An organization’s culture molds its decision patterns, guides actions, and shapes the behavior of all its members. The culture covers shared beliefs, ways of doing things, values, and attitudes that run throughout the whole organization. These are the enduring characteristics that led to the impressive success of the Williams Machine Tool Company but also its downfall. Strong organizational patterns are a requisite for success but also a barrier to realizing the changes needed for a company to remain relevant and competitive. Project leaders, as well as members, can become limited by age-long beliefs and values rooted in an organization’s culture (Grant & Shamonda, 2013). They usually experience difficulty understanding changes across organizations and adapting to new norms and behaviors required for success. This was the main weakness of the Williams Machine Tool Company workforce that ultimately led to its downfall.
There are several things that could have been done to save the Williams Machine Tool Company. The takeover of the company was a step in the right direction in an effort to save Williams Machine Tool Company but clearly, it was not enough. The management of Crock Engineering was required to have assimilated Williams Machine Tool Company fully rather than allow it to run as an independent subsidiary. A robust culture change mechanism should then have been put in place to allow for the company’s survival. The more successful an organization was, the more difficult it is to change its culture ( Bersin, et al. 2018). The first step in this endeavor is to identify the mismatch within the organization’s culture and industry needs. Williams Machine Tool Company mismatch was, for example, its insistence on the success of one of its product lines that all employees saw no sense in modifying or abandoning altogether. Once such weakness is identified, other actions that could have followed was a change of leadership, selection of members responsive to changes required, and finally socialization of the new culture to members.
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References
Bersin, J., McDowell, T., Rahnema, A., & Van Durme, Y. (2018). The organization of the
future: Arriving now. https://www2.deloitte.com/insights/us/en/focus/human-capital-trends/2017/organization-of-thefuture.html
Grant, M., & Shamonda, H. (2013). Culture and Innovation: The Secret Sauce.
https://www.conferenceboard.ca/CBI/research/secretsauce.aspx?AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1
