Jan van der Schmidt was the founder of a successful chain of restaurants located throughout Europe. He died unexpectedly at the age of 55. Jan was sole owner of the company's common stock and was known for being quite authoritarian. He personally made most of the company's personnel decisions. He also made most of the decisions on menu selection, food suppliers, and advertising programs. Employees throughout the firm are paid fixed salaries and were closely monitored by van der Schmidt. Jan's son, Karl, spent his youth driving BMWs around Holland and Germany at high speeds. He spent little time working with his father in the restaurant business. Nonetheless, Karl is smart and just received his MBA degree from a leading business school. Karl has decided to follow his father as the chief operating officer of the restaurant chain. What advice about organizational architecture for the company would you offer Karl now that he has taken over?

Considering that Karl was not really involved in working with his father in the restaurant business means that Karl lacks the experience to knowing how to handle operations matter in the business. His MBA can be useful to him as a tool to understand the business, but this would happen over time. Karl is not his father and probably does not possess the same style as his father. Thus, it would be wise if Karl would decentralize some of his authoritative power to an upper management team. This upper management team would then work with the managers of the various chain of restaurants. The managers of the various chain of restaurants would have better local intel that would better position them to make decisions to improve themselves in their respective locations. There should then be a flow of information going back and forth between Karl and the restaurants. Karl could then use this information (by in which he should be able to