An Analysis of Toyota Case Study

Word Count 1,132

In cooperation of business recently, innovation has been significant increasingly in business management that led many organisations are facing with the change. Stoltzfus et al. (2011) stated that to manage the change effectively, organisations have to recognise the influence of change both in external factors and internal factors in order to cope with the change promptly and not be provide mismanagement (Judge and Douglas, 2009). In case that Toyota had recalled their cars up to 9 million worldwide, Toyota has turned out to be the interesting case study of this era that reflects on their mismanagement (Huq, 2010). The reputation of Toyota gets the impact from the recall series plus, the lately response to the problems and the big amount of fine, market margin and the perceiving of customer on safety have given the severe impact on Toyota (Heller and Darling, 2011) This essay aims to analyse what the major causes behind the problems of Toyota faced basing on the article by Taylor III (2010). The author applies the relevant theories of change management to support the argument in this essay. The recommendations for Toyota are also provided appropriately in order to suggest Toyota to avoid this problem from its management in the future. According to Kim (2010), one of the important failed factors is that Toyota had set the very high goal for their growth in global market even through its previous market had already vary large; thus, it resulted in the big gap on their management, operation and implementation. As regarded to the theory of Nadler and Tushman called congruence model (1997), these became their outputs to control and sustain all the cost, price and product quality to stay in complete, which were more difficult to do so (Burnes, 2009). Corner (2010) described that the mistake of Toyota came from the work production approach that the company has always developed; however, when it was expanded to global the organisational culture which was the invisible direction, it was not able to cover to control in all countries with different cultures. Therefore, this made the Strategic Operations of Toyota unable to remain the completeness in the world class level and seem to be unsuccessful in its managing change (Burnes, 2009).

As indicated by Burnes and Jackson (2011), flexible management is possibly significant for organisations to be success in management of never-ended changing happening in their environment. Therefore, Toyota should have to build more flexibility in its operation both in parent company and subsidiaries. According to the case study by Taylor III (2010), the next point of mistake is that Toyota could not separate to select the proper global strategy, which is the Global Sourcing, or to hire the company to produce some parts and send for sharing to use worldwide. Only the wish to economize the cost, it could not take control as expected but worse was to apply the standard parts with various sizes of car to cut off the cost instead of using specific parts for each model. This made the floor mats, pedal entrapment, and other machinery parts became the unexpected big problems (Corner, 2010). Anon (2010) indicated that beside the production structure, there are some organisational culture conflicts of Toyota that lead to problems. As insisted by Nadler and Tushman (1997), the reliability between mechanisms and patterns of rewards should be in high level, otherwise poor performance, confusion and frustration may result as the wrong signals that sent by organisation. Therefore, as Toyota continued to focus on the external strategic goal by thinking that the organisational cultures that they possess was the holy bible that could be applied to every employee in everywhere. This resulted on the chronic organisational problems. Too much confident in the firm quality and the close organisational culture as well as the hierarchism of the management cause the late on listening. Japanese CEOs never surrendered the iron grip they arranged over the operations both in Japan and abroad, they also continuously made the entire significant decisions in Japan. It can be said that instead of globalizing, Toyota colonized (Taylor III, 2010). According to Kaida (2008), the world in the age of information technology that all the countries in the world can link rapidly, the several of cultures from each and the scope of implementation are widely opened thus; organisations are required to have the effective change management. In case of Toyota, the expansion of power and authority from the mother country to the subsidiaries should be properly divided to make a better standard, to bring out more equality and to improve the process and make the quicker decisions. Toyota

has centralized the important decision in Tokyo so; the implementation in foreign countries will be late and too slow for the local problems. Though in the big country like U.S. that possesses the high sale rate, it also cannot make its own decisions. As stated by Taylor III (2010), U.S. operations have been blocked by Toyota in Japan in order to prevent them being excessively powerful; Toyota in Japan used the antique rule of separate and overcome. Toyota operations were separately kept in a functional structure with the intention of forcing each to report back to Japan, more willingly than arrange around a single headquarters, similar to its main business rivals; Honda and Nissan. The cars that sale in U.S. market were designed and selected from Japan, but the fact is that U.S. shall have the right to choose and decide as it must know and understand better than Japan about the demand in the market. Moreover, the solutions to problems always have to wait for the CEO from Japan. And this made the previous solution of Toyota come out so late and not up to date with the events. The Japanese and American units obviously become visible to be a not-well fit due to their cultural and temperament. Before decisions can be done, the Japanese requires intensive documentation, whereas the Americans have a tendency to be more annoyed and instinctive (Taylor III, 2010). As mentioned by Paton et al. (2008), in order to managing change effectively, organisations have to concern on communication and interaction in the operation. According to Heller and Darling (2011), Toyota leaders must give important to the communication aspect since to communicate with the groups that important for both internal and external such as, beside the Marketing Communication, the relationship building with the shareholders or other public and their employees itself shall be done to 1) communicate and make understanding about the policy direction and companys strategic that change according to the new stream to get to know in all level and every organisational areas, and 2) communicate and solve the crisis that take place and may result as high impact that rapidly create damages in the short period of time.

Reference

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