On Ford Manufacturing - Research Paper Example

Effective employee management is the most critical factor for organization’s success. This paper evaluates some findings at the multinational automobile giant, Ford Motor Company, in terms of employee performance and team structures. In this process, an attempt is made to understand the relation that exists between the two, if any. A short research will be conducted based on literature on Ford Motor Co and a case will be built to identify what could be the potential obstacles towards better performance and employee motivation.

Further, this paper tries to establish that conflicts among teams members and between teams can affect performance at individual, team and organizational levels. These conflicts can also affect employee motivation and performance, which can be restored with effective leadership and appropriate organizational practices. 1.1 The Ford Motor Company: Ford Motor Company is an automobile producer, founded by Henry Ford in 1903 and has multinational presence. The automotive operations at Ford involve designing, developing, manufacturing, sales and servicing of cars, trucks and other automotive parts.

Ford Motor Co revolutionized its operations and business by making ‘quality’ its main focus and adopted Total Quality Management approach to improve quality as well as reduce costs and wastage. The company has its presence all over the world, with its main manufacturing units based in many parts of the US, some parts of Europe and Asia Pacific (Ford Motor Co., n.d). Ford Motor Co is known for the concept of Fordism, which Siegel (1988) explains as the systematic control of all stages of accumulation from producing raw materials through marketing (cited in Jessop & Sum, 2006; p.59). This management concept yielded huge success to Ford during early 20th century.

With changing markets, capitalistic structures and advent of other mass production techniques, Fordism was transformed from an