BMW’s Dream Factory and Culture Business 520 Organizational Behavior Describe the culture of BMW. A company’s culture is very important. It incorporates a firms shared values, beliefs and traditions (Hellriegel & Slocum, 2010). Most importantly it is the rules and role model for behavior. BMW’s entrepreneurial culture has no doubt assisted them in being the successful company that they are today. An entrepreneurial culture is one that values creativity, the tolerance of creative people and allow freedom to grow and fail (Murrary, Poole, & Jones, 2006). It is clear that BMW’s culture was built around these factors.
According to studies, new workers have no problem adjusting to this type of culture. This is because BMW’s entrepreneurial culture is more like a team or a family. They teach the employee s the history of the company and the mission from the first day. New employees are told about problems time for the company in 1959; using this as a way to educate new hires on how not to let history repeat itself. This culture also allows employees to work side by side with individual from all levels within the organization, eliminating the regular hierarchy that you usually see in organizations (BMW’s dream factory and culture, 2010).
Team brainstorming is done on a regular basis and the company values and respects everyone’s input. This is sometimes referred to as a freewheeling idea factory. It is no wonder that the work environment at BMW is highly sought after; the company receives over 200,000 applications per year. Discuss the model of leadership illustrated at BMW and the related impact on the organizational culture. The leadership style in BMW motivates the employees and reinforces the culture of the company. Leadership can be described as the guidance of a group of people towards a particular idea (Murrary, Poole, & Jones, 2006). Leadership is the process of developing new ideas and a vision, living by the values that support those ideas and that vision” (Hellriegel & Slocum, 2010, p. 262). BMW’s leaders are both challenging and emphatic, and embraced a new vision and set of ideas. This is all part of the transformational leadership model. Managers at BMW do not think that they have all the right answers but instead think that it is important for them to ask the right questions (BMW’s dream factory and culture, 2010). This insured that they had the best ideas selected and that the best cars were made in the company.
Together BMW’s management and employees create new alternatives that are better than their individual efforts. This is called synergy, and BMW’s transformational model of leadership fosters this (Hellriegel & Slocum, 2010, p. 305). Analyze why employees derive high job satisfaction at BMW, using the concepts illustrated in the job characteristics model. The job characteristics model involves increasing the amount of skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback in a job (Hellriegel & Slocum, 2010, p. 139).
According to the text, there are three critical psychological states: (1) experienced meaningfulness of the tasks performed, (2) experience personal responsibility for tasks outcomes, and (3) knowledge of the tasks performed. We can gather that managers at BMW seldom have formalized training to learn their jobs. This forces them to work closely with other managers and their teams to figure out ways to improve the business. This is another example of how employees are tightly knit and feel as if their opinions matter. The line between management and subordinates is very thin.
They work so closely together that the hierarchy is not as pronounced as in most companies. The heavy involvement of all employees increases productivity and job satisfaction. Discuss the attributes of organizational creativity that are fostered at BMW. Organizational creativity is a way of life at BMW. This is evident even in the design of their Leipzig factory. The facility was designed to take into account how people communicate with others openly so the ideas may flow smoothly and openly. BMW also uses creativity to gain an edge over their competitors like Toyota.
This is possible because the company specializes in manufacturing a car that suits the wants of the customer which other car manufacturers cannot afford to execute. The customers have so many choices that the same car is only built once every nine months (BMW’s dream factory and culture, 2010). When BMW is ready to design a new car model, entire teams of specialist are involved. Also, young blood such as designers from the US as well as Germany compete against each other so that the brightest ideas would come forth. Designers for BMW are not tied to rigid requirements but are free to explore innovative designs. Discuss how the culture and work environment impacts the performance results of BMW. The culture and work environment at BMW greatly influences the performance and production of its workers. Associates are indeed happy with their employment there. Some are so happy with their employment they are willing to work extra hours on heavy productions days and not get paid overtime. Employee can earn days off of work instead.
Some workers are even willing to move from home for extended periods of time and work long hours. All of these things create job stability for the employees and help reduce layoffs. The company’s profit sharing also drives employees to go the extra mile. The organization entrepreneurial culture makes everyone feel responsible for success of the company (Sense of Purpose, n. d). There are very few companies who have excelled in mastering complexity. BMW is definitely the leader when to come to innovation. This successful company has proven to be a great place to work and grow.
References
- BMW’s dream factory and culture(2010).
- Organizational Behavior. Cengage Learning: US. p 522. Hellriegel, D. , & Slocum, J. W. (2010).
- Organizational Behavior. Cengage Learning. Murrary, P. , Poole, D. , & Jones, G. (2006).
- Contemporary issues in management and organizational behavior. Thomson Learning Nelson. Sense of Purpose, Pursuing common goals. BMW (n. d. ) Retrieved April 19, 2010, from http://www. bmw. co. za/products/automobiles/bmw_insights/sense. asp
