Assignment Sample on HRM in a Global Context
Introduction
Management can be described as the process of managing people in an organisation so they can achieve success unanimously. In today’s developing era, every individual has their desired goals and aims at achieving them. Looking at this scenario, no individual is interested in taking huge pressure from their bosses and some peoples even can’t work in an environment they are being tracked and not trusted. There have been developed much great non-management structure and the company organises these self-management team (Bugdol, 2018). Employees are free to select the team at their convenience. In this context, they will be able to gain knowledge and understanding by working in the field they desire. The report aims at analysing the success of Morning Star, Tomato Plant operating as a company without any boss or pressure from the upper level. They can make orders, plant tomatoes, and sell them at their convenience. The organisation’s design and its strengths and weaknesses will be discussed broadly.
1. Organisational design terms
Morning Star Company was established in 1970 by Chris Rufer and begin as a one-truck owner-operator in California hauling tomatoes from fields to canneries. The company has achieved humungous success and currently operates three factories and has the largest production scale in the world. The company supply about 40 percent of the national market with diced tomatoes and ingredients tomato paste. Morning star also offers bulk-ingredient products to food producers and pouch to retail trade ad food service.
The company is constantly involved in research and development so they can bring changes as per requirements and even they have pioneered changes in production technology helped in enhancing the company’s efficiencies. They have about $800 million of sales of tomato products annually (Rufer, 2019). Their primary mission is to manufacture tomato products that meet the quality and service requirements adequately for their customer in a sustainable and eco-friendly manner. Morning Star is organisationally structure using the system of mission-focused self-management. They believe in operating their company without any assigned title and do not follow any hierarchy of authority. Their commercial mission is to drive their colleague’s coordination and activities through external and internal customer focus.
Organisational design is described as the process that helps in shaping the structure of organisation and the way it operates. In involve various aspects like shift patterns, team formation, decision-making process, communication channel and many more (Chandwaskar, 2019). The structure of designing of organisation helps the company in achieving their desired goals and objectives. The most surprising fact about the company is that they have self-managing staff entirely. It is not sure that every organisation having self-management will achieve success as many employees explains that these is not working for them, some will be not able to manage and self-management will only work in SMEs along with highly skilled workforce. It is mandatory to have right mind-set before achieving success in self-management. It is based on two basic principles including people must not force against others and they must have voluntary interactions (Jackson and Wilton, 2017). On the other hand, they believe that employees must respect the commitment they have made to others.
Principle 1: All interactions must be voluntary
Morning Star operates their business with no titles, no bosses, or no structural hierarchy and their prime principle is that every interaction made with one another must be voluntary. Every colleague entering the company has to follow the same set of rights as it is being followed by others (Miyao et. al. 2019). Their hierarchy states that no employee has the right to pressurise another employee to do some work they do not want to do. The most essential part of achieving success in a self-management organisation is to allow employees and colleagues to do the work of their interest. As per human resource management, it is mandatory to keep the employees motivated and influenced to improve their work efficiency and it can be achieved only if they work in the area they wish to.
Principle 2: Respect the commitments
It is an essential principle for companies with or without managers. It seems to be almost mandatory for self-management organisation in achieving success. It depicts that if employees do not follow the commitments made by them with one another then they would not be able to meet the objectives.
Furthermore, self-management at Morning Star is not about doing what an employee wants but it is all about determining what an individual has to do (Lee and Edmondson, 2017). It can be achieved only and only if all the employees are addressed with clarified goals they have to achieve. Every company primarily focuses on having its mission and purpose but it is very different in the case of Morning Star. The company has an entire mission statement that is being followed by deriving the mission of single departments. For instance, Morning Star’s mission is to produce tomato products and services that meet the quality expectation services as demanded by customers cost-effectively and sustainably. Brandon’s department’s mission statement is to be a full-service tomato ingredient supplier and supply-chain specialty and geographically unique customers (Pim, 2018). Finally, Brandon’s personal commercial mission is to obtain new sales opportunities and discover market information using cold calling and prospecting activities with the intent to sell. It is essential to have a collective mission statement as it helps the employee in having clear idea and goals.
Another different organisational structure of Morning Star is that they have a place to discover which employee is responsible for what job. They have an essential document for self-management known as Colleague-Letter of Understanding (CLOU). In this document, every commercial statement and commitments made by the employee are detailed which can affect the work done by other employees as well (Magpili and Pazos, 2018). Their organisational structure is organised effectively that follows a process for solving the arising conflicts between employees. Working in a self-management company they stated that employee has no option to pass it on to their manager but they have to fix it by themselves. In the initial stage employees facing conflicts needs to communicate and try to solve without any involvement of a third party. If this doesn’t work the third party will be involved but they are not allowed to judge they are there just to make their opinions. In the third step, panels having different people are allowed to offer their opinions (Vidyarthi and Simmons, 2020). Even at this stage conflict is not solved they can go to the founder and Chris will decide based on what is best for the company.
2. Potential strengths and weaknesses of this form of organisation and design
Strengths:
Every coin has two faces similarly self-management organisation is successful and failure as well. Self-management allows employees to take their decision and choose the field they wish to work for. In today’s developing world self-management in the organisation is no longer a mystery and every employee wants to work as per their interest (Kidd et. al. 2017). Forcing employees to work would not be beneficial but looking at the organisation structure and design followed by Morning Star it has been depicted that self-management allows the employee to choose the work they will feel interested to do. Allowing employees to do what they want is profitable for improving the productivity and work efficiency of any employee. On the other hand, greater adaptability is the advantage of having self-management practices in organisation. It is observed that time taken in a meeting for solving a problem is more than making it individually.
Furthermore, self-management also helps employees in improving the organisation’s productivity and profitability by allowing them to do the work they are interested in. It has been estimated that allowing employees to do their interests surely helps them in increasing their zeal to complete the given task and meet the deadlines (Jackson and Wilton, 2017). It will be highly beneficial in case the company has highly skilled and talented employees as they know the way of managing themselves effectively. Other than that, the personal commercial mission statement development by employees helps them stay committed to their work and achieves greater success. It is the best way to enhance the employee’s work efficiency, professional skills and improve their knowledge as well.
Weaknesses:
There is a list of weak points while organising and working in a self-management organisation. Morning star, Tomato Plant is successful in their business work but they also face some challenges in their work. The first challenged faced by the company is a long Onboarding process as it is difficult for newly joined employees to understand the way of self-managing work (Koohang et. al. 2017). For instance, many employees depict that they are not able to manage themselves without a manager or leader then it will be so difficult for them to achieve success. Some observations also declare that self-management is not a good idea for low-skilled employees as they significantly require a boss to suggest and guide them. Morning Star also faces this challenge sometimes.
As per the organisational structure of Morning Star, it is analysed that it will be very hard there to resolve the conflicts being faced by employees. Being operating in a self-management environment they do not have any leader or manager to solve the conflicts and rising differences between employees can act as the biggest barrier in achieving success. Morning Star allows employees to start communicating and try to solve their opinion and in the worst-case scenario, they will be taken to the founder Chris for solving the issue after trying 3-4 times (Shujahat et. al. 2017). It can increase the extent of conflicts and differences between employees and work can be affected due to this.
Moreover, Morning Star strictly orders employees to stay committed to their actions as it can severely affect the work. In this scenario, it has been observed that organisation can go through tough times only and only if employees did not stick to their commitments as it will not only spoil their work but also affects the other employees work (Leroy et. al. 2018). Other than that, self-management made transition tough and it requires huge time and energy to promote the transition. As people love to work like a boss but they are used to operate after getting the command so it can be challenging. The more the bigger organisation, the more it is time-consuming to have transitions.
3. Organisational culture
Since its development Chris Rufer has a statement of changing and creating an organisational vision in which all team members are influenced and motivated to become self-managing professionals, beginning the communication and coordinating their activities with peers and colleagues (Lee and Edmondson, 2017). It allows every individual to become their own bosses and take a decision on their own. In this essence, every individual has become in charge and contribute to the company’s success. Organisational culture at Morning Star treats every employee equally and provides them an opportunity to make commitments and choose the work they are interested in but most importantly they have to stay committed to their work as it can affect their colleague’s work as well. They also have to sign a CLOU including their interactions with each other and that encompasses about 3000 formal relationships in full-time personnel (Hanna, 2019). In their daily operations everyone is capable of creating a business, purchase, and take a decision and hire/fire and many more.
Furthermore, it is difficult for companies to have a great extent of trust in making decisions but in a self-management organisation, Morning Star trusts its employees infinitely. For this purpose, they believe in hiring employees that are highly skilled and talented so they can enhance the level of trust. Their organisational culture also supports their decision and allows them to take action quickly (Gao, 2017). It has been clarified by an employee of Morning Star that nobody is the boss here and you are your own boss. This quote shows that they follow a culture that doesn’t have any hierarchy culture that makes it sometimes difficult for lower-level employees to communicate about their issues and difficulties. In their organisational structure, colleagues are highly responsible for achieving their personal commercial mission statement. Other than that, they have a stakeholder channel that aligns all members to meet the emerging demands of stakeholders.
Morning Star also operates a mission channel allowing employees to gain their knowledge about the mission they need to be achieved. It helps in shaping personal accountability and filters all the bureaucratic layers and reduces time consumption. In the Morning Star employees are entirely responsible for managing every operation starting from producing crops to delivering them to end customers (Magpili and Pazos, 2018). Employees are accountable for product freshness, quality, and work efficiencies. It is being followed by a functional channel that helps in highlighting the individual efforts for achieving functional excellence and group efforts are accountable for flowing the experience and knowledge. They follow a traditional flat organisational culture (Bednarz, 2018). At Morning Star, they have multifunctional teams having the same responsibilities that need to be achieved. Their team member channel helps all the members in meeting the diverse needs, responsibilities, and skills. Organisational culture at Morning Star makes it necessary for employees to sign a CLOU with the employees they are collaborating with so they can stay committed to their commitments and actions. It helps them in reducing the effects of their wrong work. CLOU includes:
Morning Star also has a motivation channel that helps the organisation in motivating employees so they can stick to their commitments and do not get distracted. At the company, 1800 employees out of 2000 work at the company for just a few months every year (Hanna, 2019). It has been estimated that 97% of employees return to work there just because of the team culture they get. Their organisation culture is significantly known for their opportunities that allow employees to broaden their talents and skills. This organisational culture is highly influential for the company to keep their employees for a long-time. Other than that, most importantly Morning Star believes in innovating their products continuously as per market demands so they also have an innovation channel (Elsmore, 2017). It allows employees to bring innovation and implement new technologies to meet their PCM. In this way, their organisational culture is great for self-managing culture.
4. View on Peter Day’s statement
As per the Peter Day’s statement where he expresses that they probably imprinted with the idea of hierarchies and departments, and being told what to do, or without them many of employees may well get lost. It highlights the drawback of organizational structure. However, employees are empowered in the organization and they put more honest effort to achieve organizational goals as end results will directly affect them (El Morally, 2019). On the flip side, there are lot of areas where leadership and management requirement arise:
Increase conflict- Employees are free to make decision according to this situation, but in lot of instances can happen where two employees make individual decision and they are different. In this situation, conflict will arise and there is no powerful authority who can resolve issue and maintain harmony in between employees. Moreover, in that situation where an employee performing job for their personal intention and on the other side another employee fully dedicated for the organization benefit. In this situation the conflict between interest can significantly affect the organization. Other than that, all employees want to take big decision and delegate small and inconsiderable task to another (Schneider, 2018). Thus, in these scenarios they feel lost and unguided to handle the conflicts.
Lack of concrete innovation- The organization structure promote innovation and motivate employees to bring creativity in their work. However, in real situation it is challenging as there are high chances of different innovation in a single task. It creates conflicts which led to continue previous system as it is the best way to avoid conflict. Thus, implement and execute innovative process is difficult. On the other side, most of the employees hesitate to explore new things and use external sources to implement innovative techniques due lack of appropriate managerial structure which motivates them to grow.
Poor productivity– There are no system to check employee’s performance or establish control system within organization. Workers are free to work as their own wish which make them careless about punishment or control system. These practices not only affect organization productivity but also, it becomes hurdle in persona development as well. Moreover, a talented and hard worker may lose growth opportunity in order to compensate non-skilled performance (Sun et. al. 2021). Thus, it adversely affects organizational productivity and profitability or they may lose their competitive advantages.
Above discussion can proves that the existing organizational structure and practice may influence the need of departments, leaders, and proper management system. Thus, they should adopt hierarchical practice but also give adequate power to employees to make them productive, innovative, and trustworthy.
Conclusion
The report has analysed the organisational culture and structure of Morning Star, Tomato Plant at Central Valley of California. The company uses a basic self-managing organisation that allows employees to become their own boss and make decisions effectively. Their organisational culture is highly effective for reducing the consumption of time while making tough decisions. Other than that, their mission statement is divided into a group mission statement and a personal commercial statement that allows employees to focus on their mission and achieve them adequately. Their organisation structure is great for enhancing the work efficiency of employees and improves their professional skills as well. The report also concluded that there can be seen some weaknesses of self-management organisation as they can fail if they have low skilled employees because they need guidance every time. Morning Star is highly successful because of its organisational culture that possess diverse channels to support and motivate its employees.
References
Books and Journals
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Online
Bednarz. S. (2018). A Flat Organizational Experience. [Online]. Accessed through: <https://wdhb.com/who-s-the-boss-around-here-ebef1d15f859/>
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Hanna. D. (2019). 7 ways Morning Star Tomatoes helps employees become high performers. [Online]. Accessed through: <https://www.insidehr.com.au/morning-star-high-performers/>
Pim. (2018). Morning Star’s Success Story: No Bosses, No Titles, and no Structural Hierarchy. [Online]. Accessed through: <https://corporate-rebels.com/morning-star/>
Rufer. C. (2019). Morning Star. [Online]. Accessed through: <https://www.morningstarco.com/>
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