The Culture of BMW - Term Paper Example

Inserts His/her Inserts Inserts Grade (18, 12, BMW’s Dream Factory and Culture Case Introduction BMW is a well known German car manufacturer company that has performed extremely well over a long period of time. The company is known all over the world for producing high quality luxury cars. BMWs are known for their exquisite design and functionality all over the world. The brand of BMW is one of the most successful brands of the world today. All the success the company has achieved can be partly owed to its organizational culture. In this paper, the BMWs dream factory and culture case will be discussed and solutions to the case questions will be provided. The Culture of BMW The organizational culture of BMW can be characterized as employee oriented. Employees at BMW are given great importance and policies of the company can be termed as employee centric. BMW focuses on empowerment of employees and gives them enough freedom to come up with new ideas. The company also encourages innovation even for the lower level employees. There are also no red tapes in the company that separate the higher managers to the lower level employees. All this indicate to the fact that the culture of BMW is employee oriented. In BMW employees are treated with respect and their suggestions are given attention. This is another reason why we can characterize the organizational culture of BMW as employee oriented. Employees are encouraged to come up with new ideas and their ideas are implemented within the company. This not only boosts the confidence of employees but also communicates to the employees how much the organization pays heed to their word. Employee oriented organizational culture is the reason of the long term success of the company because human capital is the most important part of any organization, and human capital is treated with great regard at BMW. The organizational culture of BMW is very friendly and the top management is always interested in listening to employees. The company has benefitted from many innovations that were brought up by lower level employees. The entrepreneurial culture of the company fosters innovation by empowering employees to make a difference (Hellriegel & Slocum, 552). BMW allows employees to remain at the forefront of innovation and therefore the culture of the company can be categorized as employee oriented. The automobile industry mostly relies on standard operating procedures and rigid assembly line manuals guide employees about their work. This is not the case in BMW as employees enjoy a great deal of freedom. Employees at the company operate with a high degree of flexibility and can change even their working schedule in order to incorporate any unforeseen change in the demand. This level of flexibility is often not seen in the rigid automobile companies that are mostly interested in setting standards. BMW is able to successfully achieve this level of flexibility in the automobile industry through its employee oriented culture. Model of Leadership and How does it impact BMW’s Culture A very flexible model of democratic leadership is visible at BMW. The leadership of the company is of democratic nature and all employees have a say in the decision making process. This is not an easy thing to involve lower level employees in the decision making process in the automobile industry. But at BMW, even lower level of employees can contribute to the important decisions like car design and manufacturing process. Employees can come up with new ideas and their ideas are considered by the top level management. This is why we can characterize the leadership model of BMW as democratic. Flexibility is also an important part of leadership at BMW because the company enjoys a great level of flexibility. The company can quickly adjust to increase in sales and can change the working schedule of employees. Also leadership style at BMW is very flexible as managers operate and decide on a case to case basis. Leaders at BMW are always interested in listening new ideas and are flexible enough to accept the new changes. This is why the company has been able to fair well in many difficult situations. A good example of flexibility at BMW is that once due to sudden increase in demand the management started to operate a new plant that was designed to manufacture a different model of BMW (Hellriegel & Slocum, 552). This shows that the leadership is also very flexible. The democratic model of leadership impacts the employee oriented BMW culture significantly. The employee oriented culture of the company is complemented by the democratic leadership at BMW. The culture of BMW calls for equality of all employees and therefore anyone can come up with a new idea. The use of proper channels can ensure that the suggestion and idea of an employee is heard by the top management. This can only be possible if a democratic style of leadership is followed in the company. Any other style of leadership would not have worked at BMW because of the employees are empowered to a great extent in the company. They are powerful enough to bring about a change in the design of a car and can also make changes in the overall manufacturing process of the company. This would not have been possible without a democratic style of leadership. The leadership of BMW plays an important role in shaping the overall organizational culture of the company, and this is why another style of leadership would not have worked properly given the culture of BMW. Why employees derive high Job Satisfaction at BMW?  Employees derive higher job satisfaction at BMW because they have full control on the work they do. It is clearly visible to the employees that their work is making a difference and this is why the job satisfaction of BMW employees is very high. Even assembly line workers can come up with new ideas and can make those ideas implemented within the company. This gives employees a sense of power and meaning which is extremely important for job satisfaction of employees. The sense of power elevates the self esteem of employees and this is the reason behind the job satisfaction of employees at BMW. Another important factor behind the job satisfaction of BMW employees is the pay for performance payment structure. Employees can see that their hard work and innovation is rewarded and this leads to heightened job satisfaction. New ideas are rewarded in the company and bonuses are also given on achieving sales target to company employees. All this makes the employees aware that their hard work is meaningful and is being rewarded. At BMW jobs are designed in such a way as to increase task significance and task identity. This is visible from the pay for performance system of the company and also from the level of autonomy enjoyed by the employees of the company. Employees are clearly aware of the jobs they are performing and they even get rewarded for their good performance. The employees at BMW are able to identify themselves clearly with their jobs as they are made accountable to their work. This is another way in which job satisfaction of BMW employees is increased. Employees are aware of their work and they know that they will be held accountable for their performance. This clarity plays a great role in increasing job satisfaction of employees in the company. Also the jobs at BMW are meaningful for the employees because their work is visible to them. The new ideas that the employees of the company come up with are implemented and this tells the employees that what they are doing is meaningful. The changes in models and in the manufacturing process are quite visible and therefore they add meaning and purpose to the jobs of employees at BMW. What Attributes of Organizational Creativity are fostered at BMW? All employees at BMW are encouraged to innovate and the come up with a new design. This is a feature of organizational creativity that is fostered in BMW. Employees are motivated to come up with new ideas and they are rewarded for innovative behavior. This is how the company is able to foster creativity in its workplace. Motivation to come up with something new allows employee to innovate and become creative. This is not a luxury employees at other automobile manufacturers enjoy. An important attribute of organizational creativity is encouraging difference of opinions (Silverthorne, 1). At BMW the top management encourages difference of opinions and group discussions are held regularly. This allows the company to think outside the box many times and come up with workable solutions. This is an important feature of organizational creativity because many a time organizations are not able to think outside the box. It is therefore important to appreciate new and differing ideas, and encourage debate so that the best possible solution can be obtained. It is not always good to have genius people who are not willing to disagree with each other because innovation is all about new ideas and disagreement encourages the flow of new ideas (Silverthorne, 1). Enhanced communication between employees of the organization is also an attribute of organizational creativity (Patterson, 1). The employees at BMW are always in communication with each other and there is no divide between managers and employees. This is why good internal communication is another attribute of organizational creativity fostered at BMW. Employees are able to regularly hold meetings and discuss new ideas. Managers and employees work together to solve problems and this decreases the divide between the top management and lower level employees. People at BMW know the value of communication and this is a major reason of the success of the company for a long period of time. Autonomy is another attribute of organizational creativity that is visible at BMW. The company has given a great deal of autonomy to its employees in their work. Even assembly line workers in the company can contribute to the high level decisions through their suggestions and this is because of the autonomy employees enjoy at BMW. Conclusion BMW has been performing really well over the past many years. The success the company has achieved can be owed to its unique organizational culture and leadership. Usually the automobile companies have a rigid culture and they focus on setting standards. This is very much unlike how BMW operates as they celebrate innovation and creativity. Employees communicate in the organization regularly and this facilitates in the flow of information. The employee oriented culture and the democratic leadership at BMW complements each other really well, and allows employees to achieve high job satisfaction. Works Cited Page Hellriegel, Don & Slocum, John. Organizational Behavior 13th edition. Texas: South-Western College Pub, 2010. Print Patterson, Christiana. Individual and Organizational Creativity. The Innovation Journal, 2002. Web. http://www.innovation.cc/news/innovation-conference/patterson.pdf Silverthorne, Sean. The 3 Keys to Organizational Creativity. CBS News, 2010. Web. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505125_162-31549140/the-3-keys-to-organizational-creativity/ Read More