Ford: Lower or maintain service level?
Ford Motors Company, as one of the leaders in motor vehicles, is known for its positive organizational culture. Although its stock is undergoing a depreciation now, the values it shares within the company used to enable it to maintain high levels of customer service and employee experience. As a matter of fact, in order to get its previous leading position back in automobile market, I would recommend Ford to emphasize the importance of its organizational culture to the public.
Personally, I especially appreciate one of Ford’s organizational culture: “the leadership team is encouraged to admit mistakes.”¹ It could greatly trigger employee’s respect to leaders, and thus trigger their loyalty to the company. But the question is that does organizational culture bring more benefits or more costs to Ford? This reminds me of the debate in yesterday’s lecture that related to Zappos Company. Zappos is a shoes retailer company that values organizational culture much. Many of my classmates considered that Zappos provided employees and customers with too much welfare, which will in turn decrease profit.
However, The Good Job Strategy suggests that it is possible to “offer the lowest prices to customers while ensuring good jobs for their employees and superior results for their investors.”² As organizational culture is not built in a day, its benefits will be observed in a long run as well. Therefore, instead of lowering service level, maintaining current service level and developing a “sustainable competitive strategy in which everyone-employees, customers, and investors“³ will be better choices for Ford.
Ford Motor Company
Endnotes:
1. Hellriegel, Don. “The Organization.” Organizational Behavior. 9.th ed. Cincinnati, Ohio: South-Western College Publ., 2001. Print.
2. “The Good Jobs Strategy.” Zeynep Ton. Web. 29 Oct. 2013. <http://zeynepton.com/book/>.
3. Refer to endnote 2.
Picture reference:
Retrieved from <http://www.victoriapremiumauto.com/inventory/ford>
Article Reference:
Hellriegel, Don. “The Organization.” Organizational Behavior. 9.th ed. Cincinnati, Ohio: South-Western College Publ., 2001. Print.
“The Good Jobs Strategy.” Zeynep Ton. Web. 29 Oct. 2013. <http://zeynepton.com/book/>.
Read more:
Ford Motors Company’s official website: <http://www.ford.com/>
Definition of organizational culture: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizational_culture>