CMC Library Ledger

Finding a Company's Organizational Structure

Getting a sense of a company's structure is not always simple. Especially when one is interviewing or interested in a team within a larger organization, there isn't always information readily available as to where that team sits within the corporate structure. There are a handful of resources that can shed light as to these positions and provide results such as an organizational chart or other executive layout.  

The first resource the library recommends is The Official Board. We use the free version and have found that even though it may not provide all of the names of people at the company it does give a good idea of structure and titles (we recommend using this as a tool for identifying org charts, not for finding comprehensive lists of names for networking). Search your company of interest here and if a profile exists you can see a basic org chart such as this one for The Wonderful Company: 

For more in-depth information, the following databases also provide company structure information:  

Nexis Uni

On the landing page of the database, scroll down slightly to "Guided Search" and select "Company Info." The "...and show me" box will autofill with "Company Profile." Enter a company name, such as Zillow used for this example, and hit Search. Expand the "Sources" section on the left and choose "D&B Executive Affiliations." Dun & Bradstreet's Executive Affiliations file contains information on individuals associated with more than one corporation. This information is good for determining conflict of interest and includes data such as: company, address, country, executive names, titles and position held. As you can see below, there are currently 51 such reports for Zillow: 

MergentOnline

 This database is an excellent resource for company financial information but also provides company executive names/titles. Search your company of interest and choose "Executives" tab to view an basic org chart such as the one for Wayfair: 

Mergent Intellect 

This database is a great resource for researching public/larger companies. Search for a company and review tabs such as "Executive Details", "Family Tree", and "SEC Filings". Not all profiles will each or all of these tabs but when available they provide information regarding company structure and in the case of SEC Filings you can occasionally find 10ks for a company. See below for an example from AMGEN: 

FactSet 

Use the search icon on the left to search by company name or ticker. Select "Company Snapshot" from the dropdown results. Once there, expand the "News, Research & Filings" menu on the left and select "Filings". Look for the 10Ks which will contain some information on the company's organizational structure. Once you are inside the file look for sections such as "Corporate Governance" in the Table of Contents for a list of positions and corresponding names such as in the example below for Carrier Global: 

Levels of information will vary across the databases and not every company will appear in each database. We recommend searching for your companies of interest in each database for a comprehensive set of results.