Chrysler Company Culture Essay

The organization which I attended to analyze their organization, based on the three levels of culture discussed in class was Moe’s Southwest Grill. Over the past couple of years, my friends from Bloomington-Normal have raved about how good Moe’s food is. I thought that this class assignment would be a good opportunity to take up one of my friend’s offer to go to Moe’s. Doing so allowed me to get some great food and to further look into the company’s culture. From walking in, to getting food, and eventually leaving, it was evident what the employees at Moe’s believe in and the culture within the organization. Specifically relating to artifacts, espoused and enacted values, and basic assumptions, Moe’s organizational culture was extremely apparent.

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

“Culture consists of the symbols, rituals, language, and social dramas that highlight organizational life, including myths, stories, and jargon. It includes the shared meanings associated with the symbols, rituals, and language. Culture combines the philosophy of the firm with beliefs, expectations, and values shared by members. It contains the stories and myths about the company's founder and its current leading figures. Organizational culture consists of a set of shared meanings and values held by a set of members in an organization that distinguish the organization from other organizations. An organization's culture determines how it perceives and reacts to the larger environment (Becker, 1982; Schein, 1996). Culture determines the nature

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.

4) Given the culture described at Johnson Engine Company. Apply the Strategy-Culture Matrix discussed in the text what implementing strategies would you select? Support your answer.

5. Discuss the relation between the “hard” and “soft” elements of a firm’s corporate culture in the context of this case.

“Organizational culture consists of a set of shared meanings and values held by a set of members in an organization that distinguish the organization from other organizations” (Baack, 2012). These shared values have a strong influence on the people in the organization and dictate how they dress, act, and perform their jobs. Culture plays a huge role in the guiding of the behaviors of employees of an organization. There are three stages of culture that interact with one another to influence the behaviors in the organization. These stages are: observable artifacts, espoused values, and enacted values.

The mechanisms for changing organizational culture that Mr. Marchionne used at Chrysler were to change the workflow and the structure of the organization. The old ways of Chrysler were not working as the company was forced into bankruptcy. In a reaction to failing sales, the previous management at Chrysler slashed prices, which was not a valid solution to the problem. However, Mr. Marchionne has a different approach. When he took over, he fired top executives, took away the layers of bureaucracy, and injected fear into those that were left. The hierarchy model was no longer working at Chrysler, so Mr. Marchionne got in the trenched with those he select as his management team and together they worked together to bring Chrysler out of bankruptcy. In return, the culture at Chrysler moved to an adhocracy in that leaders were empowered to seek innovation to create sustainable growth for the organization (Kreitner & Kiniski, 2013).

Use the competing values framework to diagnose Chrysler’s culture. To what extent does it possess characteristics associated with clan, adhocracy, market, and hierarchy cultures?

4) The 15,000 new employees who have been acquired from MCA/Universal should not be allowed to form their own values but instead should be integrated into the company and subscribe to the values of Seagram. Some have argued that this is not a high priority issue but they are mistaken. Organizations cannot survive with two competing cultures and values.

The new Chrysler culture stems from Sergio Marchionne and his philosophy of developmental relationship strength, as well as strategic planning and onboarding. The unconventional methods used by Mr. Marchionne has proven successful throughout the organization. As Mr. Marchionne explained, “mediocrity will kill you. We can’t accept it” (Welch & et al., 2009). Mediocracy, as Mr. Marchionne revealed, is not a standard in which Chrysler can afford to accommodate. Instead, it has set the bar high to increase the teamwork, motivation, socialization and internal knowledge to meet the improvement in productivity as well as the product itself. Quite the change, from the hierarchical values, basic assumptions and culture, set previously by the organization of employee’s roles and knowledge being taken for granted and unappreciated.

When Sergio Marchionne first took the helm at Chrysler he was handed a company that had just declared bankruptcy and accepted a bailout loan from the U.S. government (McNulty, 2014). Needless to say, it was not a successful culture. He knew before he would ever see success he would have to change the way employees behaved, what they valued, what they expected, and make them believe that with his guidance they could be successful again. He knew he would have to change the entire makeup of the organizational culture. Here I will outline some of the mechanisms Marchionne utilized to change the organizational culture of Chrysler.

The OCI Circumplex showed that the company has a culture with moderately strong Oppositional and Humanistic-Encouraging styles. It also significantly displays Avoidance and Self-Actualizing styles. The two least prominent styles are Perfectionistic and Approval. At first glance, the organization may seem to be working against itself, since the styles are on opposite sides of the

Thus, the true culture of the organization cannot be understood by solely looking at the artifacts. To understand more, it is necessary to look at the next level. Espoused beliefs and values are goals, values, aspirations and ideologies shared by everyone in an organization. Normally, these values are laid down by the leaders or founders of the organization (Schein, 2010, p.25). However, espoused beliefs and values can sometimes be mutually contradictory (Schein, 2010, p.27). Thus, the organization’s culture is only understood just on the surface level. Basic underlying assumptions, which are unconscious and taken-for-granted beliefs and values provides for a deeper understanding of an organization’s culture. Schein concluded that the essence of a culture lies in the pattern of basic underlying assumptions (Schein, 2010, p.32). If the basic underlying assumptions are not deciphered, it will be hard to understand the artifacts and espoused beliefs and values correctly.

From my paradigm questionnaire, it highlights that the researcher is a radical humanist. The report will be conducted through the lenses of a radical humanist while analyzing the organization. The topic when analyzing the organization will be about the culture of the firm. The idea and theories of culture yet it is difficult to define it abstractly (Edgar H. Schein, 2010). Consequently, in the literature review there will be several definitions regarding culture to help understand what it really meant by organizational culture and the importance of culture to any organization. There will be two culture models that will be conducted throughout the report, ‘Iron Cage’ to show the bureaucracy control within the organization and Charles Handy four types of culture for some recommendations to improve the organizations culture and to identify from the paradigm perspective the type of culture adapted to. The analysis of the firm will be shown from a radical humanist perspective as mentioned above, ending with a conclusion for the International School of English (ISE) at the end of this report.