Foundation of Management Thought

Question: Case study on Foundation of Management Thought. Answer: Based on certain shared assumption, belief, values which governs how people behave in an organization is all about organizational culture (Robbins et al. 2013). Cultures are responsible many integrative managerial issues (Schneider et al. 2013). For instance, General Motors have experienced many ups and downs in the past. GMs bureaucratic culture was the main reason behind then bankruptcy of General Motor Corporation in 2009 which was the second largest industrial bankruptcy in history. Under the leadership of Ed Whitacre, the well-known retired CEO and chairman of ATT, General Motor Corporation had successfully settled out its government loans and celebrated the managerial efforts to change the bureaucratic culture of GM (Alvesson Sveningsson, 2015). The culture of the GM has been entirely transformed under the leadership of Ed Whitacre. When he was appointed as a CEO in the year of 2009, he has noticed a multilayered regulatory culture, which made employees and other top level executives restrictive and conservative in their decision making. This has been also followed that an entrenched corporate culture got delayed the final decision making process of GM. Under the previous working culture minor corporate decisions were ruminate by committee after committee. Whitacre was trying to change that culture under his participative leadership style. He makes the culture of the organization flexible and irresolute. Under his democratic leadership style, Whitacre values the input of team members and peers. He has also been able to boost employees morale because employee make contributions to the decision making process. This top executives of GM , thus felt that the management gives the priority to stand and take their own decision on b ehalf of the benefits often organization. Whitacres informal and flexible. According to Ferraris, (2015), when an organization welcomes certain changes to ensure more seamless operation, the participative organizational culture helps employees accept changes easily because they have the authority to take part in the final process. Additionally, Whitacre even suggested that the executive group should disband its regular Friday session when all committee meeting were arranged. He made change in GMs monotonous process of corporate dealing. Pushing authority and decision making down into the different parts of the organization was indeed a remarkable change which helped GM to achieve profitability in the initial two quarter of 2010. From the many market researchers reviews, this has been found that the productivity of employees was enhanced tremendously within performing relaxed working culture under the leadership of Ed Whitacre. Previously, Fritz Henderson had also been tried to chang e the organization culture by stressing on certain guidelines: risk taking, speed, accountability and product focus based on consumer preferences. However, it was failed because Fritz Henderson never thought of the process of authoritative change what Whitacre made within his tenure as CEO. In this positive work environment, top executives has received the authority to approve the decision which is believed to be profitable for GM and opened up for some innovative ideas for the manufacturing of new generation car under the non-bureaucratic culture of GM. Therefore, the entire work culture has been transformed by Ed Whitacre. References: Alvesson, M., Sveningsson, S. (2015). Changing organizational culture: Cultural change work in progress. Routledge. Ferraris, V. A. (2015). Lead from the front: Participative leadership. The Journal of thoracic and cardiovascular surgery, 150(6), 1413-1415. Robbins, S., Judge, T. A., Millett, B., Boyle, M. (2013). Organisational behaviour. Pearson Higher Education AU. Schneider, B., Ehrhart, M. G., Macey, W. H. (2013). Organizational climate and culture. Annual review of psychology, 64, 361-388.