Managers in Organizations: General Motor - Research Paper Example

Managers in Organizations Introduction to General Motor General Motor Company, globally known as GM, is an American multinational company headquartered in Michigan. The company designs, manufactures, distributes and markets personal cars, public transport vehicles, commercial vehicles and automobile parts. The company was founded in the year 1908. It also provides vehicle financing services to individual and business customers. The company has expanded its business in more than 37 countries in the world and its products are famous in the global market under ten different brand names such as Chevrolet, GMC, Opel, Wuling etc. This company holds 96 % stake in GM Korea and 20 % stake in IMM. Presently more than 2, 00, 000 employees are working in this company across six continents.
Diversity
Diversity is an integral part of General Motor’s success and culture. The company is getting long term benefits and competitive advantages for its diversified workforce in different countries. The company focuses on five major areas to drive their diversity. These areas are customers, employees, communities, dealers and suppliers. Employee driven resource groups are created by this organization to manage diversity of workforce. Employees are getting more than one options for selecting their suitable place or region for work. GM’s Employee Resource Group Council has become the number nine diversity council in the whole nation. These resource groups’ works like a communication link between senior leadership and general employees and exchange the ideas and suggestions of general employees to top level management. The ideas and thoughts of employees are generated from different backgrounds, experiences, ethnicity, gender, national origins, generation, sexual orientation etc (General Motors, 2014).
Challenges
Workforce diversity has created differences between co workers and colleagues in this company. The acceptance of any instruction, understanding an important issue or celebrating any particular event is also being changed according to the workforce diversity. Employees from diversified region have and different culture, etiquette, attitude and behavior that sometimes become harmful for overall productivity of workforce (Dike, 2013). GM workforce consists of employees of different age group, religion, ethnicities and they are using different communication style and various languages at the time of communication. For this reason a poor communication system might build up within organization and professional relationships become poor in nature. High extent of misunderstanding and misinterpretation might occur in the operational activities (Deshwal and Chowdhary, 2012).
Top management’s commitment
Top management of General Motor Company has committed to enhance the talent of workforce to manage diversity in a controlled and efficient way. Again organizational planning should be structured and well organized as the business is expanding in 6 continents, 192 countries and 23 time zones. The company has to promote its products in more than 100 languages throughout the world. Therefore, region wise efficient and skilled staffs are required and these staffs should know about the local languages. Otherwise marketing activities will not be effective at all. The top management of this company has been committed to implement ‘right person at right place’ concept in case of recruitment procedure. Management has also created few Affinity groups which are responsible to manage diversity of this company. Each group consist 12 employees. These groups are Asian Indian Affinity Group, Chinese Affinity Group, GM Affinity Group for Women etc (ACREW and FSBRU, 2008).
References
ACREW and FSBRU. (2008). Managing a Diverse Workforce: Attraction and Retention of Older Workers. Retrived from: http://www.buseco.monash.edu.au/mgt/research/acrew/ageing-workforce-wp-2008.pdf.
Deshwal, P. and Chowdhary, S. (2012). WORKFORCE DIVERSITY MANAGEMENT: BIGGEST CHALLENGE FOR 21ST CENTURY MANAGERS. Retrived from: http://www.zenithresearch.org.in/images/stories/pdf/2012/April/ZIJMR/7_ZIJMR_APRIL12_VOL2_ISSUE4.pdf.
Dike, P. (2013). The impact of workplace diversity on organizations. Retrieved from: https://publications.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/63581/Thesisxx.pdf?sequence=1.
General Motors. (2014). GM Diversity: Our Areas of Focus. Retrieved from: http://www.gm.com/company/aboutGM/diversity/focus_areas.html. Read More