Organizational Culture
The beliefs and assumptions that define an organization’s culture enables organizational employees to be focused, grow, get empowered, work as a team towards achieving common goals, and enhance their capabilities.
The culture allows organizational managers to evaluate and lead employees to develop and inculcate core values, resolve conflicts amicably, and ensure different organizational functions work well towards achieving organizational cohesiveness (Mobley, Wang & Fang). That is the case with GM’s employees and its management.
GM’s management endeavors to inculcate in its employees an organizational culture that merges individual values with the organization’s values under the collective rules which the organization operates (Khan). That allows GM to operate across multicultural environments.
It also influences company executives to make strategic decisions besides providing desirable leadership aimed at steering GM’s operations to achieve its business objectives.
Leadership and Management Roles
In the pursuit of its corporate strategies, GM’s management provides leadership as a distinguishing element whose aim is to influence employees in their endeavor to achieve better sales targets and improved service provisions.
Employees need to be directed when pursuing common organizational goals as one of the critical leadership components. GM’s executives consistently apply individual coaching skills across the whole organization in the pursuit of organizational objectives in the context of groups (Khan).
Well functioning groups enable members to remain focused and get actively involved in the growth of an organization with consistence, trust, confidence, sincerity, and strong esteem. Employee involvement in organizational growth is team oriented.
That growth reflects both internal and external focus. External focus reflects the traits of organizational learning, strategic direction and intent. On the other hand, internal focus reflects the capability development of employees and their core values. That has enabled GM to be strong leaders in the market for many years (Mobley, Wang & Fang).
That has been reflected in the company’s organizational culture, the reason behind GM’s leadership and strength in the market for many years now. However, management differs from leadership in a number of perspectives (Mobley, Wang & Fang).
GM’s management establishes plans consistent with the company’s business goals and objectives. The management conducts budgetary allocations across the organization’s departments, sets a timetable for the organization’s operations, and allocates, with due expertise, organizational resources for the efficient running (Ricketts).
Another leadership role is to align organizational employees towards the organization’s cultural settings on an established framework. This is achieved on a framework of established rules and procedures which reflect the organization’s culture (Khan).
GM’s leadership has put strategies in place to control managerial problems that may be experienced in the provision services to customers. That includes decision making in the event of a problem. Sometimes problems are experienced in the supply chain of vehicles with some units experiencing problems with their engines.
Good and effective leadership allows employees to make decisions in the best interest of the organization while maintaining a balance between the customer and the organization. One approach is to allow employees make decisions without escalating the problems to the management.
In order to enhance employee productivity, the organization’s management endeavors to look for the best ways to motivate. One such approach is by giving employees a level of autonomy in decision making, rewarding employees with bonuses who achieve given sales targets, and other performance achievements.
Creating and Maintaining a Healthy Organizational Culture
A healthy organizational culture is important since it enables an organization to establish a strong relationship with its environment. It enables managers to identify the need for change and adopt it throught the organization. It is important note that culture is as dynamic as the business environment is dynamic.
To maintain and stay abreast with the business and cultural dynamism, managers endeavor to create a cultural profile based on a number of assumptions and beliefs which reflect employee adaptability and flexibility (Mobley, Wang & Fang).
A strong and healthy relationship with the environment enables employees to remain loyal to their organization and consistently retain and operate with a sense of truthfulness. Each employee feels a motivating sense to remain committed in pursuing group goals that are consistent with their employer’s mission and strategic objectives.
Management endeavors to establish norms and values that are consistent with organizational vision and which act as the ideological force behind which an organization’s culture thrives (Schein).
Managers serve as teachers to organizational employees. On the other hand, once a culture has been created, managers endeavor to sustain it by acting as role models, communicate statements that detail organizational philosophies, establish reward criteria, establish procedures for selection and recruitments, and establish strong behavioral approaches to critical incidents. Thus, based on the latter approaches, organizational culture is created and sustained to last into the future (Schein).
Impact of Globalization and Management Across Borders
Globalization has created a strong impact on the way GM’s management conducts business across borders. GM’s executives have realized that different markets have different cultural orientations.
That is influenced by the political, bureaucratic, and strategic issues that reflect the multicultural environment in which GM conducts its business operations since the organization’s operations are international (Ricketts).
That is because different cultures have different rules and traits that determine management’s behavior towards employees in the operating environment. GM’s management endeavors to create and integrate new values, beliefs, and traits that are consistent with the cultural settings of the specific business environment.
That also enables the management to determine the rules and procedures that they use in employee staffing that are specific to each market. In addition to that, different problem solving strategies are used to address problems in different markets with different cultural settings. That is because emotional settings vary between different cultures in different marketing environments.
Communication serves as an important element that allows managers to effectively deliver meaning to customers and organizational employees. Other issues on the global scale that impacts on management decisions include the political terrain of destination markets, group development methods, and decision making methods.
Recommendations on Two Important Strategies
From the perspective of a global market that is multicultural with different values and norms where GM conducts its business operations, different strategies are important that organizational managers and leaders employ to sustainably maintain a healthy organizational culture.
One strategy is to offer training programs which reflect the values and beliefs of individual employees by appealing to these employees to intrinsically develop and reflect GM’s organizational culture (Ricketts).
That is achieved by motivating organizational employees and inspiring them own the organization. Another strategy is to integrate the element of organizational learning in the employees. That implies that employees dynamically learn and appreciate the evolving nature of culture and inculcate its various elements into their day to day activities.
That allows employees to experiment on new issues by allowing them time off duty to experiment with the new changes such as going out to interact with people in the market. It is important to note that leaning should occur at different levels which can be formal or informal.
That is where employees are encouraged to freely interact with the management in asking questions and getting answers without any reservations (Ricketts).
References
Khan, A. (2005). Matching People with Organizational Culture. Khan Organizational Culture 1. Web.
Mobley, W. H. Wang. L. & Fang, K. (2005). Organizational Culture: measuring and developing it in your organization. Web.
Ricketts, K. G. (2009). Leadership vs. management. Community Leadership and Management. Web.
Schein, E. H. (2010). The Role of the Founder in Creating Organizational Culture. Web.