Gore Organizational Culture

Organizational Culture and Working Hours at W.L. Gore & Associates, Inc.

-A case study

-By Group 6

William.S

Ramachandran.B

Ngyuen Van Do

Table of Contents

Organizational Culture and Working Hours at W.L. Gore & Associates, Inc. 1

Table of Contents 2

Case Summary 3

Case Analysis 4

Challenges and solutions 5

Conclusion 5

References 6

Case Summary

W. L. Gore & Associates, Inc. (1958) in Newark, Delaware; with Wilbert Gore and Genevieve Gore as its founders is a company that produces products for health care and leisure industries using polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE). This private enterprise has its offices in more than 25 countries apart from the US and has an employee strength of over 10,000.

Gore has earned several

The founders of the company believe in people oriented achievement model based on Theory Y of Douglas McGregor that enables wider participation. This model empowers all its employees working worldwide in 32 countries. It is a shared leadership based on the idea that all employees can share all the burdens and responsibilities in all types of organizational circumstances (Pearce and Conger, 2003). The company also emphasizes on creating an environment wherein an employee can develop into a “total person”.

This company is run without titles and conventional structural arrangement. It has self-managed teams where leadership is natural and team effort is encouraged. Formal authority is not given to any one person. According to Gore HR policy, leadership has to be earned and not created. This process of “natural leadership” is gained by the employees by demonstrating special knowledge skill or experience.

Gore’s HR policy finds close supervision less motivating to the employees. If they are mentored and given support, the efficiency of the employees improves. Each associate is assigned a “sponsor” to help him to be a good fit to the needs of the team. A positive supervisory influence given by the sponsor enables the employee to work

There is ingenuity and creativity among the associates in solving organisational problems. All these show that there is a positive employee behavior with positive work group culture in the organization without external pressure. The company values it's employees with motivating HR policies and the employees are committed to the company on a long-term basis.

Challenges and solutions

One risk because of the shared leadership model is the over-committing to tasks by the associates, more than what he or she is capable of. Sometimes risks of an unhealthy relationship between associates can also be detrimental to the company.

Because there is no sole reliability on a centralized leadership to make decisions, authority is being pushed out to operating teams that are better equipped to take the right decision at the right time, and this will lead to quick decisions.

Since during the team formation, all the roles of the associates are clearly defined based on their skills and knowledge and broadly elucidated during the task negotiation process, there is a little scope for tensions within the team and for a bad influence of an employee to the