TEAM 4: Leanne Whittington, Jose Velez Millet, Stan Pakkianathan, Marco Ugolotti
The case of Sun Hydraulics horizontal management model provides an interesting example of a leadership method that goes against conventional management styles. The company’s horizontal management system is unique, innovative, and provides a great deal of independence to employees since it recognizes its diversity as a unique characteristic and strength and it’s been able to maximize the talents and creativity from their employees. In order to ensure employees follow the founder’s ethical and business vision, Sun Hydraulics developed a core of people who share the same values and persistent in his approach to achieve 10 years of success.
The empowerment provided to employees has helped overall, but is not the main reason of the company success. SWOT analysis in the other hand has definitely help them specify the goals and objectives of the business as well as identifying the internal and external factors that are favorable and unfavorable in achieving the goals and objectives of the company. Bob Koski developed a business with a unique structure that has been very successful, but we do not know how the organization will be able to continue to grow while maintaining Bob’s original vision in whole. While we all have seen the company success in the past years, moving forward the next 25 years, a vertical structure will help employees to be focus on the company goals. Moreover, the potential expansion in a foreign country or even in different area of the same country might require different motivation factors base on the different cultures.
In the event of an expansion in a foreign country, we’ll agree that the Horizontal structure will not be able to define goals if not driven by a core team or senior management as well as define and follow any industry standards for safety, quality and environment. All those standards were created in order to