by Connor Rubin
General Motors is one of the worlds’ largest automakers. It (directly) employs 219,000 people and earns annual revenues of $150 billion. But in the face of daunting recalls numbering in the tens of millions and more than a dozen deaths, GM faces a gargantuan problem: how to change an organizational culture with over 200,000 individual elements that make it up. In 1996 the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra faced a conflict in organizational structure similar to the one General Motors is going through now. While these two organizations may seem worlds apart, the ideas that bind or separate organizational cultures cross industrial boundaries.
One thing is absolutely clear—things must change. In the wake of mounting recalls and death tolls, the company - under new CEO Mary Barra - tasked an outside law firm to write a report on what caused these problems. It had one answer: culture. According to the report, GM had a culture where cutting costs was seen as an oppositional force to ensuring quality (Foroohar, 2014). Much as the Atlanta Symphony dealt with dueling organizational cultures - “a world class symphony in a world class city… [or] the best symphony we can afford” (Glynn, 2000) - General Motors faced a similar problem: a world class car, or the car we can afford to build. As evidence has shown, “the car we can afford to build” won out, but lost big in the end.
Sharing information between distinct but symbiotic parts is necessary for the success of any organization. Given various parties different interest, “conflict between ideological elements in the organization's identity seems almost inevitable,” (Glynn, 2000). However, if that conflict results in crucial information being shared, it generally ends up helping the finished product. When one (or both) side(s) stop sharing information, or when one side takes too much power in the intra-organizational debate, you have a total stoppage of quality production. In the case of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra it was a series of strikes, in the case of General Motors it was the recall of almost 30,000,000 cars.
This lack of communication was caused by a feeling of disconnectedness between various parts of these organizations. According to an interview with CEO Mary Barra, General Motors is attempting to shift away from a culture where a car is viewed “as simply a collection of 30,000 parts… [Where people are] experts in this or this without recognizing people don’t buy this or that—they buy a car, and we’ve got to pull it all together, and people have to talk,” (Foroohar, 2014). This step is necessary: “identification is stronger when organizational members perceive a large overlap between those attributes that characterize their professional identity and those that characterize the organizational identity” (Dutton et al. 1994; cited in Glynn 2000). An engineer that may have otherwise noticed a literally fatal flaw in a part design has no reason to if they don’t feel connected to it. If an engineer solely handles issues with one area of the vehicle, they feel less strongly connected to the rest of the vehicle, and by extension, the company.
In the immediate aftermath of the strike, all the various components of the Atlanta symphony came together to project a singular “hybrid identity” (Glynn, 2000). It was only after the strike - when the differences were most pronounced and detrimental - that the two sides began to come together again. In the immediate aftermath of a crisis, the roles and responsibilities of each individual member were made far more clear - this is where the metaphor diverges for the symphony and General Motors. While the strikes were settled with a compromise and agreement, both sides retreated to their various roles - albeit with a better understanding of the other. General Motors must systemically change their roles, from those of passive observers of others work to those positions where they constantly challenge each other to be better. The orchestra simply went back to being musicians with a better appreciation of the board, and the board members simply went back to being board members with a more pronounced appreciation of musicians; their overall organizational identity stayed fairly static. That cannot and should not be the case at General Motors, where the culture (officially or unofficially) was one where passing on bad news to higher ups was frowned upon.
In 2010 when General Motors came out of bankruptcy it called itself the New GM. Four years later, in the aftermath of an engineering crisis, it’s calling itself that once again. Whatever happens to this new-new GM, some things are certain. Dueling cultures in an organization aren’t inherently bad, but when the balance tips too far to one side it can lead to disastrous results. It’s crucial for the company to unify, as the Atlanta Symphony did, and change the way they do things in order to continue to grow.
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Foroohar, Rana. "Mary Barra's Bumpy Ride." Time 06 Oct. 2014: 32-38. Web.
Glynn, Mary A. "When Cymbals Became Symbols: Conflict Over Organizational Identity Within A Symphony Orchestra." Institute For Operations Research and the Management Sciences Cultural Industries 11.3 (2000): 285-98.
I think your comparison between the internal culture at GM and ASO is really compelling. I also think that there is more going on in this dynamic that can help explain the reason why each organization is at different points right now. GM is clearly more concerned with their economic success than becoming the elite producer of a product where as the ASO prioritizes the quality of their craft over their bottom line. Each organization needs some semblance of both, of course. But the ASO may attribute their current success to the nature of how their board members and their musicians, or economic gains and product perfection, is significantly less polarized than the gap between that dynamic at GM. Overall, however, I think that insufficient internal communication created a toxic culture at each organization, which, as we have seen, can be challenging to remedy. Maybe GM's next investment can be buying a ASO soundtrack to play at their next board meeting?
ReplyDeleteCulture is a factor that is both hugely important in an organization's success, and enormously hard to change. I think this is an especially interesting comparison because of the relative sizes of the two organizations. An orchestra is a large organization to be sure, but compared to a corporation the size of GM intra-organizational communication is completely different. The analysis of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra ends with the organization coming together once more to be productive as a group, through communication. I think you're correct to question GM's ability to do the same, considering it's size - I certainly would.
ReplyDeleteComparing the ASO to GM was very creative. I think you make a valid argument about the importance of communication between members or parts of an organization. Both in the cases of ASO and GM demonstrate how economics can be a large source of conflict due to the way it can affect other aspects of the organization, such as GM making a low quality product which then led to recalls. This highlights how effective communication and transparency within an organization can be crucial for success.
ReplyDeleteInteresting comparison. Although both organizations differ from each other in their work area and obviously also in their size, the importance of good communication between the different parts of the organizations, but also a good understanding of the other parts' work, is necessary to be successful as a whole. I am just curious to know, however, how a company like GM is planning to apply the tool of communication to improve the quality of their cars since the sheer size of the company can make communication definitely harder. The much smaller ASO, however, still had problems of communication between the different parts of the organization because of missing trust between the musicians and the board. I guess there is just no general solution and every organization has to establish their own way to improve the communication between their members.
ReplyDeleteAs a musician and someone with prior experience in arts-based non profit organizations, I can appreciate firsthand some of the many issues that face organizations such as the Atlanta Symphony. Much like GM, the ASO is an inherently complex organizations with many variables, and as a result, lots of room to make mistakes from time to time. And while, as you point out, there are definite commonalities between the two situations, there are some important distinctions, most importantly that of business structure. While GM is a large corporation with thousands of employees and millions of customers focused on generating profit for its stockholders, the Atlanta Symphony is a non-profit 501(c)3 dedicated to preserving what has become an antiquated art form. I think you provide a great viewpoint in this piece, but I would not go as far as to say the situations are analogous in their occurrence or solution.
ReplyDeleteJust as Mary Barra felt that GM products need to be thought of by employees as whole cars instead of parts, I thought it was very interesting how you felt employees in companies each make up distinct parts of a company that needs to be thought of as a whole. Essentially, each person in a company is a cog in a giant machine, and in order to run smoothly and efficiently, each cog must be well-oiled and run symbiotically with the others. Reading your post, I was able to affirm my beliefs that two of the most important factors for employees to maintain an identity in their company is pride in their work and communication between separate kinds of employees (GM being blue-collar workers and white-collar workers; the orchestra being the musicians and the board members). In order for a person to truly care about the work he does, I feel that he has to both believe that the work he does for his company does good for society, and to a greater extent, that the work he does is essential to making the company he works for run. In order to accomplish this, there must be communication between both separate parties (again, blue-collar workers and white-collar workers when using GM as an example). Freedom of communication between different parties in the workplace makes every employee feel on a more even level in the company. They feel that what they do is equally important to what others do and that their opinion is valued. This feeling of equality in a major company will lead employees to having more pride in their work. Instead of associating themselves as employees who happen to work for a company, employees start to associate themselves by the name of that company. They come together as a whole to create a single identity. And when your work identity merges with personal identity, you tend to work harder to create a better product, as you will feel defined by how well your company is doing. I absolutely agree that GM employees should see their jobs as making cars rather than putting parts of metal together, as this will create a more powerful identity for them. Then, they may be able to communicate further with other company employees and begin to see themselves as a symbiotic part of the company they work for rather than a separate entity who happens to work for a company. This will create greater efficiency, a greater likelihood to discover and fix mistakes rather than cover them up, and a general positive atmosphere for the company.
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ReplyDeleteI think you did a great job in identifying the problems with GM’s culture.
As a whole, GM positions itself to supply a large number cars with affordable prices. As the scale of an operation increases, it becomes more difficult and costly to promote an open culture. Furthermore, because GM isn’t positioning itself to be the most innovative company; thus, employees probably place less emphasis on sharing information (innovation requires creative abrasion).
So, I think that the nature of GM’s business lends itself to its current culture.
There is often a rush to over-mystify company culture; so, last year, I conducted a field study at Google-Ann Arbor to examine how it large companies promote open cultures. I found that cultures can be influenced by organizational structure. In general, when I compared Google to other companies, I found that a flat formal organizational structure helped Google to maintain an open culture ( perceptions measured with Hackman’s Job Diagnostic Survey) . Attributes of a flat structure include fewer “middle managers”, rotational assignments, and required use of formal channels for relaying multi-directional feedback.I look forward to seeing the kinds of formal organizational changes GM will undergo in order to position itself for a more desirable culture. As stated before, these changes can be costly, Google has an entire department, People Operations, dedicated to managing company culture.