Organizational Behavior Chapter17 Case2 Q1-2

Chapter 17
Case incident 2: Wegmans

1. Would you characterize Wegmans’s culture as strong or weak? Why? How is the strength of the culture at Wegmans likely to affect its employees, particularly new hires?
We think it is a strong culture. In a strong culture the organization’s core values are both intensely held and widely shared. In this case, we can see that the presidents of Wegmans have continued its tradition of taking care of its employees. Employees in Wegmans are proud to say they work at Wegmans. And it is this kind of corporate culture that makes the employees driven, happy and loyal to the company. So we recognize it as a kind of strong culture.
Effects on employees: 1) The strength of the culture at Wegmans makes its employees realize their values. And it let them view working for the grocer as their career. 2) This culture, which focuses on taking care of employees, brings employees handsome pay and college scholarships. This gives them a satisfaction on the material level. 3) For new hires, they will be encouraged to work hard, because they know what they can get from the company. And they will be proud to be a part of this company because it is actually difficult to get into it. What’s more, they will get much help from tenure colleagues which will support them to “grow up”. 4) This culture can make employees loyal to the company, which can reduce the turnover.

2. Wegmans attempts to maintain its core cultural values by hiring individuals who are passionate about the food industry and by staffing new stores partly with existing employees. What are some advantages and disadvantages of trying to impose a similar culture throughout different areas of a company?

Advantages: 1) It contributes to making employees from different areas of a company to work under the unified values. This can assure the quality of services and products at the same level. It can make the company more cognizable for customers and make them remember the unique services and products. 2) It is helpful for a multinational company to manage. If there is a similar culture throughout different areas of a company, the company can treat employees equally and avoid employees’ dissatisfaction caused by the feeling of inequality. 3) It also helps the company to cultivate easily professional managers who are suitable for the company. It is because one manager, no matter where he comes and no matter where he was trained, he can adapt to the working environment get the support from his subordinates very easily they are exposed to the same culture.

Disadvantages: 1) It is hard for the company to localize and get into the local culture if it imposes a similar culture throughout different areas of a company. 2) It is possible that there will be some culture conflicts which will do harm to the development of the company. 3) A similar culture throughout different areas may restrain innovation which is beneficial to the development of the company. People are in the situation of group thinking, that is, they think in the same way. This cannot bring any new ideas on the development of the company.