Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Porter - How do competitive forces shape strategy
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Porter - How do competitive forces shape strategy
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...
RL Wolfe is an engineering and productions company that deals with the production of plastic pipes. The company has its headquarters in Houston, Texas. It is worth 350 million dollars and has three branches that include Wolfe’s Austin based in Texas, Columbus based in Ohio and the most recent branch that the company acquired based in Corpus Christi, Texas. The company has been trying to adopt new human resource management (HRM) practices in a bid to increase the productivity. The new HRM strategy is the adoption of self-directed teams (SDTs). The strategy began as an experimental strategy on the workforce in Corpus Christi in a bid to raise the production of the company workforce to 95%.
...might understand business concepts better than their younger counterpart, the younger one might have the better eye for developing newer technologies and a better insight to where the market is heading. With Fujifilm known for being an innovative and cutting edge company, making that appointment backs up their management philosophy. The third way that a company can build in flexibility is to appoint a type of an oversight committee/panel. Appointing a panel will help the company with its decision making process by contributing an outside opinion, from people who hold different points of view. The committee wouldn’t be given final say on the matter, but providing outside insight helps the one making the decision. These are just three of many different ways the companies can build in flexibility when it comes to decision making and adapting to the outside market.
Organizational culture at W.L.Gore & Associates can be described from the aspects of shared social knowledge within the organization from rules, norms and values that shaped attitude and behavior of its employees. When we look at the design of organizational structure at WL Gore & Associates Company, this is a company without any hierarchy or conventional structures, from the view of organizational ethics there is no formal code of ethics or a companywide mission statement. The business units under the W.L gore were also not required to have any code of ethics or mission statement .The people in the organization operated under a un-management style lattice structure.
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.
(2014) is “the way in which leaders interact, make decisions, and influence others in the organization” (p 237). The culture needs to foster cooperation from all areas of an organization, while providing the ability for adaptation and growth. Not all organizations culture will be the same, there is not a correct one that can blanket all organizations to cozy success. (3) Talent Systems. Human capital drives all organizations, the right people need to be in the right jobs with the correct opportunities for growth and advancement. There must be a constant search for strategic thinkers and leaders able to step up with called upon. The authors mention “Talent Sustainability” (p. 248), there must be enough qualified employees ready to move up so the organization will not stall while searching for others to replace others due to attrition, or other opportunists. (4) Organizational Design, must take a number of variables into account while providing structure to an organization. Hughes et al. (2014) state “the design of the organization is a trade-off between options, each with advantages and disadvantages” (p 253). The correct design can help clear the hierarchy of an organization and the proper channels for
... has built its reputation on. (Schermerhorn, John R., Hunt, James G., Osborn, Richard N. Organizational Behavior, pgs 1-31).
Flexibility in the workplace should be a benefit for the employee as well as the employer. According to Christensen, “Having flexibility in the workplace will ultimately lead to better morale, increase retention, and become an effective tool for recruitment.” (Christensen, 2005) Flexibility is an important factor toward overall workplace success. As mentioned by Christensen not only is this a great tool for companies to use for recruitment and retention, but improving diversity in the organization. Flexibility means taking a varied approach to the old way things are done. Some examples, changing work hours, location of where the work is done and restructure of the job. The traditional Monday thru Friday, nine to five work design is no longer the norm. Having a flexible work structure allows an organization to modify schedules for employees which in turn gives the employee opportunity to balance work and life. By doing this...
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
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.
Modern day organizations have to constantly change to meet the demands of customers. Workers have to change with the organizations to be able to perform new functions and complete new sophisticated tasks.
Once the department interviews qualified candidates for the interview, they make decisions on the candidate they would like to hire. That candidate is sent back to HRM where they complete the hiring process and contact the applicant with a job offer. Having a hiring procedure as such, saves hiring managers time and costs as well as reducing liabilities that may come along with possibly hiring unqualified employees. HRM and department managers have to have a trust in each other’s role in the hiring process to be successful in finding qualified
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).
Corporate culture is the shared values and meanings that members hold in common and that are practiced by an organization’s leaders. Corporate culture is a powerful force that affects individuals in very real ways. In this paper I will explain the concept of corporate culture, apply the concept towards my employer, and analyze the validity of this concept. Research As Sackmann's Iceberg model demonstrates, culture is a series of visible and invisible characteristics that influence the behavior of members of organizations. Organizational and corporate cultures are formal and informal. They can be studied by observation, by listening and interacting with people in the culture, by reading what the company says about its own culture, by understanding career path progressions, and by observing stories about the company. As R. Solomon stated, “Corporate culture is related to ethics through the values and leadership styles that the leaders practice; the company model, the rituals and symbols that organizations value, and the way organizational executives and members communicate among themselves and with stakeholders. As a culture, the corporation defines not only jobs and roles; it also sets goals and establishes what counts as success” (Solomon, 1997, p.138). Corporate values are used to define corporate culture and drive operations found in “strong” corporate cultures. Boeing, Johnson & Johnson, and Bonar Group, the engineering firm I work for, all exemplify “strong” cultures. They all have a shared philosophy, they value the importance of people, they all have heroes that symbolize the success of the company, and they celebrate rituals, which provide opportunities for caring and sharing, for developing a spiri...
3. What do you think Wal-Mart could do to develop an improved ethical culture and respond more positively to its diverse stakeholders?