Essay on Corporate Culture at W.L. Gore & Associates

During the year 2000, Enron was exceeding all expectations, its stock was through the roof, and the company seemed to be on top of the world. The next year Enron declared bankruptcy. So how did a company rise and fall so quickly? The key in analysing this question lies in Enron’s organizational culture, which is defined as “a shared meaning held by members distinguishing an organization” (Robbins and Judge, Essentials of Organizational Behavior, 269). During its prime, Enron appeared to be a successful and innovative company, but in reality was a company rooted in an organizational culture of corruption and greed. The five culture dimensions of stability, risk taking and innovation, attention to detail, outcome orientation, and aggressiveness are key to understanding how unethical behavior became such a problem at Enron.

Cisco Systems has leveraged the power of organizational behavior to become one of the world’s leading high technology companies which is spread

Enron Corporation’s failure in the year of 2001 has become a depiction of unethical corporate behavior for years to come. After having watched Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room; I found many organizational communications course concepts could be brought to our attention within the documentary. To further our understanding, I will offer my insight as to how class-related concepts connect with the documentary by discussing how Enron developed strong organizational values by identifying certain heroes and their stories that developed their sense of strong risk taking as well as discussing Enron’s “rank and yank” system that can be asserted with F.W. Taylor’s work within

McCoy’s Building Supply Centers and Chick-fil-A are two 70 years old, successful companies withstanding the test of time. They continue to sustain growth and longevity through economic turbulence, and remain competitive with new and upcoming companies. What is the secret to their success one might wonder? As we examine each company, we begin to recognize the existence of a strong organizational culture. The organizational culture of a company is the anchoring core values, which permeates throughout the company and its employees (Schermerhorn, Osborn & Uhl-Bien, 2012, pp. 9).

Walmart’s organizational structure determines the company’s business activities. Its organizational structure also enforces limits on how the business discourses its problems. In relation, Walmart’s organizational culture decides the way people react to challenges in the workplace. The elasticity of the human resources of the company partly depends on the mindset maintained through the organizational culture of the Wal-Mart. Nonetheless, the long history of Walmart in progressing successfully and continually growing internationally proves that the firm’s organizational structure and organizational culture have been very positive in bringing competitive advantage and achievement. Such organizational structure interacts with the organizational culture to maintain the significant competitive advantage of Walmart.

Quicken Loans has been successful in creating a corporate culture that is “an exceptional and rewarding place to work”. (Salinger, 2007) In the case of “Fun plus hard work equals success for Quicken Loans” the corporate culture is investigated. The study highlights the fact that the “corporate culture mixes causal with high energy”. (Gallagher & Reindl 2013) Quicken employees either “adapt to this high-energy culture or work can seem a high-pressure chamber where leaders extol workers to sell, sell, sell”. (Gallagher & Reindl 2013) This analysis will take into consideration case studies, theses, and interviews to dissect and apply cultural theory to the corporate environment at the Detroit office of Quicken.

As with much of Enron, their outward appearance did not match what was really going on inside the company. Enron ended up cultivating their own demise for bankruptcy by how they ran their company. This corrupt corporate culture was a place whose employees threw ethical responsibility to the wind if it meant financial gain. At Enron, the employees were motivated by a very “cut-throat” culture. If an employee didn’t perform well enough, they would simply be replaced by someone who could. “The company’s culture had profound effects on the ethics of its employees” (Sims, pg.243). Like a parent to their children, when the executives of a company pursue unethical financial means, it sets a certain tone for their employees and even the market of the company. As mentioned before, Enron had a very “cut-throat” attitude in regards to their employees. This also became one Enron’s main ethical falling points. According to the class text, “employees were rated every six months, with those ranked in the bottom 20 percent forced to leave” (Ferrell, 2017, pg. 287). This system which pits employees against each other rather than having them work together will create a workplace of dishonesty and a recipe of disaster for the company. This coupled with the objective of financial growth, creates a very dim opportunity for any ethical culture. “The entire cultural framework of Enron not only allowed unethical behavior to flourish,

In 1983, Costco Wholesale Corporation, the fourth-largest retailer in the United States, was founded by former Price Club executive, Jim Sinegal, and lawyer Jeffrey Brotman. Costco focuses on selling products at low prices in bulk packaging and focuses mostly to large families and small businesses. They sell products like flat-screen TVs, gallon jugs of mayonnaise, and coffins. Costco operates 556 stores worldwide: 405 in the United States, 77 in Canada, 31 in Mexico, 21 in the United Kingdom, 9 in Japan, 7 in South Korea, 6 in Taiwan, and 1 in Australia. Costco employs 140,000 employees and accumulates $70 billion in annual sales. It became the first company to rise from zero to $3 billion in sales in less than six years, and reached

Q1: Analyse the corporate culture at Enron and its management’s behaviour. Include in your analysis, the normative theory of ethics which you would consider most relevant in driving the decision making at Enron.

In today’s dynamic business environment leadership must understand the value and importance of their organizations’ culture. While it may never be formally defined, leadership must have a vision of their intended culture and a plan for creating and maintaining it. This vision will serve as the potter’s clay that determines everything from the dress code to the organizational structure. This paper examines two methods organizations can choose to create and maintain a healthy culture.

Bridgewater Associates is the world’s largest and most successful hedge fund organization, but has a very different culture that you will not find at any other corporation. They follow a radical transparency and truth at all cost theory. The founder, Ray Dalio, believes that his unique culture is the reason for Bridgewater’s success. Through closely reviewing the facts, SWOT analysis, and several options that Bridgewater could do, I recommend that they should not change their culture because it has given them success and a competitive advantage.

• Jasper Hennings, president of Rio Grande Supply Co., knew that a company’s top executives are responsible for determining an organization’s corporate culture. He was proud of the culture of the Texas-based wholesale plumbing supply company. His management team espoused and lived the values: integrity, honesty, and respect.

W.L. Gore and Associates is a privately owned company which has continually turned a profit over its 50 plus year history. This Company’s management was designed on a lattice based structure, with no management layers or organizational charts. W.L. gore has leaders not bosses and for new hires it has sponsors. They believe in commitments instead of assignments and create and environment in which employees are free to experiment and is energizing and demanding. Even through this companies growth they have maintains a sense of unity and collegiality. W.L Gore is clearly a company which will continue on into the future because they have unlocked the fundamentals to management innovation.

The culture of an organization is the set of values, beliefs, behaviors, customs, and attitudes that helps its members understand what the organization stands for, how it does things, and what it considers important"(Griffin, 49). In other words, "the way things work around here" (Dr. Williams). In order for any small business or large corporation to be successful, the employees must understand what is expected of them. While things might be slightly different in a large corporation versus a small "mom and pop shop", the goal of both is the same. MAKE THE BUSINESS MONEY. The topic of my paper will be on makes a good corporate culture.

Oticon, a Danish company founded in 1904 was the first company in the world to invent an instrument to help the hearing impaired. In the 1970's, Oticon was the world's number one manufacturer of the "behind the ear" hearing aids. During the 1970's and 1980's as the market for "in the ear" hearing aid grew, Oticon's fortune suddenly declined and they lost money and market share. The main problem for all of this was that Oticon was a very traditional, departmentalized and slow-moving company. Even though Oticon had 15 sites and 95 distributorships around the world, Oticon was operating in a market dominated by Siemens, Phillips, Sony, 3M and Panasonic and most importantly, Oticon manufactured the "behind the