Produce the Essay Question submission in a single Microsoft Word or Open Office document containing your answer. Be sure to cite your sources, use APA style as required, and check your spelling. I hav

1. GE Case Study

An organization such as GE Lighting that uses the diverse talents of its workforce can reap many rewards. Some experts believe that one of the best ways for a company such as GE Lighting to capture a diverse customer base is to make sure that its decision makers are a diverse group. Diversity could include people of different religions, sexes, nationalities, and generations.

Promoting a diverse group of decision makers will ensure sensitivity to diversity issues, giving GE Lighting a better chance of establishing businesses characterized by such diversity. At GE’s parent company headquarters, the chief diversity officer and Corporate Diversity Council ensure that diversity goals are a part of the company’s strategy. Not only does this type of arrangement keep diversity on the agenda for planning and control, but it also ensures top-down support for valuing diversity.

Diversity activity takes many forms at General Electric overall and at GE Lighting in particular. Its partnership with MC2 STEM High School and support for STEM Camp encourage female, urban, and minority students to consider technology-related careers. Affinity groups and training programs help its employees gain support and learn skills for succeeding in a highly competitive business environment. Programs such as Get Skills to Work help the company recruit workers such as returning veterans who otherwise might have difficulty finding job opportunities.

The success of a company such as GE Lighting in its diversity program will enhance the productivity of its diverse workforce. An organization’s diversity programs will help a diverse workforce feel valued and at ease in its work setting and thereby perform better than workers who feel their organization has little respect for them as people. As a result of its required diversity training, GE Lighting can retain employees and thus lower personnel costs related to recruiting and training.

Legislation and government involvement cannot provide complete direction for creating diversity in organizations. GE Lighting’s managers, from Maryrose Sylvester on down, understand that organizations should not wait for laws and government to provide guidelines for creating a diverse organization. Instead, management should re-create the company to reflect the markets in which it operates. For example, given demographics reflecting population trends, GE Lighting will probably be recruiting and hiring a greater proportion of Asian and Hispanic employees.

If an organization such as GE Lighting increases the proportion of Asian and Hispanic employees, company diversity training programs should be modified to include sensitivity toward factors relevant to the Asian and Hispanic cultures. This training should emphasize factors such as religion, values, and behavioral norms specific to these two groups. Such modification of diversity training at GE Lighting would be aimed at eliminating ethnocentrism within the company relating to these two demographic groups.

When management is committed to diversity, diversity programs are normally successful. In turn, by virtue of its financial investment in global diversity, GE Lighting demonstrates its commitment to building a world-class organization—a fact that is not lost on current and future employees. A reputation for diversity makes GE Lighting more attractive as an employer—and enables GE Lighting to attract and retain high-performing employees. In turn, top performers are typically the most successful at innovation and productivity—areas where GE Lighting needs to excel if it is to hold competitive advantage in the marketplace.

In terms of the organizational diversity continuum, GE Lighting’s commitment to diversity seems broad based. This broad-based commitment is reflected in company-wide practices related to recruiting, hiring, and training a diverse workforce. The broad-based commitment is also evident in GE’s selection of a woman to head its lighting business. Consistent with diversity initiatives in most organizations, GE’s managers are given extensive diversity training. Managers in a company such as GE who know how to interact with people of different cultures will be the most successful in creating productive multicultural teams in organizations. Overall, diversity training for managers at GE is aimed to help them become more sensitive to other cultures and thereby more capable of using planning, organizing, influencing, and controlling skills to help the organization meet its diversity goals.

In addition to managers, no managers within the organization can be a focus of specially designed diversity training.

2. Building Your Management Skills Portfolio

Your Management Learning Portfolio is a collection of activities specially designed to demonstrate your management knowledge and skill. Be sure to save your work. Taking your printed portfolio to an employment interview could be helpful in obtaining a job.

The portfolio activity for this chapter is Managing a Business in Japan. Study this information and complete the exercises that follow.

You are an American-educated manager who believes in Western management philosophies. You have just accepted a job as a middle manager in a Toyota manufacturing plant in Tahara, which is slightly south of Osaka in Japan. The plant manufactures Toyota’s new Lexus hybrid sedan. For your entire 10-year career, you have worked as a middle manager in a General Motors plant in the United States and followed traditional American management practices. Toyota was clear, however, about expecting you to fit into its culture and follow its management practices, which have built company success. You know little about Japanese management practices and start to read as much as you can about how Japanese companies operate. Based upon your study, you come up with the following points about the differences between the ways Japanese and American companies are structured:

1. 4-14. U.S. companies tend to have a well-defined organizational structure, whereas Japanese firms tend to be more loosely structured.

2. 4-15. U.S. companies tend to have several people involved in making decisions, whereas decisions made in Japanese firms tend to be made by only one or a few people.

3. 4-16. U.S. firms tend to value making profit in the short run, whereas Japanese firms tend to value building long-term growth.

4. 4-17. Management of Japanese firms tends to be more centralized, whereas management of U.S. firms tends to be more decentralized.

5. 4-18. Job descriptions in Japanese firms tend to be broader and less precise than job descriptions in U.S. firms.68

Exercise 1: Overall, based on the information given, list three major challenges you will face as a manager at Toyota and steps you will take to meet these challenges.

Challenge 1:           

What I will do to meet Challenge 1:

Challenge 2:           

What I will do to meet Challenge 2:

Challenge 3:           

What I will do to meet Challenge 3:

Exercise 2: Based on the information given, to be successful in Japan you will probably have to change the way you plan, organize, influence, and control somewhat. List the changes for each management function you probably will have to make.

Changes to the way I will plan in Japan:

Changes to the way I will organize in Japan:

Changes to the way I will influence people in Japan:

Changes to the way I will control in Japan:

Exercise 3: Do you think you will be successful in this job as a manager at Toyota? Why or why not?

Exercise 4: Overall, what did you learn from this experience?