Building unified organizational culture at Hightowers Petroleum Company

Hightowers Petroleum Company a middle sized company is initiating a project with the objective of unifying the different personalities that make up the company's workforce. This objective stands as the broad objective in trying to bridge the cultural differences among the organization's workforce. In the organization differences of the employee's background have brought about different cultures that seem to result in conflict upon attempts in moderating the workforce to observe common values, practices and perspectives on the organization's pertinent issues. In organization's where there are no commonly held perspectives, values or norms, there is a likelihood of disintegration of objectives owing to lack of a common culture (Hofstede, 2001). In an instance where the organization's workforce cannot share a common way of doing things, then it is not possible to articulate the process in archiving success (Kelly, 2006; Rosen, 2007).

It is the project's intentions to assess how the different attributes of the diverse workforce impacts on the beliefs held by others in the organization. These diversities will be evaluated for their potentials in impacting on a possible unified organization culture and creating a collectivism attitude in the workplace. It is not the projects intention to eradicate individualism rather, foster an understanding of the individual differences and build a collectivism culture that incorporates a wide range of cohesive diversities. The diversities incorporated in the collective culture will facilitate a dynamic culture in the organization that is capable of responding to dynamics in the industry and the market. The resultant collective culture will also foster a comprehensive understanding of the customers and their cultural, morals and values (Burman R., Ligen D.R., & Klimoski R.J., 2003). This aspect once attained will; guarantee the organization's capability in attending to upcoming challenges in markets dynamics and foreign investments opportunities.

Organization/Team History, Development, and Growth

Hightowers Petroleum Company traces its roots back in time where it started as a branch of a family business. The business founding proprietor, Stephen Hightower had moved from the 1940s cotton fields to set up the business in Middletown Ohio. The fact that the founding proprietor was new in the town the new business was set up presents difference between the cultures of the host town and those of the proprietor. Right from the onset the business employed persons from different background to serve as their workforce. The company did not have a liberty to employ labor force from their related background since Ohio was an upcoming state and most of the inhabitants came from different regions.

Once the company started its operations its target was to meet the need for fuel one customer at a time. This objective placed the organization in a position to target customer needs for fuel and attend to their needs with dedication. With time the organization continued to experience growth and embrace different clients from different backgrounds. Although the company has grown considerably to date, it still upholds the value of meeting the client's needs on an individual basis. This makes the organization prone to being dynamic and exposed to the different cultures depending on their clienteles.

As the company embraces growth, its workforce has grown in size and diversity with there being an inclusion of a majority of the races in the region. The expansion the company has taken in opening branches around the globe has also considerably added to the diversities and differences inherently present among its workforce. The company has also grown in terms of its customer basis experiencing different cultures from the relations they hold with their customer base.

The diverse workforce embraced by the organization may seem to have come by default. This is partially the case since it is not possible to engage in business operations in foreign regions without involving the locals. On the other hand, it served as a strategy to incorporate a region's culture and values in the organization's activities for articulations of customer satisfaction measures and smooth relation in the market.

Organization/Team SWOT Analysis (Strengths and Weaknesses)

Over the years in the company's operations, it has attained a strong leadership from the company head offices through to the business leaders and operations heads in sub-branches. The company's recruitment policy has seen to it that leaders in new branches are locals in the region and the workforce comprises of a representative proportion of the composition in the population. This aspect works to guarantee that on top of the guidance provided from the head office, the branch leaders have a positive input to the operation in relation to the dynamics in the region. Again the leaders appointed in the branches are seen to have an inclusive approach in decision making. The strong sense in leadership has contributed to the strength business operations. Additional to leadership, the company has strengths in customer service facilitated by the employees' ability to relate to the customers.

The Strong brand presence and a wide range of products in the market has also resulted owing to the relations between the company, it employees and consumers. Diversity in line with market dynamics is perpetuated by the integration of different culture that fosters deeper understanding of the market dynamics. As a result of the above the company has earned high sales and, accumulated potentials in infrastructural growth. The company also has a reliable leadership in the board of directors who allow and foster diversity in the composition of the workforce and, a diverse composition of customer that presents desirable sustainability in the market.

Despite the strengths the company has, it has weaknesses including low margins in revenues, poor planning in strategy and poor measures of performance. Additionally the company's management team has no plans for developments. This means that an ad hoc measure in relation to the expansion of business is used since no guidelines are in place for such development. The company is also seen to concentrate more on the high revenue customers putting them at risk of collapsing should any of the customers walk out.

Organizational/Team Context (Opportunities and Threats)

Among the opportunities the company has is one for having a diverse customer base given their worldwide operations, diverse workforce and the wide range of products. The company can also be in a position to capitalize more on their revenues since oil products comprise of the world's highest expenditure items. It is also possible for the company to fragment their customers into cluster owing their diversity. The fragmentation will allow the company to band the customers in accordance with their special needs and attend to those needs with greater efficiency at a minimal cost (Gurau, 2008).

The changes in the energy policies promoting consumption of oil products present an opportunity for the company to expand their revenue base. The company has an opportunity given advances in more energy products to venture in another source of energy in line with the market trends and customer preferences for an alternative.

Owing to the company's concentration on limited volumes of the products to comprise the larger share of their supply, it is at a risk of losing out on their revenues by a big margin with the changes occurring in the industry. Competitors in the same industry are seen to diversify their supply to distribute their range of product supplied in an effort to spread their risks. Given that the company capitalizes on their top customer as their main revenue earners, a threat looms in the form of possible losses in the event their high end customers fall into a credit crunch. The company also risks tying up most of its trading capital on a few numbers of clients.

SWOT DIAGRAM

Strengths

Leadership

Strong customer needs articulation

Diverse Industry base through product range

Reliable proactive board of directors

Accumulated infrastructural growth potential

An inclusive leadership style

Strong brand presence

Opportunities

Diverse customer base

High expenditure volumes in oil products

Favorable changes in oil energy policies

Potential to increase product range through alternative energies

Potential to bund customer in accordance with their needs

Weakness

Limited revenue margins

Poor strategic planning measures

Poor measures of performance

Lack of management development plans

Threats

Potential losses through credit crunch owing to concentration on few high revenues customers

Limited trade capital following trade credit to few high-revenue customers

SWOT Analysis Evaluation

Given the SWOT analysis presented above, Hightower Petroleum Company has potential to retain its existing business operations as well as capability to attain desirable growth in the industry. The company's strong and diverse leadership presents the company with the ability to embrace diversity and higher understanding of the market and consumer dynamics. The external environment comprising of the industry competitors, consumers, and regulators can be put into the ideal context given the diversities in understanding from different leaders and employees. The understanding of the market, industry and consumer diversity will leverage the organization in coming up with strategy to counter potential competitors, meet articulately consumer needs and relate to the market in a culture that properly fits.

Given the opportunities the company has in venturing in alternative energy initiatives, the company needs to identify among it a pool of leaders, project leaders who will undertake to assess potential expansion ventures. The project leaders should ensure other employees are involved and the come up with a plan for the expansion. Taking advantage of the supportive board of directors, the project leaders should present their findings and proposal to the board for approval and funding.

Since the company has an accumulated capacity for infrastructural developments, the plans for proposed innovation and expansion venture are likely to receive support. The supportive board aspect will target to counter the company's weakness in developing management plans and threat of losing market owing to competitive innovations. The leaders in the organization should also take initiatives to create with their plan measure to assess progress. This measure will act as yardstick used by the organization to assess how much the investment and efforts put have yielded results.

Evaluations of the Organizational-Level Strategy Relative to HR's Policy

The main goal of the organization is to meet individual customer needs one at a time. This objective targets ensuring that the customer needs are well understood by the employees and that their service performance target the customer needs. The organization's client structure is comprised of a diversified customer range, coming from different back grounds and with different needs. The company's human resource policy seeks to ensure inclusivity of the diverse markets the company operates in by ensuring that the workforce in the various regions the company operates represents the cultures and values observed in the region. This aspect complements the company's core objectives as far as understanding the customer needs since the employees will be able to relate to the customers and integrate what comprises their satisfaction. The employees will also be in a position to align in the most ideal way the company's operation measures to target the relative outcome of their service and good provision (Vanderslice G. & Linshuang L., 2014).

The human resource policy on open inclusivity of all ideas from the employee comes with an added advantage of ensuring that the employees are motivated through contribution to outcome (Gajda & Koliba, 2007). The company is also in a better position to incorporate various views gathered from employee contributions. These contributions, coupled with the human resource's policy on a shared common culture integrating the diversity of the workforce, presents a scenario of minimal conflict as far as difference in backgrounds is concerned. The commonly shared culture presents an environment of understanding, and cooperation among the workforce (Hartnell, Ou, & Kinicki, 2008; Labianca & Brass, 2006). The prevailing environment fosters an opportunity for the employees to share in development and innovative ideas thus allowing for timely developments and innovations. The leadership structure of the organization being strong and focused allow for more ideas to flow on the measure to target customer needs and surpass those need. It is however noted that the leadership of the organization has no planning strategies and outcome assessment modules in place. This compromises the ability of the organization to take up effective developments and to assess their input against output. Although in the end of an activity a desirable outcome may be attained. It is not easy to determine whether the output was optimally deployed for the outcome attained.

Evaluation of the Operating Unit-Level Strategy to Talent Management

Opposed to blacklisting the existing stereotype of individuals in the workforce, the organizations seeks to make the differentiating characteristics more pronounced, well understood, fully appreciated and embraced. This level of appreciation, understanding and acknowledgment will eliminate possible conflicts in interactions (Gajda & Koliba, 2007). Further it allows free intermarry of ideas proceeding to integrate the diverse workforce and cultures into a unified cohesive force (Vanderslice G. & Linshuang L., 2014). The resultant culture is one that upholds dynamics in cultural changes, is unified at targeting common goals and sustainable in future growth needs for the organization.

In order to achieve the main objective in unifying the organization's workforce, an appreciation over the differences existing is made by open forums for sharing and discussions. Additionally, the differences are made known to the workforce by highlighting the relevance of these differences as an invaluable advantage to the organization's successful operations. As Liswood (2009), notes, diversity in the workforce sets stage for incorporation of different perspectives and understanding. The organization then allows employees to take part in decision making sharing their views and discussing possible measures with others. This measure allows employees to feel part of the decision making process and eliminates possible duplication of activities since once a decision is arrived at through extensive discussions, roles are shared.

The sharing of roles is determined by the employees' ability and qualifications to a task as well as considering their background's fitness to the existing scenario or the prospective customer alignments. The discussions focus on articulating customer need with the overall understanding of their organization, culture, value, and preferences. These assessments are carried out throughout the organization with no exceptions. The discussion facilitates the organization to learn customers and their diversities targeting to advance their knowledge of the market and customer profiles (Hartnell et al., 2008).

Recommendations

The strong leaders and the reliable board of directors should formulate a strategic plan covering the growth needs of the organization. The plan should map out the initial internal steps to take attempting the organizational goals. With the ideal leadership and a supportive board, the corporation should also aim at coming up with a formidable plan that leverage the organization towards growth through assessment of each implementation stage. The leaders using their good skills should also involve other staff in coming up with ideas for the growth plan.

Considering the diversity in the composition of the leaders and employees, it should be encouraged within the organization use the diversity to deduce deeper understanding of the customer and market dynamics. The background differences among the employed staff should be used to achieve this advantage. The different backgrounds of the workforce should also be understood among other employees. The understanding will help in that, while discussions take place on making plans, stereotype association on co-workers may not obscure interaction or dilute contributions from the workforce (Hofstede, 2001).

The leaders should make plans involving the employees in coming up with plans to target known and unknown market and consumer diversities. This understanding will mitigate the company's overreliance on limited number of clients and product range. The workforce should also be oriented to work together to secure the company's future by identifying market and consumer trend and accurately predicting potential areas for consideration. The employees should also be engaged to share with the company's management those aspects specific to the market that result in delivery of maximum satisfaction to the customers.

The ad hoc implementation of development plans should be discarded. Instead the organization need to come up with an open to all model too gather input from the employees and engaging the employees in creating a strategy for development. The diversity with the organization will play a key role in ensuring that the strategy in encompassing of the market dynamics and consumer cultures and values. Additional to the creation of the strategic plan, there ought to be measure of evaluating the implemented strategy against realized outcomes. This will facilitate assessment of the more productive implementation measures and determination of the stages where some correction ought to have been made. A stage monitoring assessment tool is needful in coming up with strategic plans. The employees should be involved in creating the stage monitoring and assessment tool so that as they implement their strategy they understand what is expected in each stage.

Conclusions

Diversity in an organization's workforce is of relevance if sufficient measures are deployed to counter possible negative outcomes. In an organization where the market and consumers present a dynamic environment, diversity in the workforce contributes greatly to the attempt to stay in line with the trends and articulate the needs of the market. In the event that an organization fails to embrace and attend to the exiting differences, conflict may result and leading to underperformance or lack of cohesion in goals articulation.

Human resource departments and the managerial teams within an organization are tasked with the duty to ensure that the existing background differences are understood with the organization. The shared understanding of the differences existing owing to backgrounds of individual will perpetuate creation of a commonly understood, appreciated and embraced culture. From the commonly shared culture, it is then possible to target organization cultures and the goals set. Open forum discussions and contributions ought to be encouraged across all level of the organization's structure to allow for growth in employees moral as well as the incorporation of diverse ideas in operations.

In an organization where there is need to achieve growth and innovation, all employees should be considered to be part of the process. Their input on various aspects should be sought and this should be done in a way that no contribution is misjudged. To achieve ultimate comprehension on input made an understanding and embrace of the employees' diverse backgrounds is necessary.