Operations Culture and Production Management †MyAssignmenthelp.com

Question: Discuss about the Operations Culture and Production Management. Answer: Introduction: Organization culture is the established set of key understandings shared by the members of an organization like values, beliefs, norms and attitudes. These values have a strong influence on work environment and govern the people behaviour in an organization (Schein, 2010). Each organization has its own unique character just like individuals do. This unique character of the organization is known as culture formed by the group of individual working within that organization. There are multiple characteristics that may help an organization define their best culture such as stability, innovation and risk taking, structure etc. The organization culture helps in directing its employees the manner in which they interact at its workplace. It is the culture of the organization, which helps in extracting the best out of each employee as they develop a habit of work without any force. Further, the importance of it is also in uniting the employees from different backgrounds to promote a healthy competition at the workplace. Thus, a culture helps in promoting healthy relationship among its employees. Toyota indeed has a distinct set of its own organization culture, which encompasses true values and characteristics of its people (Benn, Dunphy and Griffiths, 2014). The characteristics of Toyota organization culture portray a sense of own identity, enhancement of its people commitment and strengthening of their behaviour. The key notions of its organization culture are: These 7 characteristics of Toyotas culture have helped it in the long run for creating a valued brand image. Its characteristics enable the company to continue growing. Innovation is formed through continual enhancements by way of Learning's (Sosnovskikh, 2016). The attention to detailing and team orientation has helped it in improving its quality and problem-solving techniques. Culture analysis and significance of culture to carmaker In a world as complex as ours, each of us is driven by multiple factors. One of the most powerful forces that define our act is culture. It is the culture that distinguishes one organization from another. Toyota culture has strong values that unified employee relationships (Shook, 2010). The employees relentlessly pursued goals. The different features and characteristics of Toyota have been formed after a cautious approach in facilitating organization learning. The culture of Toyota highlights the significance of developing a significant culture to encourage globalised business success. The international competition is turning fierce day by day in the automotive industry. This makes it imperative for companies to optimize their culture to meet the major challenges across the globe. Corporate culture portrays everything concerning a company like its policies, regulations, procedures and employee behaviours to overall customer experience (Dahlgaard and Mi Dahlgaard-Park, 2006). The culture is an important facet to carmakers as it helps in directing companies to respond to data breaches, auto recall as well as other issues. The Automotive Company is expected to attain success internationally by establishing a strong corporate culture among its employees. Fostering values, vision or mission that is shared by all can largely help in forming a successful corporate culture. Toyota mechanical failure led to the corporate crises of epic proportions. Though it had a strong basis of culture yet, it failed to influence the employees behaviour and actions. Toyota always had a model of organization and culture that other companies wanted to replicate. The culture of Toyota Way had been one of the most prominent competitive advantages of the company. Toyotas esteem image so cautiously framed over the 50 years by continuously focusing on improvement and serving the best to their customers was severely damaged. The crises began in United Stated wherein the company couldnt expediently handle the regional problem for long, and it soon became global crises. Toyota planned to enter US market in 1950s, and by 2000 all expected it to become the worlds leading car company. But as years went by everything turned out to be sinking (Kotabe and Murray, 2004). As per the NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) report, they had received more than 100 complaints regarding the brake performance of Toyota vehicles. The complaints were about how the car brakes did not respond immediately on bumps or slippery surfaces. For decades Toyota worked hard to create it remarkable reputation of esteem quality and highest value in the world. The key problem was not the public announcements that were made, but it is the concerns of the customer. It is the time company realised that Toyota culture was not well prepared to respond to customers feedback filled with questions and accusations. The Toyota cul ture was alive and strong but was not well directed and required to be raised to a higher level. Lessons learned about organizational culture The corporate culture is an intangible strategic trait that comprises of shared values and beliefs. The organizational culture of Toyota is known for the respect it pays to its people and continuous improvement (Hill, 2008). An additional aspect that an organization needs to embrace in its culture is the consideration of customers and communities associated with their business. The growth is assured when companys culture is able to facilitate organization flexibility and reduce problems. A culture must be created where managers are guided to think more about customers than their own interests. Customer orientation should be a part of organization cultural provision wherein employees are acknowledged about the basic objective to provide customers before and after sale services. The culture must comprise of Qualified and trained technicians as well as service advisors should be there to provide customer service and help. With all the allegations from the media and public the companies reputation had collapsed and question was raised from customers that endangered its quality. On 23rd of February, 2010, Mr Akio Toyoda, Toyotas owner, came to testify himself before the congress to present the facts and apologise for the losses. Mr Toyoda strategy was of apologizing and taking the responsibility towards the works in the long run and not blaming others. This gesture was to assure its stakeholders for the actions and addresses the concerns of customers. Also, it is a Japanese way which states that Toyodas gesture of bowing down is a way of publicly expressing his regret and directing the company stakeholders to continue restoring their faith in companies brands. With the massive recalls the company spontaneously looked forward to responding to a customer complaint. Bigger role was assigned to regional executives to issue a recall on the basis of local customer complaints. This shows that actions are required to be taken fast to restore the positioning. Also, it is important to note that customer orientation is a prime characteristic of organization culture and must not be overlooked in any circumstances (Sosnovskikh, 2016). The quality and continuous improvement factors are of no significance if proper addressing of customer complaints are not made. In order to respond to the crises, a company must build a strong culture to withstand and positively embrace the crises. Toyotas experience shows that with robust values governing culture over decades it is possible to exhibit positive results even after the worse crises. Organization culture can be defined as principles of shared beliefs values, assumptions based on which people work in companies. Culture has a strong influence of employees, and it motivates them to work with full efficiencies (Maanen, 2015). From the case study of organization A and B, it can be analysed that thought both the organizations are manufacturing firms but their internal workings are way different. In organization A, market culture is followed where the work was done is completely result oriented and no risk is taken. There is focus on competition and getting the job done whereas the Organization B follows the Adhocracy oriented culture in which focus is given to entrepreneurship and risk taking the initiative. Employees are motivated to find the ideas which are unique so that company can get competitive advantages in the market. Organizational power refers to the way in which leaders have the authority and the manner in which they influence employees. Organization A follows the power which is called as coercive power as employees in the company are influenced in terms of threats, punishments and sanctions (Cheese, 2016). Total controls of employees are in the hand of top management and staffs have no flexibility to do work in their own manner. On the other hand, Organization B follows referent power in which interpersonal relationships are being cultivated with other employees in the company. People in organization B have trust in each other, and they have been motivated by the top management to work hard. Organizational politics can be defined as informal and unofficial ways in which people in organizations are influenced to increase power or get tasks done. From the nature of Organization B, it can be assumed that politics definitely must be followed here where the managers influence top management for power. Proper growth is not provided to employees and because of that politics plays a part and affect people. Organization B, on the other hand, might not support the culture of politics and as soon as it is seen arising, proper actions must have been taken (Schein, 2016). All the employees are given fair chance to perform and get higher positions, so chances of politics are very less. However, where there are people, there is politics, but it all depends on the organization to remove it or adopt it. Effect of culture, power and politics on both the organizations is very different like in Organizations A, employees are not motivated to do work, and they are forced to work. The level of motivation is totally low and because of that employees feel they are working in a negative environment with no efficiency. There is no future growth, and because of that, the company will definitely perform poorly (Fairholm, 2010). Whereas in organization B, employees are highly motivated and work very hard to achieve all the goals and objectives set by leaders. They are told to be innovative which also helps in their career growth and because of that company will definitely perform well. Choice of selecting the Organization If I was given a choice to select the organization, then I will definitely choose Organization B because this is the company which can help me to get growth in my career. The working environment of this company is innovative, and employees are motivated to work hard without thinking of failure. There is learning environment which will help me to learn a new skill and also develop the ways to handle problems. With proper work, I can get good growth and become a manager soon. Organization A, on the other hand, is totally opposite as work will be given to me, and I will have to follow every rigid set of rule and function, There is no growth, support from managers and there are lots of politics which decrease the level of motivation to work. Employee motivation is one of the most important parts of the company that not only increases the performance of company but it also fulfils all its goals and objectives. However, motivating employees is not so easy, and there are many challenges that are faced by managers in doing so. One of the main reasons which make this task difficult for managers is that workforce is changing (Farrell, 2012). Employees in the company join with different needs and expectations and all their values, beliefs, needs; expectations are entirely different. It becomes very difficult to understand all these traits and fulfil them. Other than this, everyone in the company has a motivational energy but this energy, often gets blocked at the workplace because of sudden change at their home or some frustrated dreams or broken promises, etc. It becomes very difficult to understand these personal problems of employees because they are not being often shared. Other than this, the work-life pressure is another issue that cannot be understood by managers, and it becomes a major hurdle in motivating employees. In order to motivate the employees, Maslows hierarchy of needs is a theory that can be followed by managers. This theory is based on a very simple principle which says that all humans have hierarchal needs and some of these needs are basic, and in their absence, nothing else matters. The most common need for employees as per this theory is physiological needs which refer to the need for water, food and other biological needs. Once these needs are satisfied, employees start looking for safety needs which say that these should be free from any kind of danger, pain and uncertain future (Rakowski, 2011). Next types of needs are social needs which mean that employees should be allowed to bond with other colleagues, be loved and form good attachments as it motivates them to work hard. All the social needs make esteem needs more relevant which means that employees feel to be admired and respected by the people they work with and work for so that they can feel important. Last types of needs are self-actualization needs which mean employees love to get growth and learn new things. So the company should provide this kind of environment where employees can nurture themselves. Vrooms Expectancy theory This theory is based in the assumption that behaviour of employees arises from their conscious choices with the main aim to maximise pleasure and minimize pain. The behaviour of employees at work and their goals are not simple to understand. Performance of employees is directly based on some skills like knowledge, experience, abilities, etc. As per theory, managers can motivate employees if they believe that organization recognize their effort and performance which results in some rewards (Koontz, 2010). The rewards should be such manner that it satisfies their important need and makes them happy. An employee may require money, promotion, benefits or they might also require training, coaching, and supervision to do something. Tuckman theory starts with the formation stage where the trust is developed, and mission is clarified to every person. All the uncertainties and issues are discussed to move to the next stage. Proper roles are assigned, and available resources are evaluated. Next stage is storming stage where the opinion of different team members are heard regarding the situation, and they all are cleared to remove the negativity (Fiore and Georganta, 2017). The third stage is called as norming stage, where team members are being motivated, and trust gets developed. The team is improved with ethics, cohesion and spirit so that they can handle every situation. The last stage is called as the performing stage where individuals are clear about their roles, and because of that, they try to focus on work and try to handle it as quickly as they can. People here support each other towards the attainment of a goal and avoid all the disagreements so that main goal can be achieved (Barua, 2016). Factors and skills that assist or hinder effective teamwork There are various factors that can assist effective teamwork such as diversity, communication and leadership. It is because; effective teams support and are comprised with cultural diversity, skills and qualities. Diversity embraces innovation and creativity and creates awareness that promotes effective teamwork. Lack of diversity will be rigid the environment and reduce the scope for changes and improvement. It is significant for teams to challenge one another in order to prevent grudges and encourage creativity, disagreement among the team members can also hinder the effectiveness of team (Ellis and Bach, 2015). For this aspect; there is a requirement of open and clear communication among team members. They should have common goals regarding their responsibilities and target. Lack of this aspect will create work barriers such as inappropriate coordination. In addition to this; effective leadership is significant for teamwork. All the teams are benefitted from various sources of dir ection and admiration, leader assists in supporting teamwork by organizing the team efforts and encouraging them to share their ideas with the organization. The factors that are involved in teams to effectively achieving their objectives include appropriate leadership; it is the primary factor to make a clear and common objective. It is considerable because giving a clear picture of overall goal makes it easy for both the members and organization to timely and effectively achieve it. There must be viable work environment for the team to work effectively and productively; members must work with a range of skills, experience for undertaking tasks (Block, 2016). Team commitment is necessary for the team members to understand membership strength and goals sharing. A proper and positive culture is significant for achieving desired goals and objectives. Members must be motivated to share ideas and having risk bearing approach without the fear of controlling, or disapproval. Next to getting things done at the right time, the setting of targets and introducing ways in order to achieve the goals is essential. Teams are required to invest their ti me and efforts in improving working techniques and process to reach the ultimate goal in the best way. These techniques are inclusive of better decision making, and problem-solving. The better relationship must be maintained between the team members, this includes open contact, sharing of idea and helping each other. After all these factors are satisfied the company will be able to achieve their targets over time. The aspects that can threaten successful achievement and cohesive group work is when members give more priority to their personal interest instead of the work; ultimately the team faces problems. For achieving high outcomes, members must take consideration of their team and has to respect the decisions of teams. Secondly, when members are not clear about the objectives, duties and responsibilities, it creates a problem in team building activities. There should be a proper delegation of duties and responsibilities; work must be delegated after observing the qualities and experience of an individual (Koprowska, 2014). Weak communication skills also create a problem in achieving success, complex hierarchy leads to weak and poor communication, as the members cannot share their ideas and this process creates confusion among team members thus it reduces team productivity. Deficiency of decisions, punctuality and discipline also hinders effective team building and creates a barrier to achie ve team objectives and goals. There are several benefits of working in a team such as better outcomes. Team work results to effective outcomes, it is because teams are able to give more resources to business to accept challenges and assist in risk reduction of the weak contribution of individuals. Further, it develops better relationship and understanding among team members who can assist in accomplishing more rather than one can do. It helps companies to reduce risks and cost while having a competitive advantage (O'Neil ed., 2014). An effective team is build up with diversified members when all team members use diverse skills to solve problems then the solution can be determined and applied in an easy manner. Team members work together while giving support to each other which encourage them more to attain goals they may not achieve on their own without motivation and support. The effectiveness of teamwork in achieving goals in the workplace Members must share a commitment to the company for achieving the objectives, to create an effective team. Members must maintain a better relationship each other in an incorporated manner along with awareness and admiration. Members must be capable of solving their problems in an effective way; they must have skills and capabilities to solve their problems by their own (Block, 2016). The organization requires their team members to generate best quality results, as they can feel satisfied as well as provide members with the best outcomes in return. My career goal is to become a marketing manager in the retail sector. At this position, I have to work in a dynamic environment as I have to deal with various peoples and changing market conditions. According to me, primary work challenge is job role to meet sales targets and promote products and services of the company in best possible manner. At this position, I have to be committed and work on daily basis for 7 to 8 hours and on some days even more. Co-workers at this job will be competitive as we all have targets to accomplish in given deadlines however we have to work together to achieve the same. This job role will be satisfying for me if it has good pay, provide me career opportunities for growth and have positive work culture. From the case study, it was analyzed that the situation of Haiti Airport was getting worst as the team was not able to manage the air traffic. It was very much necessary for the team to take the actions quickly in order to resolve the conflicts. Different people working together should have developed trust so that they could work in more synchronization and focus on the single goal and that is to provide aid to Haiti. It was necessary for the team leader to clarify the goals and duties of every person so that they could have focused on a single task by taking fast decisions. The work environment should also have been inspiring, although it is very difficult to create one in the situation in which Haiti was. Still, proper motivation could have forced the team to work efficiently (Wilderom, 2016). Proper delegation of work also could have handled the situation as people could have helped each other by taking some work and not showing frustration with an increase in pressure which was shown by the French Pilot. A team that can run quickly can be made with the help of a particular model designed by Bruce Tuckman which is called as stages of team development. If this theory could have been followed than Haiti airport would have got an effective team that can handle every situation with proper collaboration and trust. This team would have taken decisions effectively and efficiently without affecting the work environment. A team leader is a person, who helps the team by providing proper directions, instructions, guidance so that each and every challenge that is faced by the team can be overcome easily. From the case study, it was understood that different people working on the same project that is to control the air traffic at Haiti were not aligned, and it was creating lots of issues and conflicts. In these kinds of situation, the role of team leader becomes very crucial and important (Salas, 2011). One of the biggest measures that can be adopted by the leader is to lead from the front by showing confidence in the team and providing them steadiness. It will help him to take charge of the situation in hand and then he can manage him as per his or her experience. In the time of crisis, it is a role of a leader to alert all the people working on the same project so that people in the team can be prepared for the negative consequences. This will allow the team to e ready with some solutions that can be implemented quickly to handle the situation. Also, whenever trouble strikes, the team want that issue to get over as soon as possible, so it is the leader who should be calm and take the decisions promptly not hurriedly as it will help the team to act with deliberateness and speed without being nervous (Burke, 2012). In these types of situation, it is also very important for the team leader to identify all the important processes and systems that should keep functioning so that useles s thing can be avoided and focus can be made to make the situation better. Making of proper and alternative plans could have helped the condition of the airport from being out of control (Pandit, 2015). Another important role that a team leader should pose in the situations like is that he or she should strive hard to come out of the crisis as soon as possible by taking some risks and also by clarifying the roles and responsibilities every individual working in a team (Shaw, 2015). He should have and empathy so that team members and their issues could be handled quickly. From the case study of Haiti, it was analyzed that teams from different nations were working effectively and trying hard to manage the traffic airport, but still, there was a lot of chaos. There are types of characteristics which can be implemented by the team working on Haiti Airport. One of the biggest characteristics that can help to sort the situation is appropriate leadership as if there will be a leader, then all the team working on Airport project will be able to get proper guidance and help to work in right direction (Robbins and Coulter, 2012). A leader can also motivate the team to work efficiently in these harsh calamities which were faced by Haiti. Another characteristic that can fit the situation is a clarification of goals. It can be observed from the case that teams of different nations were not aligned and were working as per their code of conduct. However, with the help of clear goals, they will be able to synchronize their efforts to provide effective aid in the are a of Haiti. Mutual trust and good communication is also required as the issue that rose between French pilot and team handling airport clearly show that there were miss communication and lack of trust. Presence of these two characteristics and can help the teams to have faith in each other work and communication can remove all the misunderstanding barriers (Chester, 2013). One more characteristic that could have helped the situation would have been unified commitment. Looking at the present conditions of Haiti, the main of should be to provide aid to the country, but every person was working on his own without any common goal. Unified commitment is necessary as it provides a proper direction to the team and makes them focus towards one direction. References Barua, M., 2016. Exploring decision-making style as a predictor of team effectiveness. International Journal of Organizational Analysis. 24(1). pp.36-63. Benn, S., Dunphy, D. and Griffiths, A., 2014. Organizational change for corporate sustainability. Routledge. Block, P., 2016.The empowered manager: Positive political skills at work. John Wiley Sons. Burke, S., 2012. Team Effectiveness In Complex Organizations: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives and Approaches. Routledge. Cheese, P., 2016. Managing risk and building resilient organisations in a riskier world. Journal of Organizational Effectiveness: People and Performance. 3(3). pp.323-331. Chester, S., 2013. FORMING STORMING NORMING PERFORMING: Successful Communication in Groups and Teams. universe. Dahlgaard, J.J. and Mi Dahlgaard-Park, S., 2006. Lean production, six sigma quality, TQM and company culture. The TQM magazine. 18(3). pp.263-281. Ellis, P. and Bach, S., 2015.Leadership, management and team working in nursing. Learning Matters. Fairholm, G., 2010. Organizational Power Politics: Tactics in Organizational Leadership. ABC-CLIO. Farrell, D., 2012. Organizational Politics: From Conflict-Suppression to Rational Conflict-Management. Springer Science Business Media. Fiore, S.M. and Georganta, E., 2017. Collaborative Problem-Solving and Team Development: Extending the Macrocognition in Teams Model through Considerations of the Team Life Cycle. InTeam Dynamics Over Time(pp. 189-208). Emerald Publishing Limited. Hill, C., 2008. International business: Competing in the global market place. Strategic Direction. 24(9). Koontz, H., 2010. Essentials of Management. Tata McGraw-Hill Education. Koprowska, J., 2014.Communication and interpersonal skills in social work. Learning Matters. Kotabe, M. and Murray, J.Y., 2004. Global sourcing strategy and sustainable competitive advantage. Industrial marketing management. 33(1). pp.7-14. Maanen, J., 2015. Making culture visible: reflections on corporate ethnography. Journal of Organizational Ethnography. 4(1). pp.4-27. O'Neil, H.F. ed., 2014.Workforce readiness: Competencies and assessment. Psychology Press. Pandit, D., 2015. Leadership Styles based on Team Effectiveness. Notion Press. Rakowski, N., 2011. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs Model. GRIN Verlag. Robbins,S and Coulter, Mary., 2012. Management. Pearson. Salas, E., 2011. Team effectiveness and decision making in organizations. Jossey-Bass. Schein, E., 2016. Organizational Culture and Leadership. John Wiley Sons. Schein, E.H., 2010. Organizational culture and leadership (Vol. 2). John Wiley Sons. Schellwies, L., 2015. Multicultural Team Effectiveness: Emotional Intelligence as Success Factor. Anchor Academic Publishing. Shaw, P., 2015. 100 Great Team Effectiveness Ideas. Marshall Cavendish International Asia Pte Ltd. Shook, J., 2010. How to change a culture: Lessons from NUMMI. MIT Sloan Management Review. 51(2). p.63. Sosnovskikh, S., 2016. Toyota Motor Corporation: Organizational Culture. Wilderom, C., 2016. Lean-team effectiveness through leader values and members informing. International Journal of Operations Production Management. 36(11). pp.1530-1550.