Human Resource Management Corporate Culture

Questions: 1. Based on what you have learned about the term corporate culture and from the information in the GM Culture Crisis article, describe your understanding of the term corporate culture and the role that it plays in an organization.2. It is obvious from the article that the corporate culture at GM needs to be rebuilt. Do you believe that Human Resources play a role in rebuilding the culture? If so, what is their role and where would you begin? (i.e. employee level, management level, executive leadership level, or CEO level). If not, why not and whos role is it?3. Should the new corporate culture reflect GMs business strategy? If so, how does the leader of Human Resources gain a seat at the table to understand GMs business strategy?4. Reflect on the topics that we covered throughout the semester, what are the main Human Resource issues that are evident in the GM article? Please describe the issues and provide an example from the article.5. The articles author, Tim Kuppler, discusses cul ture recommendations from the Volukas Report. The majority of these recommendations discuss changes in safety protocols. Looking at this from a Human Resources perspective, what other recommendations would you have to transform the GM culture? Provide 5 recommendations. Be specific by describing what recommendations you would put forth and how you would execute them. (Hint: Think about all of the topics from the chapters that we have discussed over the semester). Answers: Introduction: The main focus area of this report is the evaluation of the appropriate corporate culture and its significance for holding a successful relation between the employee and employers. This report has incorporated information from the GM ignition switch recall crisis. Fault in the ignition switch led to a number of accidents that in turn cost 13 lives. Several reports have reflected that besides the engineering faults management and culture of the GM have influenced this incidence. This report has tried to give an insight into the corporate culture and different influential approaches along with the impact of corporate culture on the various components related to business strategies and human resources. 1. The term corporate culture is used in a greater sense to describe an organization's beliefs, values, practices and attitudes to the employees, clients and the market scenario. The corporate culture of an organization is the image of its characteristics as well as act as the guide to the practices appropriate for an organization. As mentioned by, Guiso, Sapienza and Zingales (2015), corporate bodies that have apposite corporate culture can obtain 20-30% aggregate over the performance than the companies that have no ethical corporate culture. Influence of the corporate cultures has been described below: Vision: A perfect corporate culture has its vision to accomplish. This vision evaluates the purpose of the organization. Eccles, Ioannou and Serafeim (2012), mentioned that vision of a company is the fundamental element required to achieve a successful corporate culture. Value: This is the core component of a corporate culture. Value offers a guideline that helps in adopting apt behaviors required to set goals and to achieve it. For maximum companies, their values revolve surrounding the clients, employees and the professionalism. Practices: A company can only achieve their vision when they put their values into practice. The way company practices its policies and work culture reflects the relation between the employees and employer. People: Human resource is the inseparable part of the corporate culture. An organization can never form a coherent working culture until the organization shares the values with their employees and employees of the company truly embrace the values. 2. Human resource plays an important role in the corporate culture; as discussed above, human capital is one of the core element of the corporate culture. Employees are required to adopt the working culture and maintain the ethical values of the company (Bolton, Brunnermeier Veldkamp, 2013). If employees are not cooperative with the management both the performance and reputation will be at stake for the company. For GM the corporate culture must be rebuilt from the executive leadership level. As reviewed in the report, employees in this company have tried to inform their seniors; however, they have never paid heed to the concern of the staffs of the operation area. Moreover, few of the senior executives have neglected the incident even after being aware of the faulty ignition switch of the cars. As the leaders were in no mood to go the root of the problem sooner or later the lower lever staffs stopped taking any further step against such incidence. 3. The new corporate culture should reflect the business strategy. As mentioned by, Goodpaster (2013), the corporate culture of a company must reflect an image that could help the company to obtain a positive business strategy. Business strategy should be in favor of the employees as well as the clients. A company should not only focus on the cost and the profit (Hermalin, 2012). There are certain areas, required to look into during the implementation of the business strategy. If the company hold successful business they must be cooperative with the employees. The GM authority should encourage conversation with the employees; they can allow a representative of the workers in the conferences and meetings of the senior authorities so that the leader can voice the opinion on behalf of the workers. 4. Communication gap is one of the main problems behind any vulnerable corporate culture (Davidson, Dey Smith, 2015). If the authorities do not value, the opinions of the employees there is the probability of facing unwanted circumstances (Henson, 2016). Moreover, conflicts within an organization also are caused by the lack of communication between the employees and employer. GM incidence can be taken for the example of this aspect. The ignition switch recall crisis was not a sudden occurrence for the company. The ground level employees were aware of that and they also tried to ring an alarm regarding this issue, however, the senior executives were reluctant to this issue and never made any effort to convey the message to the heads of the company. Moreover, there was also conflict among the management of the GM that resulted due to the lack communication among each other and with the concerned authority. 5. The recommendation for the GM incidence are: It was evident to the GM corporate culture that the management was inactive and disinclined to raise the problem in front of the higher authority; this practice must be eliminated for the company. Each employee must take responsibility for their work because it has been seen that in GM culture everyone points towards other while there is any crisis. The management and the authorities must understand the emergence of an incident because in this case, it was clear that the executives did not take the primary concerns seriously. As a result, the incident ended up in accidents. Implementation of the planning is one important approach required to improve in the GM culture because it has been seen that employees show the agreement when the seniors level of the management has planned something; however, at the time of implementation employees do not act according to the plan. GM authorities should make corrective measures for the communicative approach. As the lack of communication between the lower lever staffs and higher level authorities are the key component to hold a successful corporate culture and improve the performance of the organization (Purce, 2014). Conclusion: Hence, after reviewing this study it can be said that it has attempted to cover all the requirements. This report has included the understanding of the corporate culture as well as the importance of the human resource for obtaining a successful culture in the organization. The recommendation has also been made for the GM so that incidence like Ignition Switch Recall Crisis can be avoided. Therefore, this report can be further revised while conducting any extensive research. Reference List: Bolton, P., Brunnermeier, M. K., Veldkamp, L. (2013). Leadership, coordination, and corporate culture.The Review of Economic Studies,80(2), 512-537. Davidson, R., Dey, A., Smith, A. (2015). Executives'off-the-job behavior, corporate culture, and financial reporting risk.Journal of Financial Economics,117(1), 5-28. Eccles, R. G., Ioannou, I., Serafeim, G. (2012).The impact of a corporate culture of sustainability on corporate behavior and performance(No. W17950). National Bureau of Economic Research. Goodpaster, K. E. (2013). Corporate culture.The International Encyclopedia of Ethics. Guiso, L., Sapienza, P., Zingales, L. (2015). The value of corporate culture.Journal of Financial Economics,117(1), 60-76. Henson, R. (2016). Building an Organizational Global Mindset Culture: Implications for Practice. InSuccessful Global Leadership(pp. 261-283). Palgrave Macmillan US. Hermalin, B. E. (2012). Leadership and corporate culture.Handbook of organizational economics, 432-78. Purce, J. (2014). The impact of corporate strategy on human resource management.New Perspectives on Human Resource Management (Routledge Revivals),67.