Analysis of the Organizational Structure of Ford Motor Company - Assignment Example

Table of Contents Introduction 2 Mission Statement 3 Organizational Structure, Processes and Systems 5 Culture of Ford Motors 10 Training, Development And Recruitment At Ford Motor Company 10 Conclusion and Recommendations 14 Works Cited 15 Introduction Most of the executives in the organizations are discovering loss of liveliness in their organizational structures along with the management systems. Furthermore, they have experienced that organizational structure at times does not comply with the business strategies and objectives and hence does not lead to the situation of the investment attractiveness. When the roles and the functions are non-transparent and therefore there is no interaction in the different levels of the management, the decision making procedure tends to be time consuming and inefficient leading to ineffective organizational structure and management systems (PWC, “Organizational Structure And Management System”). The research study tries to describe and analyze the organizational structure of Ford Motor Company. It is worthy of mentioning that Ford Motor Company manufactures automobiles and is one of the pioneers in the related sector. It was founded by Henry Ford in Michigan, Detroit in the year 1903 (Bryant University, “History of Ford Motor Company”). By the year 2010, the total employees working with Ford Motor Company had been 198000 (CNN Money, “Global 500”). The company’s net income for full year has been $6.6 billion in the year 2010 (Ford Motor Company, “Annual Report 2010”). Mission Statement Ford Motor Company is the one of the leading names in the automotive and automotive-related products and services. It also has its contribution towards the newer industries such as financial services, aerospace and communication. The company’s mission is to enhance the products and services offered by them so that the needs and the demands of the customers can be met through which the company will be capable of prospering and thus earning higher rates of returns from its stockholders whom it considers as the owners of the business. The company’s vision is to become the leader in the world in manufacturing the automotive products as well as services. For achieving this goal, the company has dedicated and sincere team members or the employees of the company who work together to provide the customers along with the community high quality and innovative products that are of world class in standards. It is because of the high quality technology and excellent engineering, the company limits the harm that can be caused to the environment and thus delivers great value and experience to its customers each time they shop with Ford Motor Company. It is through the closely interwoven working environment among the employees along with the customers, business partners are capable of sharing the company’s success and thus the company is capable of achieving higher rates of return on investment (Bassue & Et. Al., “Ford”). The main objective of the company is to take into consideration the environmental issues and thus contribute to the stabilization of the climate by the reduction of gas emissions. It further aims at the maximum utilization of the bio-fuels by establishing infrastructure and thus reduces its dependence upon the natural oils (Ford Motor Company, “Annual Report 2010”). The financial goals of the company are to enhance its market share to 20% by the end of the year 2013. The sales of the hybrid cars are expected to augment by 100%. The company wants to push the sales of the hybrid cars by 10% yearly (Slideshare, “Ford Marketing Plan 2013”) Ford Motor Company’s strategy includes preparation of energy efficient cars. It also adopts safety characteristics in its cars. The company makes use of top class engineers and thus tests the products for its safety. It tries to create strong business environment thus creating products leading to the better world. It is restructuring its operation thus impacting each sphere of its businesses. The company is focusing upon balanced portfolio, thus including small and medium sized vehicles for meeting the needs of the customers. By making use of the modern technology, its product strategy has been focused upon delivering fuel economy cars thereby reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Ford Motor Company also has plans to expand globally and thus aims 70 percent of its growth in the coming 10 years. The company is trying to simplify the way it works with the suppliers in India and in the rest of the world by reduction of the complication and thus growing parts cohesion. By the year 2014, the company’s strategy is to sell vehicles made up of 13 core platforms. When the suppliers are brought in to the process of development, the overall supply chain tends to be healthier and effective (Ford Motor Company, “Annual Report 2010”). Organizational Structure, Processes and Systems Organization structure can be defined as the way in which the jobs and the people in the organization has been arranged so that each departmemt can pay due attention towards the work and thus the goals can be achieved. In case of small work group and in organizations where the face-to-face communication is regular, there is not any such requirement of the formal structures. In larger organizations such as that of Ford Motor Company, the work needs to be delegated to each department thus requiring procedures to establish for the purpose of assignment of the duties and responsibilities for numerous functions. These sorts of decisions make up the organizational structures. Depending upon the factors such as the work done by the organization, the total number of the employees, its revenues as well as the geographic division of the facilities, the best organization structure for any organization can be determined. It is significant to comprehend the organizational structure at Ford Motor Company. This has been presented graphically. Fig: Organization Structure of Ford Motor Company Source: (Cogmap, “Ford Motor Company”). Management And Leadership At Ford Motors It is quite evident from the diagram above that Alan Mulally is the CEO and the President of the Ford Motor Company and also belongs to the Ford’s Board of Directors. Before joining Ford Motor Company, Alan Mulally had served The Boeing Company as the Executive Vice President. He had served Boeing Commercial Airplanes as CEO and President of the company. Alan Mulally has been recognized for his devotion and industry leadership and has received numerous awards as well (Ford Motor Company, “Alan Mulally”) At this instance, it is significant to revise the leadership strategies that have been followed during the era of Alan Mulally at Ford Motor Company. It was Alan Mulally who had hastened the company’s restructuring plan. Under his regime, the huge losses along with the falling market share had been reversed and thus he ensured that the company will have strong balance sheet. During the bankruptcy of General Motors (GM) and Chrysler, the restructuring of the Ford Motors was held along with a strong balance sheet. It was under his leadership, Ford Motors sold off Aston Martin, Jaguar, Volvo and Land Rover. The stake that company held in Mazda was withdrawn as well. The venerated Tauras brand was revived as well and the expansion in the Lincoln brand took place. It was noted that the company was successful at delivering its customers with high quality products that was fuel efficient, safe and were designed smarty. It further focused upon the optimum utilization of the resources that matched to the demand of the customers thus leading to full year profit in the year 2009 and also led to profits in the first quarter of the year 2010. It was further noticed that the sales of the company surmounted for all its products and thus the sales were capable of earning triple to the overall growth of the industry. Under the leadership of the Alan Mulally, the company tried to refocus upon its organizational culture and highlighted the greater sense of integrated spirit through its “One Ford” strategy. It has been identified by the Yale School of Management that although the company has good leadership skills at several levels, Alan Mulally has been capable of standing as a promising and courageous leader by building up of the new businesses and preventing the great one from being withered because of the hard times. By providing the inspirational model, Alan Mulally has been capable of reigniting the spirit of the Ford culture, has enhanced the strength of the products and has also been capable of providing the model so that once died US enterprise can be back to its original position (Yale School of Management, “News”). The main focus of the Ford Motor Company’s New Business Leader program has been to increase the pace of growth of the leaders of the future. The program is accessed to approximately 2000 leaders all around the world. Both the internal as well as the external resources of the Ford Motors has prepared a creative approach for leadership called Quantum Idea Project. It is through this project the company may experience change. It is during the first phase of the program, the entire participants will be capable of locating a quantum idea that can assist Ford Motors to change the company to one of the chief consumer company in the world in the automotive sector. By forming cross-functional teams, the new leaders are capable of sharing their ideas and thus turning them into action plan in the second phase. It has been found that in order to support this procedure, sessions on numerous topics such as managing change, leadership fundamentals are held by the executives of the Ford Motors. A specific action plan is prepared by the participants and thus they work upon how it can be effectively communicated during the sessions so that it can be advocated effectively. It takes approximately three months time where the participant devotes at least forty hours so that the plan is implemented successfully. This takes place at the final phase of the project. It is quite obvious that implementation of such plan may bring certain obstacles to the participants. However, the participant tries to overcome the barriers, identify the ways through which the goals of the organization can be achieved thus enhancing the resistance power and finally taking corrective actions. It has been found that the participants receive continuous feedback from their seniors as well as their peers on the basis of the performance in designing the overall project and upon the implementation plan. With such kind of plan the participants are capable of enhancing their knowledge regarding the Ford Motor Company and thus are capable of instilling 2000 new ideas to Ford Motor Company every year which the company can use for the preparation of its new strategy (Wharton University of Pennsylvania, “Ford Motor Company: New Business Leader Program”). Culture of Ford Motors It has been noticed that Alan Mulally has changed the company into a very simple and agile organization that is capable of reacting to the changes better and instantly. It has been because of the new products and the stumbling of the competitors such as GM and Toyota, Ford Motors was capable of augmenting its market share. With the bestselling vehicles the company was capable of earning high profits in the year 2010. Alan Mulally had withdrawn the non-performing brands and thus introduced a system that supports the managers to respond to the changes in the market instantly along with other issues and thus have fostered a culture where the managers are capable of communicating their views and ideas more openly to one another (Todays Zaman, “Ford Motor Co. Says Culture Change Has Led To Success”). Ford Motors believes in the fact that if one wants to be successful in the competitive global economy then the changes in the strategy needs to be encouraged. This implies that there must be changes in the vision and identity which is the significant part of the corporate culture (Kalamazoo College, “Driving Change: Redefining the Culture of Ford Motor Company”). Training, Development And Recruitment At Ford Motor Company It has been noticed that tremendous challenge is faced by the US car dealership. The number of qualified technicians is quite low for meeting the demand. However, it has been noticed that the Ford Motor Company is quite ahead of the competition by means of its training, retention and recruitment program. Furthermore, it has been noticed that Ford Motor Company engages itself in the training along with recruitment of the service technicians around the country for Lincoln Mercury and Ford dealership. In more than 100 colleges as well as vocational schools nationwide the company tried to manage curricula for numerous programs that have been prepared for master techs, entry level techs and specialized techs for maintenance as well as light repair at more than 100 colleges and vocational schools throughout the nation. It has been found that Ford Motor Company has been trying harder since last 10 years to recruit, reward and retain techs (Watier, “The Ford Motor Company”). The company has launched numerous learning experiences for its employees. By means of Ford Learning Network, the company provides job training. It has also started the deployment of virtual assistant that can be utilized by its repair technicians. It has been noted that Ford Design Institute was launched for its engineers as well as the technical employees. It also developed Pathlore System in order to provide training to its customer service call center employees. Most of the programs have helped the company to expand their usage in various departments and a number of them have been utilized for the purpose of generating revenues by means of selling them to other industries. In light of the financial stability in the economy the company has decided to assist its employees to sharpen their knowledge and skills so that the competitiveness can be maintained by them. In light of this fact the company has decided to expand its tool that has been developed internally named as My Roadmap so that its 350000 employees can access the software and thus acquire the required knowledge and skills which is necessary for the company. When the company decides to cut the rate of employees from the organization the tools such as My Roadmap can be quite significant to reassign the task for the remaining employees. Their current competency level can be determined with the assistance of the tool and thus it guides them with adequate learning experiences so that their competency could be enhanced and thus managers could review as well as analyze the training data (Watier, “The Ford Motor Company”). In order to meet the needs and demands of the customers, the company totally relies upon the innovation where the employees through their skills and knowledge are capable of providing the company with improved processes, products and services. The success of the Ford Motor Company totally relies upon how smarter the employees are and thus helping them to acquire new skills and obtain confidence so that they are capable of taking new and better decisions (Accenture, “Ford Motor Company”). It has been noted that the company altered its yearly evaluation system that leads to any kind of age discrimination and thus would not announce the number of employees receiving poor job ratings since that would lead to dismissal of the employees. The company tried to remove the quota system from the job rating system in order to shape up the culture of the company and thus pay more attention towards the bottom-line results. It was further noted that under the rating system of Ford, approximately 18000 mid-level managers were ranked and were provided the grade of A, B, or C on an yearly basis based solely upon their performance. If the employees obtained the C level for approximately a year then in such cases, they would gain no bonus. If it continued for two years then in such circumstances the employees were dismissed or it led to demotion. The persons receiving ‘A’ rank were classified as top achievers, those getting B rank would be classified as achievers and the ones who received grade C required further improvement in their performances (Karash, “Ford's Performance Appraisal System LO27128”). Conclusion and Recommendations The organization structure at times becomes dull if there are no specified roles and responsibilities and the work has not been divided among the several departments. This leads to loss of morale among the employees and thus the productivity of the organization diminishes gradually. Therefore, from the report it has been analyzed that it is significant for the organization to have proper organizational structure and systems in place so that the needs and demands of the customers can be fulfilled by means of innovation. It has been found that Ford Motor Company has been able to achieve leading position in the market because of proper organizational structure and the leadership skills being followed by­­­ the organization. The company has embraced changes and thus fostered the culture where the employees are prepared for any sort of changes taking place in the business environment. Ford Motor Company has been the pioneer in the auto making industry whose footsteps if followed by other companies can lead them towards great success in the near future. It can be recommended that the company needs to keep aware of the new technologies and must have a thorough knowledge of the changing tastes and preferences of the customers so that it can focus its attention upon the innovation and thus maintain its position in the market. Works Cited Accenture. “Ford Motor Company”. September 09, 2011. Automotive Case Study, 2001. Bassue, Hamill. & Et. Al. “Ford”. September 09, 2011. Company Overview, No Date. Bryant University. “History of Ford Motor Company”. September 09, 2011. Lushing, 2004. Cogmap. “Ford Motor Company”. September 09, 2011. Chart, 2011. CNN Money. “Global 500”. September 09, 2011. Ford Motor, 2011. Ford Motor Company. “Annual Report 2010”. September 09, 2011. About the Company, 2010. Ford Motor Company. “Allan Mulally”. September 09, 2011. Media, 2011. Kalamazoo College. “Driving Change: Redefining the Culture of Ford Motor Company”. September 09, 2011. Abstract, No Date. Karash, Rick. “Ford's Performance Appraisal System LO27128”. September 09, 2011. Human Patterns, 2001. PWC. “Organizational Structure And Management System”. September 09, 2011. Industry Sectors, 2011. Slideshare. “Ford Marketing Plan 2013”. September 09, 2011. 2013 Ford Edge Hybrid, 2010. Todays Zaman. “Ford Motor Co. Says Culture Change Has Led To Success”. September 09, 2011. Business, 2011. Wharton University of Pennsylvania. “Ford Motor Company: New Business Leader Program”. September 09, 2011. Home, 2004. Watier. “The Ford Motor Company”. September 09, 2011. Papers, No Date. Yale School of Management. “News”. September 09, 2011. Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute to Honor Ford Motor Company CEO Alan Mulally with Leadership Award, 2011. Read More