Organizational Culture & Leadership: Whirlpool Corporation

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Organizational Context
Organizational Climate
Motivation
Motivation and Leadership
Change
Conclusion
Works Cited

Introduction

Whirlpool Corporation is a leading home appliances manufacturer operating on the international scale. For this company, organization behavior and leadership are important because they determine and support strategic envelopment of the corporation. At the heart of the discussion of management and leadership are the concepts of goal setting and results. Common to both managers and leaders is the focus on the results they produce, which are based on the goals they pursue.

As they labor to bring about a result, shared values, goals, and common purpose form the bedrock of achievement. Whirlpool managers create a climate in which pride makes significant contributions to shared goals. Whirlpool managers inspire and motivate and managers effectively manage organizations; resources, but the consequences are of little use unless they accomplish the purpose for which the organization exists. There is a need to view management with a new and fresh perspective.

Organizational Context

Whirlpool Corporation is a global company with annual sales of $18 billion. The company has 70 research centers around the world. Whirlpool corporation hasa centralized structure based on hierarchical relations and delegation of authority. The key people are Jeff M. Fettig, Chairman & CEO and M. A. Todman, President, Whirlpool. The taks of these leaders is to develop strategic objetives of the entire top management team. These individuals are in a position to see the organization as a complete entity. The top management team also experiences firsthand the relationship of the organization to the external environment (Lamoureux 3).

The CEO and the top management team focus attention on internal and external environments in order to establish critical goals that will produce vital long-term results (Daft 76). Strategic management is a results-oriented philosophy of management.

It is a philosophy of focusing the activities of an organization so as to achieve success. It is not a technique but rather a belief with a clear purpose, philosophy, mission, and goals. People will respond well to molding the future, as it is a natural human characteristic to strive for meaningful goals and objectives (Carrell et al 13). Strategic management is a philosophy about results, attitudes, and perspectives. It formalizes a stream of actions that result in clarity, consensus, and commitment to a basic purpose for the entire organization (Robbins 17).

Organizational Climate

Whirlpool Corporation formally declares its values, norms, and ideals for the overall corporate structure. These values, norms, and ideals become the moral compass upon which managers rely. They also underlie an organization’s strategy by bringing meaning to the employees’ work. For Whirlpool Corporation to be effective, both managers and individual employees must act in accordance with these values. High-performing organizations like Whirlpool Corporation do rely on high moral values that transcend both the organization and the individual. The shared values that underlie a high-performing organization’s strategy and bring meaning to the individual employee’s work are reflected in both the decision-making and the goal-setting processes.

Whirlpool Corporation determines that shared values provide the basic assumptions that determine how people in high performing organizations perceive problems, seek alternative solutions, and set ethical goals. Defining sound institutional values is the first step in the process of building an organization’s reputation for honesty and integrity. The search for organizational ethical values is a process, and does not involve a specific set of facts or list of rules. The process involves a continuing effort to better define what the organization, as a corporate entity, believes, or thinks it believes (Robbins 19).

Whirlpool Corporation values individual commitment of employees which arises from serving a higher calling. If the individual cannot find the common ground to commit to a higher organizational purpose, then personal self-interest will naturally prevail. However, research has shown that most employees want to find meaning in their work beyond the narrow realm of self-interest. Employees find their own personal identity by associating with and sharing in a cause larger than themselves, and organizations can provide the ideal conduit for that association. The essence of the search for shared values is the bonding of organizational values to the goal-setting process. Goals that consider organizational values in their development become an extension of organizational values (Daft 56).

The values that give Whirlpool Corporation credibility also give credibility to the individual. They are a source of self-fulfillment and personal integrity. While organizational values relate to employees, profit, customers, stakeholders, community, and the like, individual goals should relate to fairness, honesty, trust, respect, quality, and cooperation. These are precisely the values that are inherent in the organizational values statement. Alone, however, these values are far too general and open to interpretation.

It is easy to forget the particular and complicated nature of human moral experience. A manager must be sensitive enough to transform an appreciation of others’ values into goals that reinforce shared organizational and individual values. Sensitivity is reflected in a disciplined decision to set goals at a challenging, but not unattainable, level and then to search for goal-solving processes that reflect personal and organizational values. Conversely, high performance standards can be set in an atmosphere of trust. Shared values between the organization and individuals flourish where everyone knows they can depend on each other. They know what to expect and how they will be evaluated. When everyone knows the standards, evaluation is more likely to be perceived as fair rather than capricious (Daft 77).

Motivation

Whirlpool Corporation pays a special attention to goal-setting approaches the explanation of performance and their relation to motivation theory. Motivational theories (Maslow theory of needs and McClelland theory) start with remote and general (often subconscious) regulators and work forward to action. Often situationally specific and conscious factors are ignored. While needs and (subconscious) motives are crucial to a full understanding of human action, they are several steps removed from action itself (Schien 33).

Goal-setting theory starts with the situationally specific, conscious motivational factors closest to action: goals and intentions. Whirlpool Corporation underlines that it works backward to determine what causes goals and makes them effective. The specific, close-to-action goal-setting approaches have been more successful in explaining performance than the general, farfrom-action motivational approaches that stress general needs and motives based on subconscious values (Robbins 62-63).

At Whirlpool Corporation, if individuals find or anticipate that effort, persistence, and direction will not be sufficient, they may then attempt to discover better methods or strategies for performing a task. Task strategies may also be developed as a means of saving effort. One means by which individuals whose goals are measured in terms of quantity may attempt to attain them is to reduce the quality of their output. Thus, if quality is an important outcome, quality goals, in place of or in addition to quantity goals, should be set. Challenging goals lead to high performance only if the individual is committed to them (Robbins 64).

Ay Whirlpool Corporation, measuring goals and task performance is formidable. Given challenging goals, self-efficacy, ability, goal commitment, feedback, support, and suitable task strategies, coupled with focus, effort, and persistence, the result will be reflected in better performance. However, the more difficult the goal becomes, even with the moderators and mediators in place, the less likely it is to be attained and the less likely it is to produce satisfaction.

Failure is the more likely result for people with difficult goals. Less-than-effective performance may also lead to frustration and decreased satisfaction. The dilemma is that as goal difficulty increases, and performance increases along with it, satisfaction decreases. Maximizing one outcome (e.g., performance) minimizes the other (e.g., satisfaction). One solution is to make goals moderately difficult, that is, challenging but ultimately reachable. Whirlpool Corporation management states that the moderate goal or compromise solution would not maximize either performance or satisfaction but would optimize the combination of the two.

The disadvantage of this approach is that high performance standards are compromised. Goal setting undermines satisfaction when it leads to or is associated with the absence of valued factors or the presence of negatively valued job factors. Some negatively valued factors are stress and failure, as well as dysfunctional uses of goals (overload, goals used to punish). Any approach that emphasizes that goals must be reached or surpassed also discourages people from taking risks (Schien 37). To the contrary, when the reward system is clearly tied to performance, satisfaction results from productivity–the opposite of the original assumption.

However, this relationship does not hold if the tie between rewards and performance is loose (Lamoureux 3). A cardinal principle for job satisfaction is that rewards must be closely tied to performance. Although there is little relationship between satisfaction and performance, job satisfaction does lead to organizational commitment, which, in turn, affects the intent to stay with an organization (Robbins 63).

Motivation and Leadership

At Whirlpool Corporation, the first leadership task is to make certain that there is a goal. The second task is to ensure that the goal is clear. Finally, leadership must confirm that the team members understand the goal. They will have to live with it everyday. A transforming leadership allows Whirlpool Corporation to meet changing demands and needs of customers and change with economic environment. An additional postulate of the model is that an individual’s primary arousal to a particular stimulus is relatively uniform and proportional to the intensity of a specific event (Schien 66). Therefore, the variation in the manifest responses produced by different types of stimuli can be explained by differences in the strength of the opponent process associated with a particular external stimulus (Lamoureux 2).

The strength of the individual’s opponent process is posited to be related to the frequency of stimulus events. The opponent process is strengthened with use and weakened with disuse of a particular stimulus. Consequently. after repeated experiences with a particular stimulus, a given event is likely to result in a weakened manifest response but one whose aftereffect may tend to linger for an extended time period after the termination of the stimulus (Robbins 63).

In Whirlpool Corporation, team leadership confronts circumstances that lead team members to withhold their best efforts. Effective leaders direct the effort, restraint, drive, and discipline that result in optimal team performance. Team leaders create a climate in which members take pride in making significant contributions to shared goals. The leader approaches the task of motivation by ensuring that each team member has the power necessary to accomplish the goal.

This is more than just delegation; it is a sharing and expansion of power. Providing resources, information, recognition, important tasks, autonomy, discretion, and input into the leadership function are a few ways to empower the team and its members (Lamoureux 4). The more power the team feels it has, the more effective it will become. There are two related aspects of team leadership that have an impact on goal setting and motivation: the leadership task and the leadership function. Both relate to how the leader manages the team and both bring focus on the task to be done; however, they are different in very specific ways. Exceptional interpersonal skills are not a key requirement for effective teamwork. That is, team members do not have to like each other socially (Daft 76).

Change

Whirlpool Corporation sees innovations as a catalyst for effecting change at every level of organization is information, but information is not enough. Creativity, innovation, and imagination are only based partially on information. The rest depends on that special inspiration, inventiveness, and originality that only the human spirit provides. Unfortunately, that human spirit seems to have lagged in the past few years, particularly in the United States (Schien 43).

Managers all across the organizational landscape are struggling to change deeply ingrained habits, but more than that, many organizations are in trouble. Whirlpool Corporation sees that managers have to organize people toward new goals and must focus on change. Managers are being forced to institutionalize a totally new work environment. The industrial model is just not functioning properly (Carrell et al 16).

That has meant a need for new visions based on customer service and quality. It has also meant new processes based on new ways to deal with organizational strategy, teamwork, and people renewal in the context of organizations. Whirlpool Corporation addresses changes that are required of organizations if they employ the team concept effectively and managers talk about renewing people through empowerment, giving them the authority to renew, not only the organization, but themselves as well. There is a need to revitalize. If the regenerative forces are not at work, the end is predictable (Schien 32).

Conclusion

Whirlpool Corporation follows effective strategic approach which helps it to develop its organization and motivate employees. Means and methods were originally designed to achieve some specific end, but when circumstances changed and new means were called for, the old means paradoxically became sacrosanct. Whirlpool Corporation pays a special attention to competition, creativity, and innovation.

The case of Whirlpool Corporation shows that organizational structure may limit or provide a great deal of freedom in how we approach a job. Other people, the task to be done, and technology all impact on what we do on the job and how we go about doing it. Whirlpool Corporation develops and introduces effective motivation practices and reward systems which meets employees personal goals and satisfy their basic needs.

Works Cited

Daft, R. L. Organizational Theory and Design. 9th Edition. South-Western College Pub; 8 edition, 2003.

Carrell, Michael R., Jennings, Daniel F. & Heavrin, Christina, Fundamentals of Organizational Behavior, Prentice-Hall Inc, New Jersey, USA, 1997.

Lamoureux, K. Leadership Competencies as the Foundation for Talent Management: Whirlpool Corporation. Case Study. 2007. pp. 1-5. Web.

Robbins, Stephen P., Essentials of Organizational Behavior, 8th edition, Prentice Hall International Inc., New Jersey, USA, 2000.

Schien, E. H. Organizational Culture and Leadership. Jossey-Bass, 2000.

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