The case “Developing Chinks in the Vaunted Toyota Way” describes The Toyota Way, or Toyota’s organizational values that are embraced and adopted by its employees. At the heart of Toyota’s performances stays the employees focus on customer and on offering the best quality, for improving the customer’s life (Nelson & Campbell Quick, 2007).
In fact, this goal is what brought Toyota its leading position in the automobile industry, because the company is permanently focused on improving its processes for improving its services and offering products that other competing companies cannot offer. The case discusses about the 14 principles that stay at the basis of The Toyota Way, which imply following a long term thinking philosophy, processes meant to optimize time and work, showing respect between people and for the partners and developing a continuous learning for attaining improvement through problem solving (Nelson & Campbell Quick, 2007; Nelson, Batalden & Godfrey, 2007).
However, the case also addresses the quality problems that Toyota faced and the fact that recently it is losing it because of its rapid growth, which in fact is contradicting one of The Toyota Way’s principles - “Use ‘pull’ systems to avoid overproduction” (Nelson & Campbell Quick, 2007). The case concludes that the cause of the chunks that appeared lately in Toyota’s production is that The Toyota Way is intended to be inculcated to foreign workers, from Toyota’s overseas manufacturing points, who have different perceptions, values and cultures than the Japanese workers and who are not responding to The Toyota Way by embracing and adopting its values as firm as the Japanese workers do.
- Toyota’s organizational culture means primarily focus towards the customer. Assuring the best quality for the customer is the aim for each Toyota employee and one espoused value, as the customer focus is legendary at Toyota and everything that they make is for making the customer’s life better. While other automobile companies are in the business of making cars, Toyota is in the business of making cars better (Nelson & Campbell Quick, 2007).
Toyota’s enacted values include seeking for long term benefits, standardizing the work for efficiency, stopping to fix problems, avoiding overproduction, working relaxed and following reliable, tested technology, pass the technology among employees while investing in people and teams, making informed decisions and implementing them rapidly, observing, understanding, reflecting and permanently learning for improving (Nelson & Campbell Quick, 2007).
- Considering the perspective of the functions of Toyota’s organizational culture, the values included in The Toyota Way business philosophy are used for permanently improving the process, making cars better, and learning others to work on making cars better.
This has contributed to determining individuals to push harder, pursuing higher overseas and domestic sales, improved accounting and procurement (“Human Resources Development – Toyota”). The impact of The Toyota Way is that as a learning organization is seeking to permanently improve its work, by improving its processes.
- Regarding the approach on the effects of the organizational values, The Toyota Way reduces the employees’ workload, determining them to think on the quality, solve the problems that arise and take time for making decisions, but to implement them rapidly (Nelson & Campbell Quick, 2007).
Pride, Hughes and Kapoor (2010) observe that one effect of Toyota’s organizational culture is the employees’ shared ownership of problems, which implies that workers who adopt The Toyota Way believe in its principles and are acting according to those principles.
- As Toyota expands pursuing its global presence, the company is facing challenges in attempting to maintain The Toyota Way in diverse social environments. Applying The Toyota Way in foreign manufacturing operations means adjusting it to the local cultures, since the original Toyota organizational culture was consolidated on Japanese workers and their culture.
This discrepancy, between how the Japanese workers adopt and embrace The Toyota Way and how the foreign workers are receiving this business philosophy translates into quality problems, negatively affecting the company’s competitive edge (Nelson & Campbell Quick, 2007).
References
Human Resource Development (n.d.) Toyota. Retrieved on 6 August 2013 from http://www.toyota-global.com/sustainability/report/sr/03/pdf/E_p80.pdf.
Nelson, E., C., Batalden, P., B. & Godfrey, M., M. (2007) Quality by design: a clinical microsystems approach. San Francisco: Jossey - Bass.
Nelson, D., L. & Campbell, Quick, J. (2007) Organizational Behavior. “Developing Chinks in the Vaunted Toyota Way”. Mason: Cangage Learning.
Pride, W., M., Hughes, R., J. & Kapoor, J., R. (2010) Business. Mason: South – Western Cengage Learning.
