The Motorola, Case Study Example

The Motorola case is one of building a global shared vision. The concern in Motorola case is that the worldwide divisions lacked cohesiveness. The players in the case were Marco Michelotti, the Vice President Analog Division together with the consultant for organizational effectiveness in the HR department, Alison Palmer, and training and HR manager, John Sherwin (Krueger and Pfund 2). Their task was to create and communicate a common goal to all the division’s employees through the involvement of the Analog top management.

In order to achieve, the players formulated three courses of action. The first option aligned to the conventional way at Motorola. This meant that employees be trained on the desired change. Second was to hire a public relations company to create a convincing advertising campaign around the new global vision and promote it within the worldwide Analog division. Finally, the third option called for the involvement of all Analog employees. The employees were involved in the conception and implementation of a “shared vision.”

Each of the courses of action had advantages and disadvantages. The advantage of a training program lay in the fact that it required limited time and effort. However, the main disadvantage was feelings it would impact on employees. The employees would feel that the imposition of the change on them. The option of hiring a public relations company to create a convincing advertising campaign would be a better way to convince people than the training approach. However, this entailed the hiring of an external organization to facilitate an internal change. This went against Motorola’s principles. Another disadvantage was the employees would not be intimately involved. The option of a shared vision was a fresh model. It involved asking employees for their vision for Analog. This resulted to combining the values to form common statement. This will limit the costs of creating the shared vision. The best course of action is the creation of a common vision. This would enable the division to work efficiently and quick as a global team (Krueger and Pfund 3).

However, the process faced the challenge of integrating ten different cultures. The Analog division has global operations. Thus, to communicate to these cultures was a difficult task. Different cultures had different interpretations the words perceived. Another concern is the way the managers would communicate the shared vision to their employees. This is because communication was different in each country (Krueger and Pfund 9).

Both Alison and John faced a challenge in the communication of the essence words. The essence words had different interpretations. Motorola adopts a family culture (Handy 201). For instance, for the Asians, family meant sacrificing their life for the company. Thus, they were more unwilling to use the word family. Secondly, to facilitate the process, both Alison and John had to participate in the different countries. This produced a psychological barrier in non-U.S. divisions.

This resulted to the cultural misstep. The formation of essence words did not interpret the different cultural meanings attached to them. Little concern was shown on how the words were communicated across the globe. On the other hand, there was no clear procedure on how to group the managers. The managers had to understand that each culture had distinctive differences and strengths (O’Connor).

The seven tasks procedures exposed the players to the cultural differences and strengths that would have otherwise been difficult to detect. A necessary step aligned the local mission statements of each division with the global vision.

The challenges in Manila lay on how the division implements the shared vision. Thus, problems will arise due to change in systems and structures. There will be difficult in aligning the plants vision with the shared vision. The several and many inter-divisions co-ordinating links required in the delivery of the vision may lead to lose of focus (Nadler and Tushman 54).

Works cited

Handy, Charles, Understanding Organizations, New York: Penguin Books, 1999

Krueger, Ralph and Pfund, Corinne. Motorola Analog Division: Development of a Shared Global Vision, Amsterdam: Elsevier Inc, 2007.

Motorola Investor Relations (www.motorola.com).

Nadler, David A. and Tushman, Michael L., “The organization of the Future: Strategic Imperatives and Core Competencies for the 21st Century”, Organizational Dynamics, 28:1, pp.45-59. 1999

O’Connor, E., Changing Motorola from a Product to a Solutions Organisation, University of Bath, 2000.