...Case study notes This case study explores a very unique organisation: W.L. Gore Associates. It explores the role of organisational management and culture within a very innovative firm, which is responsible for some very well-known products such as the famous Gore-Tex fabric, and yet few people know much about this remarkable organisation. It is operated in a way similar to that of a cooperative such as The John Lewis Partnership in the UK, where the employees are also owners. In addition, the organisation seeks to minimise management with the emphasis on action and creativity. Case study questions 1. Explain what happened to the Gore-Tex brand after the patent expired. What activity can firms use to try to maintain any advantage developed during the patent protection phase? Competitor products emerged (generic versions if you like). To compete, it was necessary to develop the brand. This is something that has not happened. What else could it do? 2. List some of the wide range of products that the Gore-Tex fabric has been applied? All sorts of clothing, shoes, coats, etc. Also, windsurf sales and kite surf sales. What else could it be applied to? 3. It seems that Gore Associates is heavily orientated towards technology. What are some of the dangers of being too heavily focused on technology? Myopic views such as not listening to customer views, too focused on technology. Missing opportunities that may exist, which involve minor changes. Also, marketing mix considerations need to...
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...Week5 : For all groups: W L Gore Associates Case study: Gore-Tex® and W.L. Gore & Associates: An innovative company and a contemporary culture[1] This case study explores the role of organisational management and culture within a very innovative firm, which is responsible for some very well known products such as the famous Gore-Tex fabric, and yet few people know very much about this remarkable organisation. It is operated in a similar way to that of a cooperative such as the John Lewis Partnership in the United Kingdom, where the employees are also owners. In addition the organisation seeks to minimise management with the emphasis on action and creativity. Today this enigmatic firm employs approximately 7,000 people in more than 45 plants and sales locations world-wide. Manufacturing operations are clustered in the United States, Germany, Scotland, Japan and China. Proprietary technologies with the versatile polymer polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) have resulted in numerous products for electronic signal transmission; fabrics laminates; medical implants; as well as membrane, filtration, sealant and fibres technologies for a range of different industries. Today the organisation divides its products into four main groupings: medical products; fabric products; electronic products; and industrial products. Gore has approximately 650 US patents and thousands world-wide. Further details of these can be found by visiting the US Patent & Trademark office website at www.uspto.gov. ...
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...Confirming Pages g Frank Shipper Greg L. Stewart Salisbury University CASE 26 W. L. Gore & Associates: Developing Global Teams to Meet 21st-Century Challenges1 University of Iowa Charles C. Manz University of Massachusetts–Amherst n 2010, W. L. Gore & Associates celebrated its 52nd year in business. Founded in 1958 by Bill and Vieve Gore in the basement of their home, Gore had grown into a global enterprise famous for its high performance fabrics, medical products, and next-generation electronic products, as well as its use of self-empowered teams of employees (called associates at Gore). In its earlier years, the company had endeavored to restrict the size of its different corporate facilities to 200 associates or fewer, a practice that helped keep the number of teams at a given facility to a manageable number and facilitated cross-team coordination. More recently, however, to better cope with the challenges of a global marketplace, increasing numbers of teams were composed of associates in different facilities, sometimes facilities that were spread across three continents; the coordination of team members working in different facilities was enabled by online communication. In 2010, Gore’s products were sold on six continents and used on all seven continents, as well as under the ocean and in space. The company global operations required teams of associates to tightly coordinate their activities in developing, producing, and marketing...
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...Case study notes This case has been updated to include the Apple iPad. Principally this is case explores the issue of licensing and how successful firms can become unsuccessful. It is not a case about Apple and why it has become successful. This case study explores the rise of the Apple Corporation. The Apple iPod is one of the most successful new product launches in recent years, transforming the way the public listens to music, with huge ramifications for major record labels. More than 50 million MP3 players are expected to be sold in 2005; over a third more than last year. Mobile phones have long been regarded as the most credible challengers to MP3 players and iPods. The launch of digital download services via mobile phones illustrates the dramatic speed of convergence between the telecom and media industries, which many observers expect to usher in a new era of growth for mobile phones. Users are willing to pay more for additional services and many analysts predict that mobile phone handsets will eventually emerge as the dominant technology of the age, combining personal organisers, digital music players and games consoles in a single device. Indeed, Microsoft founder Bill Gates has predicted that mobile phones will supersede the iPod as the favoured way of listening to digital music. The launch of the Apple ipad in 2010 makes this case even more topical. This should form the basis of supplementary questions at the end of the case: How will the iPhone succeed? What about...
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...The Future of Management by Gary Hamel Introduction Management innovation is a must in today’s dynamic business world. Companies must do something proactive to set themselves apart. Gary Hamel, an American management expert argues that organizations need bold management innovation now more than ever. For organizations like GE, Procter & Gamble, and Visa, management innovation is the secret to success. But what is management innovation, and how does it happen? The goal of “The Future of Management” is to first help the reader imagine, and then invent, the future of management. To aid managers, leaders, and readers on this mission, Hamel offers case studies including Google, W.L. Gore (makers of Gore-Tex), and Whole Foods to show how some companies have succeeded with a complete shift in the overall management approach. The main theme drawn from Hamel’s book, “The Future of Management,” comes from the idea of thinkers can be innovators. Key Points There are examples where innovations with management really enable a company to move forward and gain competitive advantage. These advantages include measureable examples from past centuries where classic processes such as strategic planning, capital budgets, project management, and reviews have been pushed aside for new areas such as: managing science, allocating capital, managing intangible assets, and capturing the wisdom of every employee. These are not without challenges though, preparing an organization to be ready to adapt...
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...Ingredient Branding Philip Kotler· Waldemar Pfoertsch Ingredient Branding Making the Invisible Visible Professor Philip Kotler Kellogg Graduate School of Management Northwestern University Evanston, IL 60208, USA p-kotler@kellogg.northwestern.edu Professor Waldemar Pfoertsch China Europe International Business School 699 Hongfeng Rd. Shanghai 201206, China wap@ceibs.edu e-ISBN 978-3-642-04214-0 ISBN 978-3-642-04213-3 DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-04214-0 Springer Heidelberg Dordrecht London New York Library of Congress Control Number: 2010926489 © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2010 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilm or in any other way, and storage in data banks. Duplication of this publication or parts thereof is permitted only under the provisions of the German Copyright Law of September 9, 1965, in its current version, and permission for use must always be obtained from Springer. Violations are liable to prosecution under the German Copyright Law. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. Cover design: WMXDesign GmbH, Germany Printed...
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...empLOyee and LaBOr reLatiOnS STUDENT WORKBOOK Case Study Series on Work-Life Balance in Large Organizations By Gill Maxwell Project team Author: SHRM Project contributors: External contributor: Editor: Design: Gill Maxwell Bill Schaefer, SPHR Nancy A. Woolever, SPHR Sharon H. Leonard Courtney J. Cornelius, copy editor Scott Harris, senior graphic designer © 2008 Society for Human Resource Management. Gill Maxwell Note to Hr faculty and instructors: SHRM cases and modules are intended for use in HR classrooms at universities. Teaching notes are included with each. While our current intent is to make the materials available without charge, we reserve the right to impose charges should we deem it necessary to support the program. However, currently, these resources are available free of charge to all. Please duplicate only the number of copies needed, one for each student in the class. For more information, please contact: SHRM Academic Initiatives 1800 Duke Street, Alexandria, VA 22314, USA Phone: (800) 283-7476 Fax: (703) 535-6432 Web: www.shrm.org/hreducation 08-0753 Case Study Series on Work-Life Balance in Large Organizations By Gill maxwell Student Workbook employee and Labor relations Overview Introduction..........................................................................................................2 Format ..................................................................................................................3 Learning Objectives...
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...several sections. Table 15-1 Elements of Organizational Structure 15.2 What are the major elements of an organizational structure? WORK SPECIALIZATION. Work specialization is the way in which tasks in an organization are divided into separate jobs. In some organizations, this categorization is referred to as a company’s division of labor. How many tasks does any one employee perform? To some degree, work specialization is a never-ending trade-off among productivity, flexibility, and worker motivation. Take an assembly line worker at Ford as an example. Henry Ford was perhaps the earliest (and clearly most well-known) believer in high degrees of work specialization. He divided tasks among his manufacturing employees to such a degree that each employee might only perform one single task, over and over again, all day long. Having only one task to perform allowed those employees to be extremely productive at doing that one thing. It also meant that training new workers was much easier when replacements were needed. However, there are trade-offs when organizations make jobs highly specialized. Highly specialized jobs can cause organizations to lose the ability associated with employees who can be flexible in what they do. By spending all their time performing specialized tasks well, employees fail to update or practice other skills. Accounting majors, for example, might specialize in taxes or auditing. Some larger companies might hire these graduates for their ability to do...
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...Over the past forty years a new growing trend has been detected. This coincides with the desire of businessman to dislocate their production and companies outside the domestic market. Such phenomenon, known as “delocalization of production”, can be defined as the social/ managerial/ organizational process through which firms not only deploy their sales on foreign markets, but they also draw supplies like raw materials, technology, facilities, equipment, financial resources and manpower. The aim of this paper is to provide an analysis on winning internationalization strategies, that will help a company to successfully penetrate a new market. Further on we will see a little case study on the shoes and accessories company Geox, performing an overview of its presence on international markets, providing a little historical background of the company and evaluating its competitiveness. Competition intensification on the global scale has lead an increasing number of companies, in the last decade, to seek new job opportunities on international markets. Internalization, today, is not only a way to increase the firm’s value, extends its competitive advantage and access to new opportunities. In our current economic environment it has become an useful and practically necessary way that may guarantee a firm’s outliving. Going international for a company means going through a tough and long process, that will change its assets completely and with no coming back. It involves quite...
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...Organisation Culture Research Commonwealth Bank Australia Executive Summary Organisation culture is a unique combination of the set of values that the members of an organisation believe in. It is a very important determinant of the conditions prevailing in an organisation and the culture says a lot about the values, beliefs and structure of a company. The essence of the culture of an organisation is captured by seven primary characteristics. These are measured on a high to low scale and they are very commonly used to provide a synthesized picture of an organisation’s culture. Eventually, this serves as a basis for the feeling of the shared understanding that members have about the organisation at hand, the way in which the members are expected to behave and the way in which things are done (Lok & Crawford, 1999). Commonwealth Bank has a good employee friendly organisation culture and is more or less a blend of the seven characteristics of organisation cultures. However, it is always better to avoid the flaws in each type of culture and adapt to only the meritorious attributes of these cultures. For this purpose, it is significant to analyse one’s own corporate environment and then figure out which blend of cultures suits best to the organisation as whole. The Bank focuses greatly on the incentivising the performance of the employees, in making the organisation more people oriented, getting a perfect mix of both innovative and stable organisation, in improving the collaboration...
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...Every company needs a “signature experience” that sets it apart. By explicitly communicating what makes your firm unique, you can dramatically improve employee engagement and performance. What It Means to Work Here by Tamara J. Erickson and Lynda Gratton IT’S THE HR EQUIVALENT OF KEEPING UP | 104 Harvard Business Review March 2007 | hbr.org Jason Greenberg with the Joneses: In their quest to find and retain top talent, businesses often try to match competitors’ offers, ensuring that their compensation schemes, health care benefits, training programs, and other talent-management practices are in line with the rest of the industry’s. While this strategy may be useful for bringing job candidates to the door, it’s not necessarily the most effective way to usher the right people across the threshold – great employees who will be enthusiastic about their work and fiercely loyal to the organization and its mission. What It Means to Work Here Nor does marching in lockstep with industry standards prompt companies to consider what’s unique about their histories and values or potential employees’ attitudes about work. Certainly, reasonable pay and a breadth of health care options matter to prospective hires, as do the tasks they’ll have to perform. But people also choose jobs–and, more important, become engaged with their work – on the basis of how well their preferences and aspirations mesh with those of the organization. Imagine yours is one of three job...
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...Management Principles for Continuous Innovation 2 This section is about global changes—why they are bigger, come more often, and are becoming more difficult to predict. It’s also about what companies have done, and are doing, in order to take advantage of the opportunities and avoid the threats embedded in these ever accelerating changes. Certain changes are products of shifting technologies. One established technology is replaced by something new. We’ve seen this before. Steam engines were replaced by internal combustion engines and electricity, electricity grew into electronics, landlines are being replaced by mobile telephones, and newspapers and paper books are increasingly being supplied as digital files for tablets and e-book readers. These changes also affect how people live their lives. Even when they are staying home with their sick child, they are now expected to be accessible by phone and to answer your e-mail. Some experience this as a source of stress, while others find greater freedom. Most of us experience both these feelings as a result of the changes that follow in the wake of innovations. When something new appears, whether a technological solution or a change in social norms, things generally start manageably. As the innovation gains adherents, development accelerates, and finally, when the change has become widespread, the rate of change tapers off. Subsequently, a new innovation appears, and the process begins again. We often depict this process as an S-curve...
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...Journal of Marketing and Management, 3 (1), 60-77, May 2012 60 Perceived Impact of Ingredient Branding on Host Brand Equity Prof. Kavita Tiwari, Dr. Rajendra Singh AICAR B-School, Navi Mumbai, India kavitat786@yahoo.com, prajsingh71@rediffmail.com Abstract The aim of the study is to discuss and estimate the perceived impact of ingredient branding on host brand in terms of brand equity. For the purpose of our study, we will measure the impact in terms of association, neutral and disassociation of ingredient brand with host brand. In this study many theories and models is studied to identify the potential factors of ingredient branding. The research methodology adopted for the analysis in our study is to some extent a replica of previous studies conducted within ingredient branding. We conducted a survey based on questionnaire method. For which a close ended structured questionnaire on 5- point Likert scale basis is being designed .The survey was conducted among 212 respondents consisting of customers in Indore city. While doing this research we have gained insights on how several aspects of our study could have been conducted differently. We recommend that a similar study should be conducted again, this time with well known host brands and ingredient brands that focus on utilitarian needs from a consumer perspective. A more representing respondent group would also increase the arguments for generalization among a wider population. By using SPSS we can conclude...
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...1 Ricardo Semler The Brazilian CEO and best-selling author transformed his pump plant into a model of participative management, and launched his company on 14 straight years of double-digit growth. by Lawrence M. Fisher strategy + business issue 41 Won’t Take features the creative mind Photographs by Rogério Reis / Blackstar Control Semco Group Chief Executive Ricardo Semler at his impromptu office — a coffee shop near his company’s headquarters 2 features the creative mind Lawrence M. Fisher (fisher_larry@strategybusiness.com), a contributing editor to strategy+business, covered technology for the New York Times for 15 years and has written for dozens of other business publications. Mr. Fisher is based in San Francisco. 3 Like many chief executives, Ricardo Semler used to wonder what would happen to his company if he were hit by a truck. One night in February 2005, he found out — while driving 85 miles per hour on a highway in Brazil. Miraculously, he was still alive within the 20-inch pancake of crushed steel and shattered glass that remained of his car. Also miraculously, his company, Semco Group, of São Paulo, Brazil, carried on seamlessly during the months he spent lying in intensive care and recuperating from the multiple surgeries he needed to repair his broken neck and battered face. Numbers were met, deals were closed, and business continued pretty much as usual. Mr. Semler, 46, is the leading proponent and most tireless evangelist...
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...1 Ricardo Semler The Brazilian CEO and best-selling author transformed his pump plant into a model of participative management, and launched his company on 14 straight years of double-digit growth. by Lawrence M. Fisher strategy + business issue 41 Won’t Take features the creative mind Photographs by Rogério Reis / Blackstar Control Semco Group Chief Executive Ricardo Semler at his impromptu office — a coffee shop near his company’s headquarters 2 features the creative mind Lawrence M. Fisher (fisher_larry@strategybusiness.com), a contributing editor to strategy+business, covered technology for the New York Times for 15 years and has written for dozens of other business publications. Mr. Fisher is based in San Francisco. 3 Like many chief executives, Ricardo Semler used to wonder what would happen to his company if he were hit by a truck. One night in February 2005, he found out — while driving 85 miles per hour on a highway in Brazil. Miraculously, he was still alive within the 20-inch pancake of crushed steel and shattered glass that remained of his car. Also miraculously, his company, Semco Group, of São Paulo, Brazil, carried on seamlessly during the months he spent lying in intensive care and recuperating from the multiple surgeries he needed to repair his broken neck and battered face. Numbers were met, deals were closed, and business continued pretty much as usual. Mr. Semler, 46, is the leading proponent and most tireless evangelist...
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