Airbnb Organizational Structure: a brief overview

Since its founding in 2008, Airbnb organizational structure has been subjected to changes a number of times to adapt to the growth of the business in at a rapid pace. Furthermore, diversification of the business beyond home rentals to include experiences, adventures and restaurant services necessitated massive changes in its organizational structure.

One of the main features of an effective organizational structure is to ensure a rapid flow of information across the company. In order to achieve this, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky turned to executives from Apple, Facebook, Google and Amazon for advice on how to better organize the company.[1] The latest corporate restructuring at the peer-to-peer lodging company gave more decision making powers to its new business development teams. Holacracy is another important feature of Airbnb organizational structure. Holacracy can be explained as a type of organizational structure where “power is distributed throughout the organization, giving individuals and teams more freedom to self-manage, while staying aligned to the organization’s purpose.”[2]

Airbnb organizational structure can be also branded as inter-supportive matrix structure. Airbnb corporate structure integrates many small teams of up to 10 people. The global rental and experiences company promotes the principle of village ecosystem in relationships between its teams. Specifically, if team members need a capability or resource, they can ask other team that has it ask them to share or cooperate.  In other words, rather than operating as a separate identities, individual groups within the global lodging company cooperate and support each-other to a great extent and this feature can be specified as one of the main advantages of Airbnb corporate structure.

Airbnb Organizational Structure

Airbnb Inc. Report contains a full analysis of Airbnb organizational structure. The report illustrates the application of the major analytical strategic frameworks in business studies such as SWOT, PESTEL, Porter’s Five Forces, Value Chain analysis, Ansoff Matrix and McKinsey 7S Model on Airbnb. Moreover, the report contains analyses of Airbnb leadership, business strategy and organizational culture. The report also comprises discussions of Airbnb marketing strategy, ecosystem and addresses issues of corporate social responsibility.

[1] Weinberg, C. (2017) “Airbnb Restructures to Grow Business Beyond Home Rentals” The Information, Available at: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/airbnb-restructures-to-grow-business-beyond-home-rentals

[2] What is Holacracy? (2019) Holacracy, Available at: https://www.holacracy.org/what-is-holacracy