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Environmental pressures

Introduction
According to Sorensen (2002), he describes the organization environment as the regulative, normative, and cognitive structures and activities that provide the firm’s activities with stability and meaning. In this structures, the firm tend to face many pressures from within itself and from outside. The organization pressures normally produce the net effect of more homogeny in the organization’s structures. In this report, I will present a table of three organizational and three environmental pressures in the organization and rank the pressures according to their influence. The report will also explain how the environmental and organizational pressures impact the financial perspective of the company. Finally, the paper will explain how the organization reacted to the pressures and at least propose strategies to reduce the identified environmental and organizational pressures.

Organizational and environmental pressures
The environmental and organizational pressures are usually the reason organizations change. The environmental pressures arise from the external sources while organizational pressures arise from sources within the organization and deal with integration, collaboration, growth, leadership moves, and identity (Sorensen, 2002).

Organizational pressures
Environmental pressures
Identity pressure
Fashion pressure
“New broom” pressure

Reputation and credibility
Growth pressure
hyper competition pressure

Environmental and organizations pressures in the organization
The environmental pressure normally occurs when the organization’s resource base decreases because of reduced demand for sales and products, bad investment decisions and a decrease in the market. Organizational and environmental pressure are essential when going through change and being able to manage the pressures help in preserving the identity of the organization in the marketplace and also determining failure and success factors.

The environmental pressures are essential to an organization. The reputation and credibility usually depend on how the organization reacts to the environmental pressures (Akin et al. 2009). An organization will face a crisis that present opportunities to boost or even destroy their reputation. However, the way the organization responds and actions it takes to address the crisis will determine the impact of its reputation. When working at Toyota, the company faced a recall crisis. The investigators in the case exposed the major flaws in the organizational culture and, as a result, the confidence of consumer’s dropped. As a result, the company decided to provide its past customers who bought a new car up to one and a half years of maintenances as a thank you for sticking with the company. The company made some changes; however, it did its best to protect its reputation and credibility.

Hyper-competition pressure normally affects how the firm responds to their consumers and competitors to cater for the increasingly rapid pace of the business. In Toyota, the Toyota Racing Development tends to differentiate itself with the hypercompetitive racing business in technology innovation (Stockstrom et al. 2006). So as to always be ahead of competitors, the Toyota Racing development usually evolves its racing software and to lead, the company must always be the first to adopt new technology. The company considers working with Microsoft that helps it to be at the forefront of the racing technology. The fashion pressure includes the organization cogently trying to keep up with trends from other industrial and organizational practices (Akin et al. 2009). About the fashion pressure, Toyota opened a bank that benchmarks the General Motors Acceptance Corp. The establishment of Toyota Financial Savings Bank aimed at emulating the success of GMAC in providing home mortgages and also vehicle financing for dealers and consumers.

The organizational pressure includes identity, growth, and new broom pressure. Growth is very important to organizations and failure to recognize growth can result in the organization being left behind. The phenomenon of the company is to continue improving and with this philosophy, the company has been improving every single day and also embracing change at every opportunity. The managers are usually responsible for writing annual growth plans and submitting them to their supervisors. The managers will decide on what he needs to grow and every quarter they sit and review the growth plans with the bosses.

The new broom pressure considers a change at the senior management level as being a catalyst for significant change in the organization (Akin et al. 2009). In March, Toyota did announce its biggest management overhaul since Akio Toyoda took over in 2009 (Stockstrom et al. 2006). The reorganizations occurred so as to enable the company to handle growth. The change happened as a way of rebuilding the organization where people would be able to take ownership of their work when entering the new phase of the sale of vehicles. With the new idea, the company appointed Takeshi Uchiyamada as the chairman and he has been the driving force behind the Prius, hybrid car.

The identity pressure is normally important in an organization and mostly to the minds of employees, investors, and customers (Akin et al. 2009). When a company has a powerful identity, it tends to increase the value of the company and also provides the motivation and direction for employees. The organization’s identity also enables clients to select the company for a business relationship easily. In May 2006, Toyota launched a rebranding campaign that was a technique to change its image (Stockstrom et al. 2006).

Impact from financial perspective

Every organization should work within a framework of particular environmental forces, and there is a continuous interaction between the environment and the organization. Organizations are usually not the same, and they tend to respond to a change in a different way (Sorensen, 2002). The changes have had a positive impact on the company’s financials. When Toyota created the hybrid vehicles, the public loved them, and the global sales of the gasoline-electric cars surpassed five million in an area where the innovation experienced great skepticism. Both organizational and environmental forces drove the company’s decision to make the hybrid car. Toyota saw an opportunity and decided to make a change in responding to the environmental changes.

Impact of the environmental and organizational pressures personally

The organization usually operates in an environment that presents threats and opportunities to it. Hence, the way the organization will take the best use of the opportunities and threats imposed is a matter of major concern. The organizational and environmental pressure has had a great impact on me and mostly with concerns about the change in managers. As Toyota has been experiencing a change in the past year, it also considered making some changes in its management. With some of the changes, the company considered appointing a new manager who would oversee the change process that resulted in the success of the change. Toyota made some changes in the attendance policy. The management considered making the change and amending the policy that has had a great impact on all employees as it provide a more work-life balance to staff.

Organization reaction to the changes
Based on the identified pressures in question one, the company did react to the changes in a proactive way that helped in securing its place as one of the top three car manufacturers. The company did publicize its strategic commitment towards the organizational change that integrated the environmental goals into its business processes. While considering the different changes that it has been making, Toyota enhances its existing capabilities in maintaining a sustainable competitiveness. When reacting to the pressures, the company continues to search for new development capabilities before its capabilities can become totally obsolete in the competitive market. The way the company reacts to the pressure enable Toyota to be more successful than most automobile firms.

Strategies to reduce environmentally and organizational pressure
A strategy that the organization can use in reducing the organizational pressure of fashion pressure has a strategic vision. Having a vision is very important because, with a clear vision, it will be able to attract the right strategy (Sorensen, 2002). In the case of the fashion pressure changes, if the organization has a vision of where it wants to be, the pressure of imitating the strategies of other organizations will reduce. A strategy for the growth pressure is for the organization management to create a culture of growth. The research and development team should have the necessary resources so that they can be able to come up with new ideas that may be helpful in the growth of the company.

Conclusion
Change tends to be a risky activity and most organizational changes fail. The pressure to changing usually comes from the internal, organizational pressure and external, environmental pressure. In this report, I discussed three environmental and organizational changes about the organization I worked for.

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Management Questions

Question One
Level five leaders can drive an organization to success because of his integration of humility and professional will. The manifestation of humility gives the level-five leader a higher chance than the level-four leader. The level-four leaders emphasize on commitment towards the organizational goals, as well as the achievement of high-performance standards. However, level -5 leaders will achieve better results than level-4 leaders because of the practice of humility. Humility refers to a modest or low view of one’s importance. The demonstration of humility for level five leaders means that the leaders do not allow their executive positions blind their intentions. Humility enables level five leaders to focus on driving the company to success (Collins, 2001). Humble executives perceive success as a joint effort rather than his individual effort. The leader thus encourages teamwork and motivates employees to work towards attaining the overall organizational objective. Additionally, a humble level-five leader interacts with the employees by allowing open bottom-up; top-bottom communication. The organization reaches a consensus through joint decision-making rather than executive decision-making. A level five leader focuses on driving the organization to success irrespective of his executive position. The level five leader thus looks beyond his term and strives to ensure that the organization succeeds beyond his leadership terms. In contrast, a level-four leader is short-sighted and strives to achieve organizational success up to when his leadership term expires.

Question Two
The right employees are an organization’s most valuable assets thus the need for an organization to ascertain it has the right people. The right people for any organization are self-motivated and thus possess the inner drive to achieve the best result. The right people are willing to make sacrifices and go the extra mile to achieve organizational goals. The right people also strive to surpass their set targets and drive the organization towards success. The right people also focus on the long-term goals of the organization, and this engage in strategies, to ascertain the attainment of the goals. Personally, I could be right for an organization that supports career growth and advancement. The provision of training and career advancement opportunities i.e. promotions would motivate me to keep working for the success of the organization. An organization should engage in a mutual working relationship with the employees. The employees provide their output thus enabling the organization to realize profits while the organization provides employees with a chance to progress. I would also be right for an organization that provides its employees with a degree of autonomy. An organization that is allowing employees to take responsibility for their actions and also engage in decision-making fosters innovativeness.

Question Four
I agree with the statement “good is the enemy of great”. The good mentality puts individuals at a comfort zone that results in relaxation and lack of effort. A good company becomes comfortable and complacent with their accomplishments. The good mentality pushes organizations to focus on what to do to become great rather than what not to do or what to stop doing (Collins, 2001). An organization can easily be satisfied with the achievement of good that they fail to make the effort to improve and achieve greatness. An organization that is good may acquire solace from their goodness and thus put no more effort to be great. An organization that is good attains the basic level of achievement. An organization that is good can easily be overwhelmed by competition. In contrast, an organization that is great sets itself apart from its competitors. Good is an enemy of great because it prevents risks taking. An organization that is comfortable will make no effort to take risks and disrupt the status quo. The element of being good creates the mentality that an organization is functioning as required. The perception thus leads to inflexibility towards change as an organization feels there is no need to change. A good organization fears that risk taking moves may result in failure thus disrupting the good streak. The good mentality thus hampers an organization’s efforts to being great.

Question Five
According to Jim Collins, a level-5 leader is self-confident and has no qualms preparing their successors for the position. The level 5-leader must be self-confident on his ability to hire competent people who can take over as leaders. A level-5 leader has long-term interest for the organization thus strives for overall organizational success rather than success during his term of office. A level-5 leader is also modest and humble and associates organizational success with team effort rather that his contributions. The level-5 leader is also a hands-on leader who works with his subordinates rather than delegate and a practice hands-off approach. Individuals who want to become level-5 leaders must develop humility and act in a humble way (Collins, 2001). The individual must also learn to ask for help. The request for assistance is not a sign of weakness, but it is an indicator of genuine strength as it allows an individual to call upon the expertise of a qualified individual. A leader striving to become alevel-5 leader must learn to take responsibility for failings. A level five leader does not engage in finger pointing so as to evade the accusation. The potential level-five leader must learn how to appreciate team effort and receive recognition of failures as a team. An individual who desires to become a level-5 leader must develop his sense of discipline. Discipline is an essential virtue in the workplace that pushes an individual to remain focused to a course despite the hurdles. A discipline leader will not back out of a challenging task at the first sight of trouble. Instead, he will be the source of encouragement to his team.

Question Eight

The biggest surprise that I encountered in this unit arose from Jim Collins book. Specifically, I was surprised by the revelation that the first step in driving a company towards success involves the hiring and placement of the right employees. Personally, I have always thought that the success of an organization lies in its ability, to create a new direction for the organization. I thought that an organization must first create a strategic vision that gives employees a sense of direction. Jim Collins revelation is thus objects mu beliefs. An organization that hires the right employees is bound to grow to greatness. The right workforce understands their responsibility and is willing to go the extra mile and ascertain organizational success. I was surprised to understand that an organization can have the right people but with the wrong assignment. I learned that the management must ascertain they understand the skills and competencies of every employee thus establish where each employee can be most productive.

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