Case Study Of Patagonia Inc.

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Several topics are considered to be controversial surrounding the operations of Patagonia Inc. A few of these controversial topics are as follows:
• Profitability is secondary because Yves Chouinard views large growth negatively
• Horizontal organization (little to no middle management members)
• Informal operations
• Liberal culture
• Distrust among employees due to lack of quality measurement system
• Employee concern among accounting division (lack of business/related education)
• Psychological and financial damage from the 1991 crisis
• Products are made of durable, high quality material
• Goals of the OBM system:
a. Foster better communication of the corporate goals throughout the company
b. Establish a clear understanding of how every …show more content…

Workers were curious about the financial statements and enjoyed the “brain food” courses. This is all what we like to call “fool’s gold” because problems began showing up at end of the year. Unfortunately, it turns out that many objectives were not met, lack of communication showed up, and employees began blaming one another.

Patagonia employees began manipulating the system in the second year by altering objectives so that they were very easy to accomplish. Consequently, this damaged the financial statements and did nothing to challenge the employees and improve the company.

At this point, it is obvious that the Workbook Process is not working in the manner Patagonia intended. Although things can turn around at any point, it is unlikely that they will. Moving forward, we suggest that Patagonia fix the problems listen in question 1 and 2:
• The Workbook Process is heavily financially oriented, which is contradicting in a corporation that places profitability as a secondary concern
• Lack of participation among employees due to the lack of understanding of financials
• Unnecessary costs in time and paperwork
• Lack of individual rewards for motivation (group rewards prove to be unmotivating)
• Results of new ideas decrease enthusiasm towards new ones
• Uncertainty among departments and objectives
• Process does not contain long-term

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