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Tesla’s Organization Culture
The corporate culture of Tesla Motors focuses on human resource competence for innovation to develop automotive products. The organizational culture in the company empowers the employees to develop ideal solutions that give the company an edge over competitors. Employee innovation is key to its success and the company encourages its employees to be innovative. As the company focuses on electric automobiles, success would require having human resource capabilities that support its goals. To maintain such personnel, the company, through its culture, encourages employees to develop new ideas and solutions for different problems in the automotive industry. The company’s corporate culture hinges on six key features.
Tesla’s organizational culture guides its employees in the development of advanced electric vehicles. The company relies heavily on innovation and the corporate culture demonstrates this need for innovation. The six main features in the company’s corporate culture are Move Fast, Do the Impossible, Constantly Innovate, Reason from “First Principles”, Think Like Owners and We are ALL IN. under move fast, the company uses speed to gain a competitive advantage over competitors. The company requires that employees are able to quickly observe trends and react fast enough to be ahead of competition. The ability to respond to market changes ensures the company is always ahead of rivals. Employees understand that it is important for them to respond fast to current issues and challenges. The ability to do so ensures they always have solutions before competitors in the automotive industry. The Do the Impossible part of the corporate culture encourages employees to think outside the box. The company encourages employees to develop cutting-edge products. For that to be possible, they have to continuously come up with new ideas and solutions. It encourages coming up with new ways of solving a problem. The company encourages the employees to go an extra mile in their creativity and productivity to develop new automotive designs. Employees have the freedom to develop alternative ways of performing tasks. With freedom for creativity, the company is able to improve its performance.
Success for Tesla Motors anchors around innovation. Constantly innovative ensures that innovation at Tesla is a continuous process. Constant innovation ensures that the company is able to develop and produce cutting-edge electric automotives and products. The company requires continuous innovation for it to remain ahead of its competitors. To keep up its innovation, the company takes measures to encourage innovation among its personnel. The company’s employees are always happy to contribute to innovation as the company rewards such efforts. In solving problems, Tesla’s corporate culture encourages the application of the first principles. Here, in solving a problem, one needs to identify the root cause first before they can understand the problem and develop its solution. Therefore, the company encourages the employees to apply reasoning in all situations so that their responses and solutions to problems are effective. Applying the first principles helps the company in diagnosing problems and developing working solutions. It helps employees fulfill their jobs effectively.
Responsibility and accountability are very important in any organization. Most often, employees fail to take responsibility because they are not the owners. However, at Tesla, the company encourages employees to think like owners. Such a mindset among employees helps provide support for business development. When employees think that they own the company, they work to develop it and improve its performance. They take responsibility for their action and do everything possible for the company to succeed. Cultivating such an attitude in the company helps keep its employees motivated. They are therefore able to offer more and put in more effort to achieve goals. Lastly, Tesla’s corporate culture encourages teamwork. Through its “We are ALL IN” principle, the company encourages employees to cooperate and work with each other with great teamwork. The company aims to minimize conflicts by developing a team spirit among the employees. The company seeks to create synergies that are beneficial in its quest to maximize on the skills and talents of the employees. Such teamwork allows employees to cooperate and put their varied skills to use to develop innovative products.
Volkswagen’s Organizational Culture
Volkswagen’s corporate culture focuses more on the customer than the employees. Its values mainly focus on the customer and the product. The values that the company lists in its culture are together, customer oriented, courageous, efficient, genuine and mindful. The values guide the conduct of the employees as they handle their responsibilities on a day-to-day basis. While the company states that the most important component of the company is its personnel, the corporate culture indicates that the focus is more on the customer. In the first value, together, the company tries to encourage all employees at different levels to cooperate and work together for overall success. The company urges employees to work together to implement the objectives of the company and attain good results. That includes employees from interns, apprentices, trainees to the direct and indirect production workers. Under customer oriented, the company encourages the employees to focus on solving customer problems. They work towards developing products that meet customer needs. All effort s by the employees would therefore focus on making the customer happy and satisfied. Under courageous, the company aims to spur employees to take courageous actions in their tasks. It is a call for employees to try new things in their line of work. That urges the employees to come up with new products even where the markets may be untested. The company’s corporate culture also encourages efficiency. It emphasizes efficiency in its production lines as well as in its products. For many years, the company prided itself in producing efficient vehicles. Efficiency means that employees are encouraged to achieve the best results with minimum resources possible. The company focuses on being cost effective in its operations as well as producing products that are cost effective to the customer.
The company also focuses on being genuine. It makes effort to produce genuine products that are able to meet standards. In line with being genuine, the company encourages its employees to work towards developing authentic and unique products that stand out from competitors. Lastly, the company’s culture focuses on the need to be mindful. That means the company promotes taking responsibility of one’s actions. It encourages checking the effects of one’s actions on others. The company tries to minimize its negative impacts on the environment and the communities around it. Through its Corporate Social Responsibility activities, it tries to foster positive coexistence with communities.
- Volkswagen, (2017). Corporate Culture. Retrieved December 15, 2017 from: http://volkswagen-poznan.pl/en/corporate-culture