Organizational Culture at HP
...acing uniqueness and encourage internal competition, while working toward a shared objective. HP has cultivated a team-based, participative culture throughout its history, oriented primarily around its culture of high performance. What makes the HP Way unique, though, is the seriousness with which values are treated as a management tool. Among the ways that Hewlett, Packard, and their successors have managed the organization is management by walking around (MBWA), the open-door policy, and management by objective (MBO). HP's leaders ensure the company's base pay is competitive in every region where they operate. There is a positive belief in the future of HP, so management constantly upgrades to be consistant with the times. HP focuses on a strong work environment for employees to succeed in, which helps contribute to the organization's success as a whole. Though HP maintains a unique organizational culture, it has its weaknesses with its constant innovations and employee downsizing. The HP culture has been heavily influenced by the company's engineering, innovative heritage; “Invent” is the company slogan. HP attempts to keep its employees more adaptable and responsive to correspond with its advancement. HP is increasingly attempting to establish a common set of holistic, explicit statements that reflect an interlinked set of values and commitments to contribute to cultural cohesion and a decentralized structure. HP's values-based decision-making process can, however, proactively address a broad range of legal and ethical dilemmas. These clearly defined values provide employees with the necessary tools and conceptual framework to make independent decisions, which, in turn, can increase the company's vulnerability to employee misconduct. This misconduct has the ability to damage management focus, profitability, brand image, and overall reputation. Another dilemma with HP's innovation are the increasing costs of modernizing the organization. To reduce costs and avoid layoffs, HP instituted two new policies: downsizing and redeployment (never really mention redeployment in detail... should you just delete it?) When a company seeks to cut operating costs and wants to be improve management techniques, they profess firing (downsizing) employees, whether they are managers or hourly workers, to be the answer to all of their problems. The “satisficing” objectives for HP’s downsizing beyond mere payroll savings include: improved communications within the company, swifter decision-making capabilities, refocusing of company energies on new markets, improved service for customers, better control of cos...