Case 17 – Johnson & Johnson
1. Diversity should provide greater alternatives and inputs into the decision process, but if diversity is blocked due to organizational infrastructures that do not allow the free flow of information, than the diversity goes unutilized. Johnson & Johnson (J&J) structured its company to insure the positive impact of diversity in regards to decision making through its creation of FrameworkS. Through Frameworks, the executive committee is partnered with a variety of managers from around the organization that concentrate on specific, unprogrammed organizational decisions. FrameworkS matches the problem with appropriate decision making method. In this approach, managers share the problem with others and engage the group in consensus to arrive at a final decision.
By incorporating managers from around the organization, FrameworkS provides a process that successfully incorporates knowledge from a wide variety of sources. Managers are able to bring a variety of perspectives and experiences to deal with the problem at hand. The knowledge brought into focus is greater with these additional individuals involved.
In addition, difficulties including decision biases (confirmation traps and hindsight traps) and escalation of commitment can be countered in a constructive manner. J&J provides an environment that supports information search and open discussion among members of the group. By challenging long-held assumptions, a better decision develops from the interaction of group members.
2. J&J wished to increase both the number and quality of strategic choices for creating its future. Groups are often more successful than individuals in developing creative solutions due to the increased diversity of ideas available to the members. J&J managers attempted to benchmark high performance activities by investigating processes at its three internal and three external organizations. With a focus of identifying and implementing the new processes into J&J, the program "What's New" was the focus of the collection of J&J’s executive and senior management team. By mixing managers from different organizations within J&J, the executive board hoped to manage knowledge in a manner that supports new ideas. A manager from one area may be able to shed considerable insight into the problems of a manager from another section of the company and as a result, organizational learning is increased through a free exchange of ideas.
3. J&J has shown through its Credo and actions that the company is very committed to ethical behavior on the part of its employees and managers. Its reaction to the Tylenol poisoning, with its emphasis on socially responsible behavior above immediate profits, was entirely consistent with its ethical code of placing the customer first and shareholder interests second.
Diversity in the retail marketplace is something that is significant to the company’s success. Retailers are comprised of people selling things to people. Thus, the people that do the selling must be a good representation of the people that are doing the buying. Companies that are well diversified in their hiring practices, as well as organizational goals, are well recognized by the public. Likewise, companies that are unjust in the functioning of their company will be viewed in a negative light, which could lead to decreased sales and company accountability. Taking this into consideration, observing the diversity profiles for two major retail companies can lead to a firm understanding behind their success and company values.
Diversity is the piece that makes the modern workforce so amazingly unique and challenging at the same time. Valuing diversity means creating a work environment that respects and includes differences, recognizing the unique contributions these differences can bring, and maximizing the potential of all employees and the company. In The Loudest Duck, the author describes what often happens when diverse individuals enter the modern diverse workplace. Liswood gives great examples, analogies and shares simple insights into the hardships of bringing people from diverse backgrounds together to accomplish goals. The main emphasis is put on recognizing that diversity strictly by statistics of different races and/or genders present is insufficient.
On the issue how to link his idea to his organization or business, Kerr simply collected and gained quick feedback and recommendation about how to present or make use of the idea or creativity to his sixty-five top executives in GE; he would assessed and examined his idea with his top management team first before link it to GE (Davenport et al). Davenport, Prusak & Wilson (2003) analyzed and claimed that getting instant comment or criticism is very critical and vital for a idea, as Kerr in his interview argued: “Gaining quick feedback and translating it into action and results is what advocating ideas is all about” (p. 207). In strategic planning, management must measure or evaluate the courses of idea and creativity or development and expansion to ensure they obtain the best and maximum returns from platforms (Davenport). In ideas and organizational management, feedback, criticism and suggestion not only could turn or develop into the guidance, objective and direction or target and focus of innova...
This involves choosing from a lot of alternatives of ideas and producing a strategy on how they will be able to make trade-offs. The team’s activities here include ambassadorship and task coordination. The key leadership activities here include visioning and inventing.
DuPont has been known for its low reliance on borrowings. In the 1970’s, the company had to assume a substantial portion of debt of Conoco, a newly acquired company. In 1983, the managers have to decide about the future optimal target debt ratio. Should the company continue to keep about 40% of its assets financed via debt or should it strive to lower its borrowings to 25%?
J&J understands that community is important due to the 60 countries in which it conducts business. J&J has a corporate social responsibility to protect all individuals and must strive to be actively involved in the community. In J&J’s Credo they state, “We are responsible to the communities in which we live and work and to the world community as well. We must encourage civic improvements and better health and education” (2014 Citizenship & Sustainability Report 121). J&J strives to meet this goal through research and testing of their products and through programs such as Social Impact through Procurement, Bridge to Employment, Sight for Kids, Volunteer Support, Stop Hunger Now and Safe Kids.
Let’s acknowledge some history of Bose Corporation. The firm always want to improve their corporation and they included a frame series of evolutionary stages. They are exploration, discovery, and formalization, process-think and process link. The initial stage exploration: issue driven activities which is shared understanding problems and likely solution slowly forged through informal networking (Harkness, 96). This mean prioritizing and handling assignments for the Information System Director to fix situation within the organization. Also, encouraging managers and personnel to meet freely with staff to discuss concerns an...
When aligned with Organizational Objectives, diversity can be a powerful contributor to the organizations competitive advantage.” (Best practices page 9)
Within an organization, diversity is considered a having a population of people that are of different races or cultures working collectively. From this collection of people, a variance of perspective is formed and talent is fostered in order to maximize performance. These great minds work
This document will explore what a company can do to foster diversity in the workplace. The business case highlights the development and implementation of organizational initiatives that could:
Diversity is a highly important issue in today’s business, especially in a globalized company. Workplace diversity helps to get better solutions to business problems (Schawbel, 2012). When you have a group of individ...
There are many different forms of diversity that effect human behavior and the culture of companies. These many different values, skills and abilities, ages, and occupations will be a challenge for managers today to find creative new ways to incorporate each individual’s ideas into their business and to create a productive culture that values every form of diversity.
1. There are many different cultures in the world in which we live today, and it is important for any organisation planning to globalise their firm to know and understand the cultural differences that occur between nations. This theory is specifically important when it comes to two firms operating in different countries decide to merge to become one, as is the case with Upjohn and Pharmacia. The differences that became apparent during this merger were important as they affected the way business was conducted, in a negative way.
In a world that has grown increasingly smaller due to mass media, world travel, and readily available information, the workplace has grown increasingly diverse in both gender and cultural aspects. Individuals no longer live and work within the confines of their geographic locations. At almost any position with any company the individual employee is a part of a larger world economy that harvests assets from the ends of the earth. Because of this, companies seek to capitalize on diversity to become more creative and flexible in their business models.
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary (n.d.) defines diversity as “the condition of having or being composed of differing elements; especially, the inclusion of different types of people (as people of different races or cultures) in a group or organization”. In general, diversity is often only related with differences in race and gender. In actuality, numerous elements can determine diversification in the workplace. Elements such as skills, abilities, experience, values, age, and education could be part of a diverse footprint in an organization. Other important attributes related to diversity include disabilities, religion, sexual orientation, and marital status (Guillame et al., 2013). The adoption of diversity in the workplace has the potential to increase organizational effectiveness in many ways. Organizations that practice diversity tend to increase their capacity to innovate and make better decisions.