Management Planning
The management planning entails making decisions about the goals and the actions that need to be taken to realize these goals. Through planning, the management can define the future and then set up what needs to be done to accomplish these goals. The ability of the organization to function optimally depends on the management plan. It is because it determines the actions within the organization. The decisions by the top management influences all the activities of the organization and what every department works to achieve ( Panfil & Nechita, 2015 ). As a result, the decisions made by the management could significantly interfere with the functions of the organization.
Toyota had struggled with quality issues due to a management decision to focus on growth strategy and profitability, but failing to consider the risks associated with such a strategy. As a result, the activities of the firm were aligned with the growth strategy, with globalization being the primary focus. It led to high productivity and entrance into many global markets, but the organization had declined in its quality. The management's plan to achieve global growth had interfered with quality improvement philosophy, which was the previous objective of the firm. The management even disbanded the quality taskforce, leaving the organization to focus on mass production. The outcome was deteriorating quality and customer dissatisfaction.
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Employees Perception and Organization Culture
The vision, values, and goals of the organization usually come from the top management downwards. Therefore, the actions by the management can encourage a quality culture that promotes happiness, motivation, and keeping the employees committed while also attracting new talents. However, the management can also negatively impact the culture and lead to employees’ demotivation. The management influences the culture of an organization through leadership and communication. Through their actions and leadership, the managers can create a great organizational culture in which employees are motivated and happy to work towards the goal.
Toyota's decision to pursue a growth strategy had led to the hiring of new engineers from overseas to help meet production. This act led to miscommunication and coordination problems. The management was losing close contact with employees as the demand increased. As a result, more decisions and information had become centralized ( Cole, 2011 ). This strategy created a culture of poor communication between employees and management. The worker's creativity had also been curtailed by centralized decisions making. Miscommunication and loss of contact with management had led to more quality issues, especially from the less experienced contracted suppliers.
Management Communication and Employees’ Performance
Effective communication remains one of the major ways in which management can increase the performance of the employees. Poor communication can limit the ability of the organization to optimize the performance of the employees. Lack of effective communication can lead to limited employee engagement, a culture of distrust, and uncertainty in the work processes. In most cases, barriers to effective communication entail language differences, cultural differences, and physical separation. When the management and workers cannot communicate effectively due to the barriers, it can lead to low production and reduced employees moral.
Toyota had experienced an increase in barriers to communication between the management and the team members. As more foreign engineers were being contracted to boost production, language barrier, and cultural differences arose. The hiring of non-Japanese speaking engineers made communication a problem due to language and cultural differences ( Cole , 2011). Some of the contracted engineers did not have enough experience and required close coordination and communication to improve performance. However, the language barrier made communication difficult, leading to low employee engagement and uncertainty in the work processes. This communication problem significantly led to the quality issues that it was facing with its products.
References
Cole, R. E. (2011). What really happened to Toyota?. MIT Sloan Management Review , 52 (4), 29.
Panfil, G., & Nechita, D. (2015). Fundamental principles in strategic management. Eur. J. Pub. Ord. & Nat'l Sec. , 5.
