Control System Design: Geniebook

 

I. Organization Introduction

Geniebook is an Ed-tech company found in Singapore in 2017 specializing in providing individualized lessons and exercises in various grade school subjects. I worked for Geniebook from 2020 to 2022 as a curriculum specialist. The company has a corporate structure with about 350 employees. There are primarily three main goals to the business: The first is a goal of sales department which is to improve sales, i.e., student enrollment. The second objective is that of the IT department which is to deliver more features and sophistication of the Geniebook App. The third objective is that of the curriculum department which is to deliver quality content via building a database of practice exercise in various subjects such as Math, English, Mandarin and Science. 

II. 3 Forms of Control

    1.) Output Control

Insofar as the outputs of all three main objectives of the company are quantifiable and measurable, output control is appropriate for use in all three departments (sales, IT and curriculum). For the sales department, the company does set up sales target on student enrollment to be achieved by sales employees. For the IT department, new features of the Geniebook app and their functionality are directly observable and measurable and therefore can be used to set up output control for IT employees. Lastly, since the database of practice questions developed by the curriculum specialists such as myself are also measurable, the company also has output control for the number of problems each specialist must produce in a month. 

    2.) Behavior Control

Geniebook only has behavior control practice for the employees of Sales and of Curriculum departments. The sales department works mostly with parents so there has to be behavior control such as, dress code and code of conduct for interacting with parents. Likewise, the teachers from the curriculum department are subjected to even stricter behavior control practices set up by the company since teachers have to deal with both parents and students as customers. 

    3.) Clan control

Geniebook has very minimum clan control other than the general acknowledgement of company's core values which all employees must adhere to. These values are regularly reinforced through team building activities, training, and promotion events that the company organize. I am not sure about the IT department but I know that Geniebook only does the bare minimum to create clan control for employees in the sales and curriculum departments.