General Motors As A Diverse Multicultural Organization

The purpose of this paper is designed to introduce, educate, and promote diversity within your company. Your company will be shown the merits of diversity and how diversity within your organization can be a benefit. This paper will be broken down into three main areas: Benefits of Diversity, Challenges of Diversity, and Recommendations for an effective diversity within your organization..

The founders of the Lincoln Electric Company left a legacy of an organization culture that promotes high productivity through sound management policies which have stood the test of time. The exponential growth of the company after the death of James F. Lincoln was a direct result of the establishment of a rich culture mix based on values that were widely shared and accepted by the members of the organization. Management empowered employees to become part of the decision making process through the contribution of ideas through the Advisory Board which was elected by the employees from amongst themselves. Reward management systems and all the other artifacts of the Lincoln Electric’s distinguished strong organizational culture will be analyzed in greater detail in this essay.

Southwest airlines, a company that is known to have strong employee relationships, believes that the happier an employee the better productivity they will have. Southwest Airline CEO, Gary C. Kelly, has stated that in order to have a strong company he needs to take time building strong relationships as well. “Happy Employees = Happy Customers. Happy Customers keep Southwest flying” (Southwest). He created an environment that challenges employees to be innovative which lead to creative solutions. Gary C. Kelly is able to initiate structure within the company, since he had a clear goal and direction for the company employees were not confused. If Southwest Airlines was to change their leadership style to reflect a

Lueneburger, Christoph (2014). Lessons from Chrysler: how to rev up a purpose-driven corporate culture. Retrieved from

Every organization has values and beliefs that define what they do and how they do things in the organization. These values have significant influence on how the employees behaves and the general performance of the organization – it is these set of values and beliefs, rooted deep in the company’s organizational structure that depict the “dos”, “don’t” and the “hows”, of the organization and these unequivocally represents the culture of the organization. This concept became popular in the 1980s when Peters and Waterman in their book: “In search of Excellence” presented the profound argument that, the success of any organization is inextricable linked to the quality of its culture. (Carpenter, M., Taylor, B., Erdogan, B. 2009 p183). The purpose of this paper is an attempt to analyse the impact diverse cultures played in the success of the Lincoln Electric Company.

Diversity at Target, like everywhere, is a work in progress. Target is ahead of the national average in terms of minority hiring. Additionally, the company has a higher percentage of minorities in management positions than the industry average. “The Strength of Many. The Power of One,” is Target’s tagline for diversity. It is realized that we need many points of view all working towards the common goal in order to be successful. The goals set forward in this plan are: to increase diverse hire mix by 30% over last year; improve retention rate by 30% over last year; and to develop high potential diverse talent in the ST. Louis market. This can be done

Northrop Grumman clearly has made significant strides towards diversity and inclusion efforts with respect to the LGBT community and veterans. However, the data published with respect to the hiring and retention of women and people of color reveals there is room for improvement.

The 8 concepts I will discuss in this paper will stem from the courses: Leadership I & II, Critical Thinking I & II, Measurements I & II, Satisfying Customers II, and Satisfying Shareholders. While the information acquired from these courses provided the initial thought process for our organization, it was how we collectively decided to apply those principles in a creative and unique manner, in my opinion, is what gave us our competitive advantage. For example, imagine being told you could build your own car. You know the things the car must have to make it operational, such as the engine, the body, tires, etc. But it’s when you customize your car, it begins to take on your identity or brand, and this is what we did with our decision making processes in which I feel led to our organization’s ultimate success.

There are conditions in the internal environment of G.M. that have contributed to its problems. A useful framework for gaining insight into any organization is to view it as a sequential process of value-creating activities. This is useful for understanding the building blocks of competitive advantage. The value of G.M.’s automobiles is the amount that consumers

Chapter 2 Harvard Press Book (2006). Performance management: Measure and improve the effectiveness of your employees. (Chapter 2) Motivation: The Not-So-Secret Ingredient of High Performance. Harvard Business School Publishing. Cambridge, MA. Lynn, I., Hodge, Y. & Yemen G. (2007). Teamwork turmoil. University of Virginia Darden School Foundation. Beamish, P. & Jiang, R. & (2011). The Chinese fireworks industry. Richard Ivey School of Business Foundation. Kaplan, R.S. (2010). Leading change with strategy execution system. Harvard Business School Publishing. Cambridge, MA. Karkhardt, D. & Hanson, J. (1993). Informal networks: The company behind the charts. Harvard Business School Publishing. Cambridge, MA. Katzenbach, J. & Smith, D. (1993). The discipline of team. Harvard Business Review. President and Fellows of Harvard College. Kerr, S. (1995). On the folly of rewarding A, while hoping for B. Academy of Management Executive. 9 (1), 7-14 Download on class site Kramer, R.M. (2003). The harder they fall. Harvard Business School Publishing. Cambridge, MA. Montgomery, C.A. (2005). Newell Company: Corporate Strategy. Harvard Business School Press.

The Maersk Group's organizational culture and practices focused around the development of quality relationships with the wide array of stakeholders, such as customers, business partners, the general public and so on. This culture was also reflected at the level of the employees, who were treated as valuable organizational assets, and the generators of organizational

Ford in 2011 is on the rebound, having recovered from the darkest hours in the late 2000s. The company for the company is that many of its competitors are also rebounding, and there are significant long-run changes in the automobile industry. Ford needs to determine a strategy that will take the company through the next decade, and improve the company's competitive position. The company has four of the top fifteen best-selling cars in America, but also needs to set strategy globally, as many of the best automobile growth markets are overseas. Another strategic consideration is that CEO Alan Mulally remains in the process of changing the organizational culture at Ford, which had become stagnant and unresponsive to the changes in the industry environment.

Every business has a set of key characteristics or values that make up an organizational culture which is unique to its business. Organizational behavior examines "the impact that individuals, groups, and structure have on behavior within organizations for the purpose of applying such knowledge toward improving an organization's effectiveness" (Robbins, 2005). The purpose of this research paper is to identify and evaluate General Electric's (GE) organizational culture, organizational behavior, and customer service standards. We will also

A web-enabled platform was introduced, which was integrated with group-work, whereby the specially-trained ‘coach’ of the group could relay feedback and advice to participants. Bajer, the specialist who came in to aid the process, noted that after 100 days new behaviours and new ways of doing things had formed, with new language coming with this. Employee engagement, measured each year, was at an all-time high. The message that was taken from this was ‘it is possible to change the culture of an organisation... no matter how challenging it might seem at the start’ (Losada and Bajer, 2010). Similar success can be seen with NUMMI, a joint venture between General Motors and Toyota, outlined by John Shook (2010). What was seen here mainly affected the chronically under-performing Fremont plant of GM, but did have significant effects across the company. Previously there had been a culture upon which management had no control over. Quality had been known to be sabotaged and absenteeism often reached 20%; more than anything the culture was ‘anti-General Motors’. However, after the majority of workers were sent to Japan for training and then the adoption of not only Toyota’s stop-the-line production system1, as well as some of their key principles, a mutual trust was formed and the culture was reformed. Toyota’s ‘Respect for People’ tenet (Shook, 2010) summarised the vast change that had

“It’s a small world,” is an expression that has been used for a long time to describe how connected the people of the world can be in spite of the vast geographical distance that might exist. This sense of connection is due, in part, to the actions that exist in the business sector and the globalization of business and industry. As organizations strive to remain competitive, many recognize the necessity of global outreach in order to sustain a strong presence throughout the world. There are many opportunities and challenges facing businesses with an eye toward global outreach.