Top Management Team Toyota Analyze Structure, Controls

¶ … top management team Toyota analyze structure, controls culture implement strategy fulfill corporate mission. Step One: After reviewing background materials strategy structure, controls, culture, readi article: Norihiko Shirouzu. Management at Toyota In February 2011, Toyota announced that it would complete a voluntary recall of nearly 2.1 millions vehicles in had sold in 2006 and 2007 (Toyota Recall, 2011). This piece of news is not in fact new and unexpected, as Toyota has been following an ascendant path of recalls throughout the past recent years.

The safety and security issues faced by Toyota can be linked to a series of components, three of which are of the utmost importance -- the organizational culture, the organizational structure and the control mechanisms used by the automobile maker. The combination of these three items has led to a situation in which the safety of the Toyota automobiles has been jeopardized and the organizational mission of the Japanese manufacturer has not been attained.

However all of the three elements are crucial, the scope of the current endeavor is to assess the role of the organizational culture in the propagation of safety issues. At a general level, the organizational culture is understood as the totality of values, beliefs and morals which guide and create the relationships within an organizational climate and which in turn impacts the overall functionality of the economic agent. Human resource management theories argue that a positive organizational culture fosters communication and motivation, which in turn fosters performance and success.

A negative organizational culture on the other hand would stimulate the emergence of negative results due to lack of motivation and low performances. In the case of Toyota, the organizational culture is based on a complex set of principles which make up the already popular Toyota Way.

The Toyota Way is composed from principles dealing with respect for people, improvement, long-term sustainability, emphasis of perfecting production, base production on demand (pull rather than push), a culture focused on production, transparency or the support of the professional formation of the employees (Liker, 2004). But despite the fact that they practice good values, the actual implementation of all their 14 principles is discretionary. For instance, while they invest significantly in production volumes, they tend to neglect testing.

One explanation in this sense could be represented by the fact that they do not produce more items for inventory purposes, and base production on demand. This means that they are always under pressure to deliver the orders they registered and they seldom have the time to ensure safety. Another cultural dimension which would influence the safety of the vehicles and generate recalls would be linked to the emphasis placed on the quality of production.

The production process is essential at Toyota and the focus falls on the completion of the production within the utmost highest standards. In such a context, the perception is that the production process is indeed perfect and flawless, and less emphasis is placed on testing, as it is believed that the execution of the vehicles was faultless. Then, there is also the pressure to gain more market share and to overcome the competition.

This objective of becoming the supreme global leader is creating tensions at managerial level due to differences of opinions as to the values which should be prioritized. In this context, decision making processes are delayed and inefficient, as the managers cannot agree on a course of action to suit all expectations. Also, these pressures are also felt at the level of the employees, who continually seek to develop themselves and to embrace change. Somehow, the emphasis on safety has become lost in this complex and contradicting culture.

Overall, control and structure do generate recalls, but it is the culture that fosters the environment in which safety is neglected. As Saporito, Schuman and Szczesny (2010) put it: "What makes the recall since November of nearly 9 million Toyotas that are susceptible to uncontrolled acceleration and balky brakes such a shocking story is not so much the company's manufacture of some shoddy cars or even its dreadful.