suitable for them both in technical level and characters level. So the company believe that the employee can have a relatively good performance in working in their Dept. The two departments collaborate with each other and try their best to make maximum profit and the highest safety level in each flight. Also, EVA AIR also departmentalize on the basis of geography. EVA AIR has the airlines to worldwide so the offices in charge of different region of departments are divided into three main area--Asia, Europe and North America. It has an headquarter in Taiwan and has many branches worldwide. I was worked in the shanghai EVA AIR representative office, Cargo Operation Dept. Each of these regions has corresponding branches organized around geography. People in Each region may have similar folkways and similar needs, so branches in each region can just meet the needs in different people and this form of departmentalization can be valuable. EVA AIR also use the particular type of customer to departmentalize their company. As we can see, the airway has two business, one is passenger and another is cargo. So customer departmentalization can help solve customers in each department that can best be met by having specialists for each. EVA AIR use all these three forms of departmentalization and in each department, employee do complex operations and each one knows the whole procedure of running the Dept. Secondly, let me discuss about the chain of command. Air corporation may not work as the same mechanism as other manufacturing firms and other finance corporations. In air corporation, especially in EVA AIR cargo dept, we open our company mailbox half on hour. Because if colleague or supervisors in other division want to send some information about the flight, they will send our emails. It is very convenient. Also, because we are work in an air corporation, when we send emails to report the details about loading of each flight to our supervisor, we used to make another copy email to other divisions' colleagues. Also, when colleagues in business dept or even other division such as Passenger Division and Flight Operation Division send emails to the supervisor of our dept, they will also cc an email to each of low-level employee. The reason is that the information about the flight is paramount to the safety of the flight and the profits to air corporation. The most important task an employee working in air corporation do is to make the plane safe and its departure and landing on schedule. So information is crucial to all the employees in air corporation. Also, we are in operation department. Every day we meet different situations and emergencies. So when we are at the scene, we may not have time to report to our supervisor. So in many circumstance, we are empowered to make decisions that previously were reserved for management. The third I want to discuss is the span of control. I am not familiar with the situation of other dept so I just talk about the span of control of our department. In our department, we have one department supervisor, two vice department supervisor and five cargo operation representatives. The level of department supervisor is just like the department manager. One different thing I want to explain is that we have the shift system because our cargo department have night shift. In daytime, we operate the cargo in passengers airlines and in the midnight, we operate the cargo in cargo airlines. In working hours, there usually be three to four employee in the office. One is our supervisor and the rest are our operation representative. So I think that the proportion of our spans of control is not so ideal. In many times, we feel the atmosphere in the office is depressive. Narrow spans of control cause tight supervision. Because we only have one supervisor when we are working, the level of hierarchy slow down decision making and tend to isolate upper management. In a nutshell, I think organizational chart in EVA AIR is relatively good. Though it has some problems and need to enhance in later times, their annual profits is the best proof of performance in their organization.