Walgreens-Industry and Organization Structure
Walgreens is a hybrid occupying two distinct industries. It is involved in the pharmaceutical retail industry, providing individuals with the opportunity to purchase all of their over the counter medical products and prescription drugs prescribed to them by doctors. In addition to that, the company occupies a quasi-grocery store space. Stores offer shelves of items that can be found at convenience stores and grocery stores, including alcohol, toys, snack food, beauty products, greeting cards, and some school supplies. The industry is a crowded one on that side, as Walgreens is forced to compete with the major grocery stores as well as all smaller convenience stores. Its primary competitors on the pharmacy side are CVS and Duane Reed. The company has purchased Rite Aid, eliminating one of its chief competitors while making itself somewhat larger. There is a regional element to the market. Duane Reed, for instance, is primarily competitive in Northeast cities, while it cannot be found in rural areas and the South.
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Walgreens operates using a bifurcated organizational structure. The headquarters of the company are located in Deerfield, Illinois, and the company then features 700 stores all over the country. Importantly, more than 400 stores are opened each year. The corporate headquarters deals with branding issues, overall management decisions, and the like, while day to day operations are left to the individual store managers. Walgreens at the corporate level has ten different departments, handling everything from pharmacy to merchandising to e-commerce, as the company tries to compete in all of the different areas where it has potential customers.
Current Executive Leadership Structure
The company’s leadership structure reflects the company’s somewhat odd positioning within the market. For instance, the leadership structure has a chief operating officer at the top, but below that, there are executives in charge of the various different departments that facilitate the company’s different functions. The company has a president of pharmacy and retail operations who oversees both the pharmacy side and the overall retail units for the companies. This is a good reflection of the fact that the company focuses so heavily on the pharmacy side of the business. In addition, though, there is a president in charge of retail products. At the same time, she is the chief products officer. This is a reflection of the wide variety of different products that the stores sell in addition to pharmaceutical products. The company also features a high-level executive in charge of developing the healthcare markets. This person is interested in developing relationships that potentially make it easier for the company to improve its standing with healthcare companies, allowing Walgreens to enhance its margins on the drug side. The company quite obviously has all of the other necessary officers, as well, including a chief information officer, a general counsel, a chief finance officer, and even a chief human resources officer. The company has begun to focus more on its supply chain, adding to its mix a supply chain specialist among its executive team.
Rationale for Choosing Walgreens
Walgreens has undergone significant changes over the last few years. As it has tried to compete with its many competitors, the company has shifted its focus some and decided to fully embrace its role as a company competing in dual markets. Likewise, the company has been engaged in buying and selling activity, bringing to bear changes both within the organizational structure of the company and within the market at large. This makes Walgreens the sort of interesting company that can provide a ripe hunting ground for analysis into its organizational structure and how that interacts with the structure of the market. Likewise, all of the changes have created some conflict within the company in terms of goals and the future.
- Guinzoni, R. (2015). Walgreens Boots Alliance goes multi-lingual through e-learning: Challenging program brings many and significant benefits.Human Resource Management International Digest, 23(7), 5-8.
- Moore, J., Hanson, W. R., Maxey, E. C., & Kraemer, L. (2015, January). Fully Integrated Inclusive Organization: Beyond Accommodations. In Academy of Management Proceedings (Vol. 2015, No. 1, p. 15503). Academy of Management.
