Organizational theory and design

MOBILITY FOR ALL

Tree are long lasting and always growing, metaphor

Improve the life of all with mobility accessibility for everyone, with no negative effects for the environment. Pag.60

Organizational theory and design2^term 2023

Toyota values

Respect of people and continuous improvement: go and see for yourself the facts to better understand the situation and find the solution for the, being close to the processes: ambition to improve and find new ways to do better.

PDCA5 core competencies:

What did Toyota do?

2011-12

Many problems

Too many units

Starting from the vision and strategy, lot of people that decided

Problem also that

Divisions that ad the same stakeholders

Recap: employees attributed to different functions that deals with same 3 "heads" suppliers or clients, in Italy: many points of decision making, the employees at the second level report directly to up. (Little structures in the company separated and not coordinated.

Reduce the workforce: optimise the business. Too much

managers and division with aim to support the business.

Provide the employee with a new vision.

Group of activities that all are customer oriented

Functional structure

Key drivers

Benefit: put together functions with a e stakeholders

Eliminate level of hierarchy, more effective decision making

Last challenge

Keeping functional but with cross-functional teams.

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Main problem in Toyota: span of control of top manager is too much, too many bosses empty, poor coordination, there were many structures within the same company (compression with Appex case: it develop due to burocrazia ( and not for business reasons)

Haier example for inverted triangolo richiama come Toyota ha organizzato.

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Toyota guest lecture: recap and introduction of the next module

Toyota is an international, global big company, with focus on sales, manufacturing and research and development.

They have a strong attitude towards maximizing

Sales and being focused on creating new products and services through research and development. Toyota has also a strong attitude toward the closeness to the customers, in order to support and assist them in the best way.

There we can see that the first problem arises: the company wants to maximize sales and thinks that the best way to do so is to be as much closer to the customer as they can. Nevertheless, this is not a common feature of a pure functional structure, which is not meant to pursue a customer-oriented strategy. To reach this goal they have tried to locate their production plants and sales offices very geographically close to their market.

In Italy, the company is small, focused on technicalities and with one business.

It is a peculiar type of functional structure: pure functional structure + one division (Lexus).

The crisis of the current design happened especially because they went through the worldwide crisis of the automobile sector. This is a change in the environment.

There were a huge decrease in the market share and in the sales. When a company has to face such an issue, the following questions help to understand how to solve existing problems and how to adapt the company to the new environment:

1. Does the market want our products and services as they are?
• If not, the company has to think about differentiation or improvements.
2. Should we enrich the products range?
3. Should we improve the quality?
4. Is our mission and brand perceived in the right way?

Answering these questions, they elaborated a new brand identity and new products and aimed at the closeness to the market's needs. In addition to diversification, brand identity and customer focus, there is the challenge of digitalization and sustainability. They understood that in the changed environment the company should have been perceived as a mobility company, rather than just a vehicle one.

Mobility company: a company that can serve the clients to go wherever and however they want.

not just a company that sells components and cars. In addition, they wanted to do this in a sustainable way, promoting the use of second-hand vehicles and electric cars, for instance. (Pag.63 Organizational theory and design 2nd term 2023)

From the chart above, it is easy to understand that their organization was not effective. With that structure, they could not react to such dramatic changes in the way mobility is perceived. The more a company is horizontally differentiated, the more it is specialized and it is able to react in an efficient and fast way to market's demands and less environmental changes.

From the chart, we can also see that the span of control of the CEO, as well as the one of the first line managers, is pretty huge.

A weakness that can be spotted also in the Appex case is the proliferation of the units, without strategic reasons. In functional structures, when customers are not your focus anymore (loss of focus on the customers), workers in organizations are

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The change of Toyota structure affects also a change in the values. Their statement is:

Toyota will lead the way to the mobility of the future, improving the lives of all the world's inhabitants with extremely safe means of transport and the most responsible mobility solutions - Mobility for All

The key points are sustainability, altruism, pro-social behavior, and inclusion.

Example: they are also a partner of the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

They change values and structure often because it is in the Japanese view of Kaizen: continuously improving.

Their current values are:

• Act for others
• Work with integrity
• Drive curiosity
• Observe thoroughly
• Get better and better
• Continue the quest for

improvements

• Create room to grow
• Welcome competition
• Show respect to people
• Thank people

Starting from this point, we will see that these are not only statements, but often are translated into evaluation forms and expected behaviors of the employees.

In addition, company elaborate training and compensation practices that are consistent with certain values. Pag.66

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Part 2 Pag.67

Organizational theory and design2^term 2023–Lecture 1 Organizational culture members’

It is the set of shared values and norms that controls organizational’s interactions with each other and with people outside the organization.

The organizational culture can be a source of competitive advantage: they can give distinctiveness and recognizability to the brand. A certain value statement may change the way the company is perceived by the market.

The organizational culture can be used to increase organizational effectiveness: it is a guideline for

The workforce, you can persuade your employees to work in the right way and behave according to the values. They can be considered a sort of coordination mechanism and control tool.

Which is the result of the application of the organizational culture on the actual performances (why are important for the companies, strategically speaking)?

• The values set clear goals and expected behaviors: in a certain sense, the values define the priorities that a worker should have. When employees find themselves in critical decision-making situations, values command them towards a preferred way of behaving.
• The values create a sense of belongingness: sense of identification that is long lasting in time. It is generated because the company is recognized by something that is typically human, in this way the company in or mind become a big human being with whom we identify ourselves.
• The values provide checks and feedbacks: they remind the workers about the expected behaviors. They tell you if

You are behaving with the expected performance or not.

• Reputation, attractiveness and company employer branding.

Examples of Toyota

Toyota wanted to be perceived as a mobility company, not a car manufacturing one: values give distinctiveness to the brand and they can be a source of competitive advantage. If we take into consideration its value declaration, we can make examples about expected behaviors: if the value is act for others, the employees are expected to prioritize the help and support that can be given to other employees that are facing a crucial situation.

Example of Netflix

Reading the article, it comes out how the company wants to design the culture:

• The values that the company wants to pursue are innovation, technical competitiveness, flexibility. Values are a way to program employees to serve the company in the best way possible.

It is also true that the more a company grows, the more it is difficult to set and manage values: each person has his own beliefs, when hiring

You have to be sure that the value of the people that you are hiring are aligned with the value of the company. Moreover, values are informal ways of coordinating people, because they rely a lot on social control; it takes time to internalize the values.

Values can help when having a hybrid workplace: in such workplace the company develops values of belonging, flexibility and choice. In this way, the company persuades its workers that, for instance, the flexibility in terms of working hours and presence/remote is the best for them.

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Organizational culture