Strategic Development of Managing Global Talent - Essay Example

Strategic Development of Managing Global Talent Introduction The Toyota Motor Corporation is a multinational auto carmaker, which has its headquarters in Toyota, Aichi, in Japan. The company was founded in 1937 by Kiichiro Toyoda as a derivative from what his father had started as Toyota industries to crest automobiles. The company employs 317,734 people globally and is one of the largest employing organizations in the world. The Toyota Motor Corporation is part of the Toyota group, which is one of the biggest conglomerates in the world. Alongside motor production, the company engages in other businesses such as the Toyota financial services through the Toyota financial services division. Moreover, the company also engages in the building of robots for both commercial production and assisting in the production of motor vehicles (Krishnan & Chaudhuri, 2010, web). Toyota is the largest producer of motor vehicles in the world. In the year 2010, it was ranked the largest producer by units, reaching a maximum high of 8.6 million units. However, the company’s production was ranked third in 2011 after GM Motors and Volkswagen motors. To achieve this status, the company has used strategic development of global talents, which has conformed to the demand of the products and services. The company was the pioneer of the kaizen way of thinking and reasoning and the Toyota way of management. These are methods of production, which are based on the continuous improvement and standardization. This analysis will engage the readers in the analysis of the talent management practice in Toyota Motor Corporation, with the following tools. One is the strategic resource practice overview, the SWOT analysis, the Atkinson flexibility model, and the Universalist or the contextual paradigm. All the above criteria will be used in the relation to the advantage of management capital, human capital, social capital, and the organization capital (Hancock, 2003, p.3). Aims and Objectives The Toyota motor corporation uses some policies and philosophies, which aims at achieving consumer satisfaction in the use of their products. One of their greatest policies and philosophy is that they do not only build cars, but people too. This is realized in the importance of their quality cars, which play a great role in offering transport to the people. However, the corporation faces a challenge in their management that is brought about by the managers. This occurs in that the managers want to play more roles in the management than in teaching. Teaching is the fundamental of all management as it involves instilling new ideas to the people that is the employees of the organization. This led to the company to employ the 14-point model of operations of which 6 points relate to the development of talent. The 14-Point Model The first principle is that, the company should base its management in the decisions based on the long-term philosophy, even at the expense of short-term financial goals. This shows that the company development and training are given a priority to other matters in the organization. Moreover, the company has realized that the standardized processes are the foundation for continuous improvement. This forms their second principle, which is applied to talent development through standardized work and job instruction during training. In addition, the company encourages the growth of leaders who thoroughly understand their work while at the same time encourage the leaders to teach the philosophy to other employees. This will play a major role in ensuring that the employees are well aware of their job demands and will therefore give favorable to their supervisors. It also encourages in job training, which aims at instilling new skills to the employees to gain quality production. Furthermore, Toyota Motor Corporation has a policy to develop exceptional people and teams who will follow the company’s philosophy and policies. This is done through retaining the best talent and training the emerging talent so that they can all achieve a certain objective. This is mainly done in line with the company’s strategic management objectives. The company also respects their suppliers by challenging them and helping them improves. This demonstrates a holistic approach to talent management, where the external suppliers are held to similar standards with those of the company. The challenge and the standards set for the suppliers have to conform to the demands of Toyota Motor Corporation. This is mostly done in the raw materials department where the company has to acquire the right materials for input in their production purpose. In addition, the company encourages the organization to become a learning center through relentless reflection and continuous improvement. The purpose of this policy is to develop skills of reflection that helps the individuals to grow and improve independently. This policy oversees a systematic company wide and division training and assignments meant for training purposes. Some of the training strategies, which they employ, are the on-job-training. This is meant to ensure that the associates can fully utilize their abilities in the job after their talents are shaped to conform to the demand of the Toyota Motor Corporation (Mitsuo, 2008, p.8). Being a multinational company, the company specializes in training for individuals divisions, in language training, special training, and skill training. In their slogan “Toyota- developing people” of 2002, they developed a strategic resource booklet that aims to create a common understanding that the source of Toyotas competitiveness is its strategic resource development. Various steps are followed in the training process. They include, introductory training to newly joined employees and staff members. Secondly, they include the advanced training for assistants and supervisors, and orientation training for newly promoted specialists (Randall & Susan 2008, p.7). Lastly, the company advances training for assistants managers so that they can be competent in the advancement of their managerial roles. This training program helps the company to oversee self-development and language training. Findings Toyota Motors Company has also developed a learning institute, which addresses the global leadership and management development schools. They divided this philosophy into two parts, the global leadership school, and the management development school (Choo & Bontis, 2008, p.5). In the global leadership school, their objective is the development of executive strategic resource, which is capable of showing leadership from a global perspective. Its aim is to achieve enhanced leadership ability, which is based on the Toyota way. In addition, they aim to get reinforced business management knowledge and skills. Lastly, their aim is to gain global human networking. The target of this institute is to develop future global leaders from around the world (Yasuhiro, 1997, p.5). Management Development School Model According to management development school, their objective is to give training to the management to systematically understand and implement the Toyota way as it relates to each core business area. These are the production, sales, strategic resources, and the finance department (Ichijo & Nonaka, 2007, p.7). The aim of the production department according to the management development school is to give understanding of the Toyota way at various functions at Toyota manufacturing companies. In addition, the aim of the sales department is to understand the latest marketing methods, which are based on the Toyota way in sales and marketing. Their goal is to develop better middle level management from around the world (Hiles, 2011, p.8). Toyota Motor Corporation has also developed key principles of operations, which are embodied in the strategic resource operations. The key principles in the continuous improvement according to the Toyota way are challenge, improvement, and Genchi genbutsu, which means go and see. The key principles in the respect for people according to the Toyota way are respect and teamwork (Griffin, 2010, p.7). Schuler et al (1993) sought to understand the human resource capabilities and their ideologies, which he described as ‘The Type 3 Company’. He set out a new schema for human resource management where he noted that the first-hand approach to strategy is reliable with the resource based view perception of strategic human resource management. He consequently highlighted the implication of placing employees with their skills, knowledge and abilities at the centre of things in an organisation, as it is this, which may constitute a potential source of competitive advantage. In order to achieve this, Bartlett and Ghoshal (1989), came up with four strategies for competing through borders. This involves multinational autonomy, the use of extraneous subsidiaries, which would give the Toyota local market room for reworking. Bartlett and Ghoshal (1989) continue to note that home office command centres should regulate worldwide extraneous affiliates, thus enabling economic productivity and international-parent knowledge utilization through dispersal and variation. This would provide a great help to Toyota in managing its global talents. However, there lies some ambiguity in the way human resource management and development. This ambiguity may be traced back to misperception surrounding definition of human resource development (Walton, 2003). Although conceding that there is variability and diversity in the manner in which human resource development progressions are hypothesized and fabricated, varying awareness and run-through environments that can be seen to impact human resource development in the global domain should be wiped out. Strength Weaknesses Opportunity and Threats Analysis Strength Creates awareness Rigorous Standardizes training Integrates talent management practices Threats Complacency Group thinking Threat of retention Weaknesses poor strategic resource practices cost rewards scheme poor in training group thinking moulding lacked complacency Opportunities Individualized management practices Flexibility Encourages initiative, and growth Re-evaluation Toyota Motor Corporation has its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Strength In its strengths, the company creates awareness of the role of effective strategic resource management and talent development play. The company is rigorous, and standardizes training programs, which teach skills and embed organization values. Lastly, in its strengths, Toyota Motor Corporation has a holistic view to strategic resource, which integrates talent management practices into all aspects of business, including relationships with their suppliers (King, 1994). Weaknesses Toyota Motor Corporation has several weaknesses too. In 2010, Toyota was subject to two product recalls, losing $155 million per week, and $30 million in stock valuation. The cause of these weaknesses according to Sullivan was poor strategic resource practices in eight areas. One of the major reasons is that the company used existing rewards scheme. The aim of these rewards was to reward managers for cost management over sustaining product quality. The Toyota Company was poor in training. Their policy was based around plan, do, check, and act in which more focus was based on the last two principles. This creates more risk of group thinking and not enough focus on individual initiative. Moreover, the company emphasized too much on moulding, not putting more effort on raw talent and initiative, which resulted, to poor performance in management. This indicates that there was no assessment on the reaction of the consumers. Generally, the management took no action and was designed to identify the presence of groupthink. The corporate culture was also much concerned with retaining and improving the image of the company and not their products. This led to postponement of the announcement of the recall of the damaged vehicles in 2010. Furthermore, there was a leadership development conflict, in that the company promoted those who toed the party line, rather than those who could make difficult decisions regarding the company. The other weaknesses occurred in that the company needed to have already identified the extent to which strategic resource failures could contribute to systems failure. Lastly, the weakness occurred in that the company lacked complacency and a lack of learning experiences. This is because the company used innovative methods to reach to the top therefore leaving behind some more important methods which could oversee the company retain its better strategic resource strategies. The above weaknesses points towards the issues, which arose due to the effect of group thinking. It was also the effect of standardization of thoughts and behavior at the expense of individual initiative. Threats However, the company faces some threats. The company is faced by both the internal and external threats. Among the internal threats, facing Toyota Company is the complacency. This occurs in that the company believes their strategic resource systems are industry leading but they do not test their efficiency. Moreover, there is a threat in the effect of group thinking. This is because the company value standardization of values and behaviors. The effect of group thinking is that it is beneficial when things are going right in the company but on the other hand, it causes difficulties when problem solving or reaction is required. There are also external threats that are associated with the company. One of them is the threat of retention. This happens in that the employees are recognized for conforming, but not on the individual excellence. This effect may cause dissatisfaction and lead to defection. Opportunities Lastly, the company has some opportunities, which faces it. One major development is that there is the development and allowance of more individualized management practices, which are built upon existing understanding of standardized practice. In addition, the company has more flexibility, which is integrated into the strategic resource management and the overall management practices. In addition, the company encourages initiative, growth, and the reduction of group thinking tendencies. There is also the re-evaluation of the targets and rewards systems to reduce risk-averse management practices. Organisational Capability and Globalisation Model Tallman & Fladmoe-Lindquist (2002) presents organisational capability and globalisation model as the planned exertion to treat the world, or the large part of it in a one market whereby everybody can do business. They note, “It is the potentiality of a single research and development laboratory, a single production centre, a single logistic network, and a single headquarters site” (Tallman & Fladmoe-Lindquist, 2002). Sparrow et al (2004) notes that managing global talents is normally credited to numerous deliberations, which are often related to several issues that are in line with globalisation. He notes these factors are of an economic, political, cultural, and sociological nature. Moreover, managing global talent normally exists within the actions of those few firms that recognize the world as having no borders. He designates globalisation as customarily characterized as a new stage in world development. These organisations and cosmopolitan companies perform trade on a global basis, and their foremost concerns are fewer trade barricades, profit intensification, sustaining client requirements and generating a forte or market position. All these appliances have a straight and philosophical impression on the comportments, insolences and mind-sets of people who work in such businesses, and on how they should be managed (Sparrow et al 2004). Sparrow continues to add that, the powers of globalisation have altered the manner people toil including the principles. He notes that the domain has continued to put more importance on effectiveness, therefore mounting the number of talented people joining the workforce. The move has enable Toyota to create a more mobile and diverse workforce which has resulted in the growth of part time and flexible work. The Issue of Flexibility According to Atkinson in 1985, he defines a flexible firm as one that designs its workforce to meet proactively business needs through flexible staffing arrangements. He also notes that flexibility is a calculated risk that is utilized by the firms to survive and gain strategic competitive advantage. Another definition is that a flexible firm is one that allows for the expansion and contraction of labor in order to address market fluctuations, using part-time, temporary, or contractual workforces where the full time employees grant the functional flexibility. This occurs in that they are moved in reaction to emerging technological, market or product changes (Atkinson, 1984, p.29). There are several benefits, which comes along with flexibility. One is that there is a better matching of staff levels to business volumes. Moreover, Toyota Company benefits in that it gains the competitive edge over others in the market. In addition, it benefits from the lower wage and non-edge costs and it gains the improved customer service. Moreover, the company benefits in that there is flexibility in employment. This means that the company changes the staff levels to meet its demands. In addition, the company benefits from the flexibility of individuals in their different roles. To gain this competitive advantage, the company contracts and subcontracts work outs, joins consultative committees, uses casual and part time labor who work even within overtime hours and shifts employees in quality circles briefing groups’ semi autonomously and through group incentive schemes (Atkinson, 1984, p.29 & Plunkett et al, 2007, p.8). To answer the question “is Toyota a flexible firm?” we find that it is flexible in that the firm recognizes the role of employment and strategic resources as a source of strategic competitive advantage. Secondly, the firm is flexible in that it utilizes flexibility in work principles. This is done through designs process and utilizes the technology so that different employees can operate different stations. It also trains employees and management in multiple roles with a holistic understanding of operations (Center for Teaching and Learning, 2003, web). We also notes that the firm is flexible since it utilizes management innovation methods such as semi-autonomous work groups, quality circles, shift work, group incentives and joint consultative committees (Mockler, 2002, p.7). However, the firm fails in achieving maximum flexibility since does not favor standardization and codified practices and their employment base is stable and long term. This means that they value loyalty, which is a two-way concept. However, the main reason for Toyota to incorporate employee flexibility is that ability to change staffing levels to suit demand, and thus ensure cost efficiency (Liker, 2004, p. 5). Toyota avoids this by smoothing demand and avoiding fluctuations of demand, thus eliminating the need to fluctuate labor too much. It this way, the labor force is always fully utilized and does not stand idle. Therefore, the Atkinson form of flexibility is therefore, not needed, since the aims are met using alternative strategies (Martin, 2010, p.7). Universalist Model The Universalist or the contextualise contrast can be seen to be a discrepancy between strategic resource management that leads and shapes, and strategic resource management that analyses and reacts. The Universalist believe that behaviour can be shaped and controlled to meet strategic goals while contextualise believe that human behaviour is unique and context dependent. This means that it must be analysed to understand the reason for action and that management principles should be designed around this things (Hino, 2006, web). According to these principles, we can see that Toyota is more of a Universalist practiser. This is because the training programs aim to regulate and control behaviour and instil values. In addition, there is a formal system for information sharing and they strongly define job roles. Moreover, they employ attitude monitoring and performance appraisal methods while reward recognition of high performance (Hino, 2007, p.7). However, there are some contextualise elements, which can be identified. This can be seen in that, some processes and systems aim to view employees historically, as individuals. They accommodate this through care programs and inclusion of elements such as meditations. However, Toyota does not analyse behaviour and accommodate natural tendencies of employees as a group in their strategic resource activities (Liker, 2005, web). Recommendations During the growth days, Toyota Motors Corporation strategic resource practises promoted strong growth and development. It is now at the helm, but has not altered practices accordingly and has become subject to complacency. This means that review and rework is needed. In addition, Toyota motors has a rigidly structured training, practises and values that do not promote initiative, and favour innocuous play and the avoidance of negativity. This means that more focus is needed on reactive, problem solving management and individualisation. Toyota motors also believe strongly in the ability to shape its workforce and do not listen to its natural dynamics. Giving heed to these and accommodating them can avoid conflict between the natural instincts of the workforce and the structure imposed. Conclusion In conclusion, Toyota has for many years, been considered industry leaders in relation to many of their operational practices. This includes their management and development of talent. However, while the company was experiencing growth, their effectiveness as market leaders failed in unstable economic conditions. The company has failed to acknowledge this change and have become complacent, which has led to a number of organisational issues that have affected their profitability. Toyota motors correspondingly believe strongly in the aptitude to shape its workforce and do not listen to its natural dynamics. Giving heed to these and accommodating them can avoid conflict between the natural instincts of the workforce and the structure imposed. We besides realize that the firm is flexible since it exploits management innovation methods such as semi-autonomous work groups, quality circles, shift work, group incentives and joint consultative committees The Toyota motors corporations strategic resource management practices are not necessarily wrong, but possibly wrong for their current context. A full re-evaluation and redevelopment of practices needs to be considered, making a greater role for individualism, initiative, problem solving, and the ability to react to as well as shape the immediate and wider environment. Summary The Toyota motor corporation is the largest motor corporation in the world by sales unit. Toyota, was founded it in 1937, as Toyoda, to develop engines. It employs 317, 000 people to work it its branches globally. They are the pioneers of the kaizen and the Toyota way of thinking. These are methods of production, which are based on continuous improvement and standardization. Toyota manages its talents through management practises in strategic resource overview, SWOT analysis, Atkinson Flexibility Model, Universalist and contextualised Paradigm. All its practices are designed in relation to the advantage of Management Capital, Human Capital, Social Capital, and Organisational Capital. 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