Elements of an Organizaiton

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Interesting research project! Please see response attached for the hyperlinks and better formating, which is also presented in part below. I hope this helps and take care.

RESPONSE:

Interesting topic! Let's look at the following three concepts: motivations, organization structure and communication. However, the three are interrelated and overlap. For example, company motivations will direct the type of organizational structure, which informs the lines of communication.

Let's take a closer look at the following question:

1. I am not looking for my essay to be written-just to tie my ends together, and where I can find more information.

For an assignment like this one, a good place to begin is to go to the company website, which tells us about the company, their philosophy and values, and how they operate as a business. Often, from this information, we can get a pretty good idea of the organization structure, their motivations, e.g., mission and vision statement, and the communication style, for example.

So let's go there now (click http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/company/philosophy.html. Let's take the time to explore the entire website, learning about Whole Foods Market through the company overview, the mission, philosophy, values, goals and so on, which provides us with a bird's eye view of the Whole Foods Market. Then, looking at secondary information to actually see if the company is living up to its mission and goals is also important.

Another place to look for information about how the company is doing is financial reports (See Income Statements: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=WFMI&annual) and awards (e.g., listed on website: fifth ranking by Fortunes out of top 100 companies, etc.) or stock market financial information (http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=WFMI).

For how well the company is doing: Is it working? (Click http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=WFMI, which has all kinds of links on the left hand side of the website, such as graphs, income statements, comments about the company, etc.).

Let's look at the company website information first. I then provided other links for further research.

From the Whole foods Market website, the goals listed tell us a lot about the company motivations and some about the communications style and attitude (e.g., "inclusive and open minded" often leads to vertical lines of communication and open transparent communication styles):

E.g. "Our goal is to sell the highest quality products that also offer high value for our customers. High value is a product of high quality at a competitive price. Our product quality standards focus on ingredients, freshness, taste, nutritive value, safety and/or appearance. While we have very high standards for product quality, we believe that it is important to be inclusive and open minded, and not overly restrictive or dogmatic."

Lets' look at the three concepts of motivations, organizational structure and communication.

A. Motivations:

From the website:

E.g. "To date Whole Foods Market remains uniquely mission driven: We're highly selective about what we sell, dedicated to stringent Quality Standards, and committed to sustainable agriculture. We believe in a virtuous circle entwining the food chain, human beings and Mother Earth: each is reliant upon the others through a beautiful and delicate symbiosis." http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/company/index.html

In other words, some of the implied motivations of the Whole Foods Market are:

a. Sell highly selective and quality 'organic' products
b. Dedicate to stringent Quality Standards (e.g., "We are building a business in which high standards permeate all aspects of our company" "Quality is a state of mind at Whole Foods Market") http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/company/declaration.htm
c. Customer satisfaction
d. To keep in mind the interrelatedness of the food chain, human being and Mother Earth in all business decisions.
e. Making a profit and sustainable growth

Can you think of others to add to the list?

Another place to look ...