I gained good experience working for Lockheed Martin Corporation (LMC), one of the world’s leading defense service providers. This company has spread its services into different sectors like aerospace, information technology, emerging capabilities, space and contract vehicles. The company was formed by the merger of two companies; the Lockheed Corporation and Martin Marietta Corporation in 1995, and currently employs more than a hundred thousand employees globally and follows a culture that emphasizes on ethical work environment and believes in growing the culture from bottom up to understand the social and economic realities of the corporation, while supporting the top down approach by providing opportunity to the top level management to design new strategies and be on par with the changing global trends in the business. As stated by (Daft, 2008, p.422), most leaders now understand that a company’s culture fits the needs of its external environment and company strategy, employees can create an organization that is tough to beat.
The company’s culture defines a process to meet the corporation goals, mission and objectives, the norms to interact with the vendors, deal with the stakeholders, and the outsiders. The core values and culture of the corporation is purely based on the business domain. Some companies work towards speed, flexibility and a faster response towards customers, and such companies create a culture that supports adaptability and understanding between various departments. Organization culture can have a positive effect or a negative effect on the employees and the management. Cultural strength is critical for an organization’s success and it completely relies on the acceptance of the agreement between employees and the organization. Employees must be aware of the core values and the ways to achieve these values to strengthen the corporate culture.
The core values of Lockheed Martin’s Corporation are to do what’s right, respect others, and always perform with excellence. The corporation always respects the employees’ needs and preferences by implementing corporate-wide programs and policies for the benefits of its global employees. LMC believes that a person who respects human rights is a good corporate citizen and they always work towards supporting a global cause. As this corporation serves five different businesses the mission statement is different across the businesses; however the global mission across these businesses is to attain overall customer satisfaction and meet all the projected commitments as the company works towards providing excellent customer value, profitable returns to the investors and career growth opportunities to the employees.
Shaping the culture of an organization is the main requirement of the leadership team as the culture can make or break the future of an organization. The leaders of the organization have held to the company values to fulfill the vision as they follow the full spectrum leadership to encourage and progress the objectives and face the competitive challenges. One of the most important roles for leaders in the coming years will be to develop a solid base of diverse leadership talent (Daft, 2008, p.325). In LMC everyone is considered as a leader as every employee’s contribution towards achieving the mission statement of the company is valuable.
The culture of a corporation must be created from the base and integrating it in the employees in the initial stages is a key to success. A few recommendations to make the culture last long and still keep growing are to define various concepts that are different and friendly, create a process where the veteran employees train new employees, employees at different levels must be aware of the cultural changes and accept it, and evaluating the progress at all levels to measure success is critical. Employees may not be aware of the cultural changes on a regular basis, and the top level management must ensure that these changes are circulated.
Culture in a corporation can be developed when there is a mutual understanding between the leaders and staff. Most of the relationships in the corporation are the results of the Vertical Dyad Linkage (VDL) theory in which there are two-groups, the in-group and the out-group. When the manager is relatively open in extending individualized assistance to work through job problems, an in-group relationship is likely (Miner, 2005, p.258). Some factors that make this model successful are based on the trust between the leader and the groups, ability of the leader and the group to perform, and honesty. The VDL model leads to another relationship theory that is known as Leader-member Exchange (LMX) theory in which the leaders exchange information with the sub-ordinates to help them develop in terms of accepting responsibility, decision making, and improve the performance of the groups. The LMX theory is strongly related to the subjective factors than to the objective ones and the only outcome that cannot be predicted is the actual turnover (Miner, 2005, p.267).
The employees need to know the contribution they can make to the corporation, and must be motivated to participate actively, engage themselves and understand their presence in the corporation. This is the major responsibility of a good leader to energize the team and create an encouraging environment that helps the employees to deliver results and works towards achieving the objectives of the corporation while adhering to the cultural values. Concepts of leadership have evolved over time, and major research approaches include Great Man theories, trait theories, behavior theories, contingency theories, influence theories and relational theories (Daft, 2008, p.27). These theories are important as they deal with particular tasks and individuals, and are completely based on the principles that leaders can forecast the future and create contingency plans and organize a work environment that keeps the functions of the corporation running without any hassles.
References
Daft, Richard L., (2008). The Leadership Experience. 4th Edition, illustrated, Cengage Learning.
Miner, John B. (2005). Organizational Behavior 1: Essential Theories of Motivation and Leadership. M.E. Sharpe.
