OL Discussion Board Question

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Milestone One

Angela Fasoli

Southern New Hampshire University

Professor Alex Labrie

January 31, 2017

Introduction

The Case study is about an organization that depends on its culture in the way it performs its actions. This culture however contributes highly to the current problem of the organization. The ignition key has a problem which leads to the death of 13 people. The staff of the organization is so dormant that it didn’t notice the ignition problem until 13 people lost their lives. A new set of engineers who were hired did a case study to realize the main cause of the ignition problem something the previous engineers had overlooked. The case study also identified the GM culture as the primary cause of the problem. After the case study the organization decided to take the necessary steps to rectify the whole issue before it led to more catastrophic effects

Strengths

The organization has many strengths which contributed to its success but its primary strength is its competitive advantage over other companies in the market. It had a large number of employees who were experts in their own fields. This enabled it to make more profits than other organizations they were able to come up with better products.

Weaknesses

Despite competitive advantage of the company the case study showed that it also faced numerous challenges which contributed to its failure thus the ignition key problem. One of its major weaknesses was the communication issue. It lacked a good communication channel between its employees. This led to the ignition key problem persisting for 11 years unidentified by any of the employees. It would have taken only one employee to demonstrate a sense of urgency to the very end until the problem was identified. The other weakness is no one wanted to raise the problem to the highest level so as to take responsibility. Many parties identified the problem but couldn’t raise it as a major problem that affected the organization. All those who were engaged in the problem had a responsibility to fix it but none of them took their responsibility seriously. All these weaknesses led to its down fall.

Organizational Modeling

Every organization would need a good organizational model to succeed in its operation. A good corporate model defines an organizations line of power from the board of directors at the top to the employees at the top. It defines the resources of an organization, the communication channels, the job allocation and the general organization of an organization. A corporate model serves the organization best for its operation.

The organization uses a hierarchical model where it is run from the top by the chief executive who oversees all operations. The manager is in charge of various structures in the organization. He is in charge of regulations, rules, job description and control. This organizational model works best for the organization because there exist activities daily activities in the organization which have to be managed.

In this model however the low-level employees are overlooked as just workers to the company and are not given priority on any ideas they may have about transforming the company. The main ideas for the company are given by those in higher position of power who are respected. The operating assumption of the model is that all those In higher positions have worked their way to their positions and thus must have a lot of academic credentials and work experience thus their ideas can be trusted to be successful. The low level employees are expected to just follow orders and work with the ideas implemented by their bosses (Piercy, 2014). 

The other organization model used by other competing organizations is a holacracy model. This type of model unlike the hierarchical model serves to have an equal distribution of the decision making process. It gives an open platform for all employees to present any ideas on what they may have in mind that serves to improve the operation of the organization. In this model information is openly accessible and any issues affecting the operation of the organizations are processed within the organization during special and ongoing meetings (Bourne, 2016). 

This model’s main objective is to bring together every component of the organization so as to enable smooth operations and make complete use of every component. It does not overlook some of the employees because they are in lower positions. Unlike the Hierarchical model this model employs the motion of decentralized decision making.

The impact of culture on an organization modeling is minimal currently as opposed to before. This is primarily because most organization has given its employees the go ahead to come up with new strategies to come up with new products that can effectively compete in the market. The old motion used by organizations that culture defined how they would do in the market has been passed by time.

The use of hierarchical model by the organization is has contributed to its downfall. The fact that it doesn’t give its employees an opportunity to present their ideas may have contributed to their lack of a sense of responsibility. These employees may end up believing that they are not as important and thus not care of whatever problem affecting the organization.

References

Piercy, N. (2014). Marketing Budgeting (RLE Marketing): A Political and Organizational Model. Routledge.

Bourne, L. (2016). Stakeholder relationship management: a maturity model for organizational implementation. CRC Press.