P&G Corporate Structure

The P&G website portrays what aspects of the company’s structure make the consumer-packaged goods corporation a global and local power. P&G divides its efforts into four primary groups: Global Business Units (GBU’s), Market Development Organizations (MDO’s), Global Business Services (GBS’s), and Lean Corporate Functions. While the Global Business Units puts a strong focus on sustaining profitability in a more global sense, that is concerning shareholders, the Market Development Organizations are responsible for truly knowing consumers and retailers in specific regions. In addition to these two branches, the Global Business Services is more concerned with human resource management. P&G understands that the greater the talent level that its corporation reflects, the higher its productivity. The corporation hopes to reduce costs by sustaining these “best-in-class” partners. The last branch of the structure, the Lean Corporate Functions branch is concerned with continually innovating within the business to ensure improvements. P&G functions in a very competitive market, one in which product differentiation may be a predominantly a function of pricing strategies. For this reason, innovating products and maintaining brand awareness and loyalty is crucial. P&G’s corporate structure seems to impressively combine advantages of horizontal and vertical organizational structures. The company has a hierarchy; one can see this in its global functions versus internal motives; however, the branches incorporate a broad range of personnel, which fosters creativity and collaboration between partners.

http://www.pg.com/en_US/company/global_structure_operations/corporate_structure.shtml