The Culture of Best Buy - Essay Example

The Culture of Best Buy As in most business dealings, Best Buy has its own ways of meeting the demands of itsbusiness. These demands are how to conduct things faster, better, cheaper and more effectively than the competitors. Their corporate culture is an ever-changing work environment that aims to understand customers need and enhance the employee’s talents for persuasion and satisfaction of the customer. They struggle in providing the right product for use at the right time, at the right place and price to meet the customers demand all over the country with an increasingly strained labor force. Best Buy culture embraced long working hours and sacrifice in the workplace, the corporate employees find it to be hard to balance work life with family. Women decide to reduced revenue and standing for a part-time place in order to have moments with their family and flexibility in their work thus increased employee turnover. On the other hand, the cultures of the company stumbled when the employees had to work for long hours also made a lot of sacrifices. The resignation was due to lack of time to spend with their families and getting tired after long working hours. The culture did not keep a balance between family and work life until the launching of the ROWE program, launched in 2003 at Minneapolis. This helped change the culture of Best Buy and improved its performance. The ROWE program stands for the results of the work environment whereby employees can freely work whether in the place of work or home as long as one finishes the job. It is a program that is home to revolution in the work places by changing older organizational culture of having to work day and night to complete tasks assigned. Once Best Buy adopted this program, it faces changes in the company in terms of flexibility and efficiency provided by its employees. The program has brought drastic changes in the culture of Best Buy and has significantly improved the performance of both the staff and products. The program is easy to adjust as it handles most of the retail store works and training offered to the staff. It has brought to light very good ideas but the principles and rules are lenient. Some principles are questionable, like, “As long as the job gets done, the workforce do whatever they want at whatever time they want”. This principle is not suitable for the work force since it empowers them to do anything at their own will and too much time to waste. The ROWE program and the culture it created make it more adjacent and reduce an employee’s pressure trying to balance their work and family issues (Pointer 2008). By the use of the program, employees have a sense of ownership of their job and see the job as a window of opportunity. Organizational change is a movement within an organization tending to move from the present state towards a desired goal in the future in order to increase its effectiveness (George, 2008). Many organizations tend to resist change, as its natural to every organization, but with the modern market at present, globalization, new technologies, investments, foreign trade, and shifting marketplaces need the need for change, flexibility, and adaptation with the down side to this being the employees. Resistance to change in Best Buy can be grouped in three different levels; individual level, group level and organizational level. Organization resistance to change makes it to be quite difficult for changes to occur in the organization in response to environmental changing conditions (George 2008). Resistance brought by change in power and resolution to conflicts. The base to resistance is when change occurs and aims at benefiting one group but does not favor the others. The group that has favor will tend to resist change while others will push for the changes to occur. This will cause a slow down to change and may end up to change not occurring. In Best Buy there are different divisions and functions which may also lead to resistance in change. The differences in the division tend to see a problem source as a vision tunnel. In other words, according to their point of view, they see the problem as bias rather than for the good of the organization, these results to management inertia, since the firm has to spend a huge amount of money and waste a lot of time trying to make a balance among the divisions. Stress can have various impacts on the workforce of an organization, in an individual; stress is any interference that concerns a person’ mental, health and physical being. It shows symptoms that the body should be required to carry out beyond its ordinary series of capabilities. Stress is a familiar problem affecting most people at some point in lives (Luke 2007). Knowledge in identifying when one is under pressure and the different ways of dealing with stress can greatly improve both ones mental and substantial well being. Anyone affected by stress in ones bodies, it shows the way in which one responds to any kind of order. Its origin can be by both good and bad practices. Due to changes in the firm, this may either be physical or mental; the workforce may experience a compatible with their mental evolvement and their physical transformation with their environment socially and thus may suffer from problems of arising from insufficient alteration. This dilemma may also promote emotional problem and even make out of the ordinary actions. The ROWE program has greatly changed the organizational culture of Best Buy organization. The changes have impacted positively to the organization and society in general. It faces changes in the organization in terms of flexibility and productivity provided by its employees, it creates and makes it more contiguous and reduce the employee’s pressure trying to balance their work and family issues. By the use of the program, employees have a sense of ownership of their job and take the project as a window of opportunity. It facilitates an effective means by which they can make sales regionally and internationally without overworking its workers. References Begun, W., and Luke D., and Pointer D. (2008). Resistance to Change. San Francisco: Josser-Bass. Hertz, G. (2007). Sources of Stress. London: Oxford University Press. Simmons, D. (2007). Organizational Culture and Change. Canada: Lighes Publishers. Read More