Problem Solution - How to Change a Culture - Essay Example

Absenteeism was high, wildcat strikes could happen at times, and workers sometimes deliberately sabotaged quality. Taken together, all these point out one single kind of problem, and this is the seeming lack of commitment by top management in terms of culture. Put differently, the corporate culture was not conducive to the introduction of new improvements that could have helped with the overall quality and quantity of the plant's output. This kind of environment at the plant in turn produced the low morale of the workers there.

An important thing is to gain employees' trust.
2. Section 4 (Possible Solutions) - The new combined management at the NUMMI plant made the right decisions regarding gaining employee trust so that there will be cooperation from the workers. In particular, it is vital to have the so-called “employee buy-in” wherein the workers are themselves convinced of the proposed solutions coming from management. However, not all of the proposed solutions came from the top only, the workers down below in production lines were also given new responsibilities together with the corresponding authority to detect problems with quality, if ever these defects come up, by allowing them to “stop the line” which is a novel or new idea for most of the previous workers at the old GM Fremont plant. In other words, they are now given the capability to manage their work. They are now empowered to check quality. Read More