Blog 1: Can cultures be managed within organizations? (766)

In spite of huge amount people have their own understanding for the organizational culture, and as an ordinary notion which could be identified or interpret in various senses depend on different circumstance. According to Atkinson (1990), a culture of organization is involved to reflect the basic assumption for the performance of the working methods, whether it is acceptable or not even the stimulation or disputation of the behaviours and actions. As a broadly speaking, organizational culture is mainly manifested in the spirit and values of the entire company that it approaches from its daily operations and undertake practices (Johnson, 2013). Last but not least, the organizational culture usually seems like the personality of an individual (Oswick, Lowe and Jones, 1996).

I came from a business background family in China and its cooperative companies throughout the country. Furthermore, as an MBA student concentrating on Global Business, it is significant for me to recognize how to manage the culture in various business scenarios. Since I was little, I have loved cars especially when they were racing on the road so that I really look forward to joining a famous firm in the automotive industry aspects in the future. I wrote this blog which is mainly focused on the number of assessments of the challenges suffered by automobile companies with utilizing different patterns and implementing the strategies for the cultural management. Furthermore, managing the organizational culture of BMW not only could figure out the existing problems even the potential risks but also could comprehend the emotion and perception of organizational members conduct promoting the efficiency and effectiveness of the operation.

Culture exists only in the comparison of two or more societies, and culture varies with people’s geographical location on the basis of Hofstede Organizational Cultural Dimensions (Hofstede, 2014). It was initially divided into four elements: power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism and masculinity/ feminine, and later added long-term orientation and indulgence/ restraint. Particularly, BMW as a worldwide company which has 30 production facilities over 14 countries, meanwhile, creates around 150 global network selling points. Thus, it might generate lots of conflicts and misunderstandings between organizations, groups, even individual as potential risks conduct have a negative impact on the enterprise.

In the Power Distance aspect, although the entire organization consists of the rigorous hierarchies, both team spirit and individual initiative still are the most significant features to drive the corporation to develop continually. It means the effects of the style of management, the structure of the hierarchy, the level of education and subordinates’ willingness those factors to form the social distances between people through the unique business model, creative initiatives and sustainable leadership of BMW shrinks gradually.

In the Uncertainty Avoidance aspect, the economic crisis has been a sensitive topic among employees that indirectly threatening their positions and benefits since 2008. In order to resolve this issue, BMW continued to adopt its creative initiatives which keep the outflow rate of talent of full-time staffs within 2.7 %. The decline was not due to layoffs but to incentives for early retirement, willing to leave and not fill vacant occupations or renew temporary contracts. Furthermore, the company changed the working week to a four-day week and worked with the German government to give employees a one-day subsidy for achieving the purpose of expenditure reduces.

In the Individualism aspect, the firm prefers the collectivist ethics caused high regard for either individual freedom or commitment to team members.

In the Masculinity aspect, BMW retains its strong market position even in the face of financial crisis, meanwhile is good at observing market changes and making relative strategies—NUMBER ONE. Afterwards, planning to create a digital model city where provide the end-to-end mobility services, connectivity of network and new project ‘BMW Vision E³ Way’.

In the long-term orientation aspect, the corporation announced their 2011 report about ‘Honeybee (sustainable) leadership’ in strategy that follows the rules found by Hofstede and Bond. The locust (unsustainable) leadership model was used in the past, but over time, employees’ negative emotions gradually intensified and seriously affected their work efficiency, until managers recognized how important it was to focus on the balance between tradition and innovation.

Underlying four types of organizational culture (Harrison, 1972) that Handy enhanced and categorized them in 1993 as below: power culture, role culture, task culture and person culture. Moreover, I realized the culture of BMW belong to task culture that the small goals are achieved from the bottom up through the Sustainable Leadership Pyramid model. At the same time, it also is work- hard/ play- hard culture, subordinates have flexible working hours and concentrate on the customers’ requests.

References

Mullins, L.J. (2016), Management and Organisational Behaviour, 11th Edition, Pearson Higher Education

Atkinson, P. E. (1990) ‘Creating Cultural Change’, Management Services, vol. 34, no. 7,  pp. 6– 10.

Johnson, R. ‘Changing corporate culture’, Governance & Compliance, June 2013, p. 3.

Oswick, C., Lowe, S. and Jones, P. ‘Organisational Culture as Personality: Lessons from Psychology?’, in Oswick, C. and Grant, D. (eds) Organisation Development: Metaphorical Explorations, Pitman (1996), pp. 106– 20.

Hofstede, G. and Bond, M. H. ‘The Confucius Connection: From Cultural Roots to Economic Growth’, Organisational Dynamics, Spring 1988, pp. 4– 21.

Hofstede, G. Culture’s Consequences: International Differences in Work-Related Values, Sage (1980).

Harrison, R. ‘Understanding Your Organization’s Character’, Harvard Business Review, vol. 50, May/June 1972, pp. 119– 28.

Handy, C. B. Understanding Organizations, fourth edition, Penguin (1993).

Avery, G.  and  Bergsteiner, H. (2011), How BMW successfully practices

sustainable leadership principles, Strategy and Leadership 39(6):11-18. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235304256_How_BMW_successfully_practices_sustainable_leadership_principles Bmwgroup.com. (2019). Corporate Strategy [online] Available at: https://www.bmwgroup.com/en/company/strategie.html [Accessed 2 Jan. 2019].