Toyota Corporate Culture Analysis

COLLAPSE

Week 3 – Marie Samalova GF2059 Activity 1 – Definition of culture

It is hard to set up a universal definition of culture as its understanding vary. This difference can be explained by experience of the person and by some national stereotypes. Culture can is a combination of religion, art, habits, traditions, lifestyle and various other factors. Some of these aspects can be very strong for one person or a group but insignificant for some other one.

Organisational culture as a specific sort of culture was defined by various experts with different results. Robbie Katanga defines organizational culture as “consistent, observable patterns of behaviour in organizations”. It consist from repeated behaviour or habits with influence of factors

Company set up in a collectivistic Japanese society based its success on teamwork, long-term orientation, respect and continuous improvement, so called Kaizen philosophy. Jidoka is another part of the Toyota production system. It is system with high level of individual responsibility where every employee can stop the production line if there is some defect of product in order to prevent subsequent work with poor-quality component. Those fact demonstrate that Toyota uses in some extend all seven dimensions of organizational

web model). Cultural Web model describes a corporate culture as six categories (Power Structures, Organizational Structures, Rituals and Routines, Symbols, Control Systems, Myths and Stories) that form the base for the paradigm of the organization. After a short explanation can be easily used by everybody. Compared to that, culture models using typology type is easier to memories however deeper understanding to the picture is much harder and explanation by some expert may be required. Both types of models can be a useful tool for understanding of weaknesses of a company and it can be a first step to improvement by changing the corporate