Systems Engineering and Management Company: SEMCO - Assignment Example

The paper “SEMCO - Systems Engineering & Management Company" is a wonderful example of an assignment on management. Systems Engineering & Management Company (SEMCO) was established in 1963 and was responsible for the production of sheet metal fabrications with only five employees. It has however advanced through the years to become a multinational company. It is currently a leading company offering engineering services and wireless communications products and services to the U.S and other related governments for military, intelligence and law enforcement applications.

SEMCO has partnered with the Flakt Woods Group which is based in Columbia, Missouri. Further, it has an operational extensive department based in Columbia that has a complaint research and development facility concerned with the advancement of the facilities and services that suits the needs in the 21st century and beyond. Some of the products and services that are currently offered include RF and Telemetry products, Tactical military products, video surveillance systems, RF modules and control systems, Engineering and Logistics services.

What makes SEMCO successful?The success of the SEMCO Company can be attributed to the leadership styles that were applied by Semler once he became the CEO of the company. The CEO had accorded all the employees the freedom to work without supervision and feel part of the company they were working for. This follows the belief that people are naturally capable of self-direction and self-control. Whenever employees are made to feel part of the management of the company, they tend to channel all their efforts to improve the company’s performance (Hamel, 2007).

Generally, the CEO’s management approach was the sole reason for the success of the company.What is unique about the way the company is led?The company’s leadership is quite different from the normal articulation. There are no top managers and Semler accords all the employees total responsibility of the actions that they are engaged in. They are made to set their working hours as well as set their pay. This is unique as compared to other companies where the employees are strictly supervised by the middle and top management.

Employees further are made to have full responsibility of the company’s performance rather than the responsibility being entitled to the management team and the CEO. What type of management style does CEO Ricardo Semler use? Is this any different than the styles of the founders?Ricardo Semler applies participative management and industrial (corporate) democracy to manage his team. This is different from the traditional hierarchical management style that was earlier used by his father and that involved many managers within the company (Hamel, 2007).

All the employees have the right to make decisions in regard to the company’s performance including the financial matters. Further, the earlier management style did not provide room for the lower-level employees to air out their managerial ideas. All teams within the organization were supervised by a middle-level manager. This generated tension within the employees as they felt excluded in the management role of the company. What organizational beliefs and values does the Semler hold important?

According to Hamel (2007), Semler believes that the freedom of the employees is what motivates the employees to perform effectively. All employees are their own bosses and should not be dragged to perform their duties. Employees should have a self-drive to perform their best in uplifting the company’s performance and understand that the company’s performance reflects their effort. Can this type of culture be sustained in the long run at Semco?This type of culture has been internalized in the operations of the employees and they feel to be part of it.

The culture, therefore, will be maintained since most of the employees will be unwilling to adopt a new way of conducting business. Even with a change of the CEO, the employees will propose for the adoption of the management style that they are used to since they find it free and productive to the company. In case the culture is not maintained some of the employees may prefer to quit following the leadership mechanism that they had been used to. Can this type of culture be implemented in the company you work(ed) for?

The culture exhibited within the SEMCO Company will be hard to be applied to other companies. Most managers in these companies have a feeling of power, they are conservative and feel undermined whenever the lower level employees air out positive ideas regarding the performance of the company. They formulate their ideas and expect them to be adopted without challenge from the other employees of the company who are involved in the implementation of the same ideas (Supervisory leadership, 2005).

Further, the CEO of the company would not be comfortable giving the employees the freedom to do according to their wish as it is in the case of the Semco organization. They want their power to be felt and respected by the fellow employees and this according to them can only be achieved if they act strict whenever dealing with the employees. ConclusionSEMCO Company was established to provide metal fabrication products and is based in São Paulo in Brazil. The founder of the company added over the company to his son Ricardo Semler during the time of financial stress.

The new CEO changed the organizational structure by first firing all the managers who happened to be his father’s friends. He managed to revive the company and is recently one of the successful companies. He adopted the participative management style which enabled all the employees to have full responsibility for their work. This brought a lot of success to the company.