W.L. Gore
1. What is it about the Gore organizational culture that keeps it a leader in innovation and creativity?
Since they are hiring the person and not to fill a specific job position, it keeps the people flexible and innovative.
2. What problems would a newly hired person have working for Gore?
A newly added employee is not given specific direction of where to go and what to do. Instead the Gore Company promotes creative thinking and the employee places himself where he thinks he needs to be. If you do not have imagination about your job then you might be sitting at a desk for a month wondering what in the world you should be doing. Sometimes employees cannot understand this and must leave the company.
3. What advantages does the Gore culture provide in a dynamic world?
When management and employees are flexible, they are quicker to respond to the external business changes than someone that is static. The world will always have new demands for specific products and Gore can deliver with their fast paced change system.
Background
Gore is an organic management system with a flat hierarchy that incorporates a lattice structure. They have few written rules with their focus along the lines of a narrow competitive scope but unique in advantage. This gives them a focused differentiation according to Porter’s competitive strategies.
Identification of Issues
Gore does not have defined job titles besides President and Secret...
Based on interviews with management, we found that XTO’s management style encourages innovation. Employees are encouraged to ask for forgiveness and not permission. We’ve learned this semester through lecture and readings, that this management technique empowers employees and gives them the autonomy they like and the freedom to create. Employees that work under this type of management style are not faced with the possibility of loosing their jobs if they make a business decision that turns out to have negative consequences. Employees are free to innovate and take pragmatic risks. The company culture at XTO is described as laid back and relaxed. XTO believes that major oil and gas companies are unable to implement this type of culture due to their size. Since XTO is smaller, the company is able to deploy a much different policy from what the majors employ. As the company rapidly grows, this relaxed practice has become a concern for XTO’s management. The company has recently grown so much that they’ve had to pull back slightly on the relaxed atmosphere. Management has been working with Human Resources to increase the amount of structure within the company. It remains to be seen if this policy will stifle company innovation.
As we know that a company’s culture, particularly during its early years, is greatly a reflection of the personality, background, and values of its founder or founders, as well as their vision for the future of the organization. When entrepreneurs establish their own businesses, the way they want to do business determines the Organization’s rules, the structure, and performance evaluation in the company and the people they hire to work with them. This is very much evident in the case o...
Jones Blair Case #1 Introduction In 1999, the U.S. paint industry sales were projected to be more than $13 billion. The industry has slow sales growth and is constantly changing due to government regulations. In 1999, JonesBlair had sales volume of $12 million with an annual growth rate of 4%. JonesBlair produces and sells architectural coatings, OEM coatings, and paint sundries. However, the President, Alexander Barrett, and the senior management executives know that there are some areas that they need to improve on.
Within each business group is a matrix organization to support project based work (Newman, 2013). The organizational structure culture of CH2M HILL is very laid back according to the Little Yellow Book, however, senior management is unaware of it (Newman, 2013). Prospective candidates are attracted to the company due to the exciting projects and the chance to directly have an impact on making a difference in the environment. Historically, CH2M HILL has achieved its growth and success as a small engineering consulting firm. The CEO at the time strongly believed in developing its own people rather than hiring top positions from outside the company. As time went by, the company grew through mergers and acquisitions. CH2M HILL became a world leader in engineering, consulting, construction, and operations. The main problem Walstrom must address is employee turnover, especially with new employees, and a lack of senior leaders who were promoted from within the company. Walstrom identified a lack of growth opportunity and support from management and as the root cause of the problem. These causes are manifested by the company hiring employees for the technical skills, not interpersonal or leadership skills and also due to a lack of a culture that encourages a continuous learning environment. Employees who 've been with CH2M HILL between three to five years claim to have less opportunities for advancement, recognition, and direction than
This can boost morale as it doesn’t limit employees to feeling stuck in a niche and gives them hope of advancement. There are no requirements that are needed to apply for these jobs with the exception of a few positions that require an engineering degree. “When an employee feels threatened by a lack of job security, she may stop putting the necessary effort into completing assignments and interacting with colleagues, due to a belief of not having a future with the organization.” – Laura Woods. Lincoln definitely subscribed to this belief and as a measure to eliminate this concern, the implemented a policy which ensures each employee a guarantee that they will not be fired after a year of employment unless they are guilty of misconduct and they will have at least a 30-hour work week each week. The Lincoln Electric Company has not had any layoffs since 1949. This would provide job security and satisfaction. They also have a very selective hiring process and external candidates are only selected for entry level positions. Once a candidate has a personal interview with the Personnel Department and have been cleared for the next level, they then meet with a committee of vice-presidents and superintendents. After the candidate has made it through that process, the supervisor who the candidate will be reporting to makes the selection. This process is the
part of their HR strategy and to do this, they need to have a solid
How important is leadership and the work culture to Southwest Airlines over the years? Give several examples.
WL Gore has done a great job of creating a profitable, innovative company. As a flat organization they have higher participation using an organic model (555) with cross-functional teams that have wide spans of control. This includes the free-flow of information, low formalization, and decentralization that provides for faster decisions from cross-hierarchal teams. The team/matrix structure combines functionality and product resources. This also creates generalists rather than specialists to share product resources and allows for timely completion of products closer to budget with less duplication of activities. Decentralization creates a chain of command from the team directly to the final decision maker with a lower span of control. In addition, their innovation strategy promotes unique, meaningful innovations that empower employees to introduce new products to their teams for possible manufacturing.
Although the name W. L. Gore & Associates may not seem familiar to the ear, in all actuality, its products are some of the most well-known in existence. W. L. Gore is famous for its pioneering work with the polytetrafluoroethylene polymer, which lies as the backbone for many of Gore’s products, including its most famous, Gore-Tex. Founded on January 1, 1958, by the husband and wife team of Bill and Vieve Gore in the basement of their home, W. L. Gore & Associates has expanded internationally to a workforce of over 6,000 associates in 45 locations, with sales volume of over $1.84 billion last fiscal year. For thirty-five straight years the company has enjoyed profitability and constant positive return on equity, and from 1969 to 1989 had a compounded revenue growth rate of over 18 percent. Today, the company’s products can be found everywhere, including the automotive, aerospace, chemical processing, electronic, manufacturing, healthcare, military, and textile industries, with key products such as membrane vents, surgical products, aircraft sealant, outerwear garments. In addition, W. L. Gore & Associates is organized in an very unique and unusual way; there are no ‘bosses’ or set management. Instead, every member of the company is labeled as an ‘associate’ (besides Bob and Vieve Gore, who hold the titles of president and secretary-treasurer, respectively), and it is the responsibility of associates to pursue opportunities and assume responsibility. As of today, W. L. Gore has many opportunities to grasp and threats to prevent approaching in the near future. As W. L. Gore stands as the ’name-brand’ in many industries with its quality reputation and Gore-Tex line, it holds the responsibility to bre...
In essence, employees at Gore & Associates are their own bosses, and each of them have an equal say to what their team will or will not do; this helps give each team member a clear sense of purpose, as well as acts as a driving force for innovation (W.L. Gore & Associates, 2011). W. L. Gore & Associates firmly believe in their unparalleled corporate structure approach, as it has been the contributing factor in their success (W.L. Gore & Associates).
Eisenbeiss, S., Knippenberg, D. and Boerner, S. (2008): Transformational leadership and team innovation: Integrating team climate principles. Journal of Applied Psychology, vol. 93, no. 6, pp. 1438.
Campbell, R. A. (2008). The leadership quarterly. (2nd ed., Vol. 19, p. 426–438). Elsevier. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1048984308000696
they will hire a person. Also, after employment, a person’s boss may fire them based on what
Horth, D., & Buchner, D. (2009). Innovation Leadership. Retrieved from Center for Creative Leadership: http://www.ccl.org/leadership/pdf/research/InnovationLeadership.pdf
Robbins et al. (2011, p. 186), states ‘Change is an organizational reality and affects every part of a manager’s job’. Today’s wave of change primarily created by economic condition so change is now such a constant feature of organization life (Goodman, E. 2011, p.243). Organizations need to be changed at one point or another in structure, technology or people. These changes are defined as organizational change (Robbins et al. 2011, p.18). Organizational change is important because changes can increase effectiveness and efficiency, the innovation of products, services as well as dealing with changes in external and internal forces (Goodman, E. 2011, p.243). However, ‘the bottom line is that organizational change is difficult because management systems are design and people are rewarded for stability’ (Lawler, E.E. & Worley, C.G. 2006, p.11).