1
Week 7 Discussion Thread
Fabulous Footware
School of Business, Liberty University
BUSI 735: Strategic Organization Design and Theory
2
Introduction
Fabulous Footwear is a thriving footwear company that produces approximately 12,500
pairs of shoes per day at two locations in the Chicago, IL area (Daft, 2021). The company uses a
design/build production structure: its design team constantly produces shoe designs they
believe the market will be interested in, and presents them to the leadership team, which
decides whether to go/no-go on each design. This is in contrast to their competitors, which use
identical shoes as their production strategy to keep prices low.
While both marketing styles introduced above work for their target customers, the need
to continually innovate to attract more customers remains, and the way they innovate serves as
a barometer of success. Changes in production tactics and the way products go from inception
to creation vary, depending on how they travel. For Fabulous, there is some debate over
whether its information flow is efficient and aimed at keeping the company competitive.
Frequent changes in the shoe industry pose challenges for Fabulous Footwear and
require close attention. Questions linger about whether the current structure is best suited to
the business's needs. Additionally, the introduction of new technology presents unique
challenges. Identifying and addressing these issues is a top priority for Fabulous and involves
leadership at all levels.
Structure
Fabulous Footwear is uniquely structured in that its design, financial, and sales leaders
all have roles at the top, specifically right under the CEO. Characterizing the structure at
Fabulous is similar to the approach of general systems theory. This theory emphasizes the
“wholeness” of organisms, which function as a complete unit rather than as individual parts
(Steyn, 2020). Each of these units provides design input and output and approves the progress
of new designs throughout the process.
The structure at Fabulous Footwear has been in place since the 1980s and is heavily
hands-on. Unfortunately, this process has not been without friction, and at times, employees
3
have had disagreements, primarily over timing, design differences, and the rate at which new
ideas enter the workflow for consideration.
Inappropriate Structure/Changes
The structure at Fabulous Footwear is inappropriate for the current rate of shoe style
changes and the physical process the company uses. Fabulous employees touch many aspects of
the design potential, which often creates bottlenecks. Specifically, as it pertains to development,
design sketches, color choices, and pilot runs, these are hand-carried items that are not only
placed in an employee's physical hands but also in the hands of a specific employee due to the
additional task of obtaining that employee's approval.
As the focus shifts to the obvious bottlenecks that may occur, which are tasks taking a
long time or causing rework of other tasks, placing these tasks into the hands of a person does
not bode well for efficiency (Tang et al., 2021). There is approximately 2 weeks to 1 month
between the time a design is approved and the first production run at one of the plants (Daft,
2021). This time can be reduced significantly if addressed and acted upon using the available
technology the plant has introduced, but has yet to capitalize on.
Structural changes going forward must include adopting new technology, removing
samples from employees' hands, and implementing new systems to enhance both speed and
productivity. Emerging technologies are beginning to have a positive impact on the workplace
(Parry & Battista, 2023). As such, Katherine Olsen has advocated to Fabulous’s leadership that
the company adopt the new technology, which has already been implemented (Daft, 2021).
Lastly, the company must leverage its newly created e-commerce and social media
departments to disseminate information about the company and provide employees with
information. The intranet can be used to distribute new designs and information that would
typically be sent by email or word of mouth. Social media has a constantly growing user base
that spends many hours a day across various platforms, making it an excellent marketing
channel
4
(Appel et al., 2020).
New Information Technology
Fabulous Footwear has introduced a series of new technologies to enable its employees
to interact with one another and to improve production efficiency. The company has many tasks
its CEO can take to ensure compliance. First, an introduction and training on the new technology
should precede its official rollout. Obtaining employee buy-in is critical, as the company has not
used technology before.
The process of using the intranet to facilitate new design tasks should be mandatory and
used not only as a vehicle for producing new products, but also as a record-keeping source. The
current process does not lend itself to good record-keeping, as most item movements for design
are hand-carried.
Finally, the CEO should consistently introduce layers of technology on an alternating
schedule, making them interconnected and boosting efficiency. Monthly reports during
meetings should highlight the successes of using technology and compare these new data to the
old process. Showcasing the “wins” with technology helps maintain buy-in and encourages
future compliance.
Conclusion
As the world becomes more geographically connected through technology, advancing
technology and using it to improve processes is vital. Fabulous Footwear is well-positioned to
sustain its success by leveraging technology and empowering its personnel to do the same. The
leadership is poised to continue this success, provided they adhere to the teachings of Romans
12:2, which states, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the
renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good,
pleasing and perfect will” (Bible Hub, 2025).
‘
5
References
Appel, G., Grewal, L., Hadi, R., & Stephen, A. T. (2020). The future of social media in
marketing. Journal of the Academy of Marketing science, 48(1), 79-95.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-019-00695-1.
Bible Hub (2025). Romans 12:2. https://biblehub.com/romans/12-2.htm.
Daft, R. L. (2021). Organization theory & design (Thirteenth ed.). Cengage.
Parry, E., & Battista, V. (2023). The impact of emerging technologies on work: A review of the
evidence and implications for the human resource function. Emerald Open Research,
1(4). https://doi.org/10.1108/EOR-04-2023-0001.
Steyn, R. (2020). Leadership styles and organizational structure. International Journal of Human
Resource Studies, 10(3), 98-116. https://doi.org/10.5296/ijhrs.v10i3.17295.
Tang, J., Li, L., Liu, Y., & Lin, K. Y. (2021). Automatic identification of bottleneck tasks for business
process management using fusion-based text clustering. IFAC-PapersOnLine, 54(1), 1200-
1205.
Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)
