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Culture change at IBM

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Demonstrate your understanding of organizational culture using the IBM case study in chapters 20-22 of Louis Gerstner's Who Says Elephants Can't Dance?

Given the "GLOBE Dimensions'" theoretical framework, as discussed in Wong and Gerras' article entitled "Culture and Military Organizations," identify and assess the impact of one prominent GLOBE dimension of IBM's culture as described within the assigned Gerstner IBM case study. Because GLOBE dimensions present in degrees, be sure to address if the dimension you discuss is expressed in a "high" or "low" degree within IBM's culture. Next, identify and evaluate Gerstner's leveraging of an "Embedding Mechanism" to help reshape the culture of IBM.

Use the Gerstner IBM case study to give examples of each of these two theoretical frameworks (GLOBE Dimensions and Embedding Mechanisms).

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Organizational culture change at IBM is discussed in a structured manner in this response. The related references are also provided.

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Lou Gerstner joined IBM as the CEO when the company was on the brink of collapse and liquidation. He showed practical leadership qualities and took action that turned IBM around and during this tenure, the stock prices of IBM increased eight times. At IBM Gerstner made the critical decision of keeping the company together, reducing costs in processes and systems, and re-engineering the business process. He considered the marketplace as the main driving force, underlined the technological excellence of IBM, and considered the primary measures of success as customer satisfaction and shareholder value. Gerstner also restructured IBM to reduce bureaucracy, speed up decision-making, and increase productivity. He brought a sense of urgency to the organization, focused IBM on his strategic vision, and strive to satisfy the needs of all employees. His actions were related to restructuring IBM, improving the HRM, and making the processes more efficient. He restructured the information and decision support systems and improved the rewards at IBM (1).

The GLOBE dimensions presented by Wong and Gerras' are performance orientation, assertiveness, future orientation, humane orientation, institutional collectivism, in-group collectivism, gender egalitarianism, power distance, and uncertainty avoidance. The GLOBE cultural dimensions provide a comparison of cultural values and practices. These are measures of societal culture (2).

The impact of one prominent GLOBE dimension of IBM culture is institutional collectivism. ...

Solution provided by:
Hatim Baxamusa, MBA
Education
  • BSc , University of Calcutta
  • MBA, Eastern Institute for Integrated Learning in Management
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