Case 26: W.L. Gore and Associates.
1) In terms of its management and method of achieving objectives, Gore’s associates is very unique. Some impressive components of Gore Company are how the workforce/associates is set up in terms of innovation and cohesiveness, involvement of coaches and building and promoting of relationships and how less authoritative and hierarchical the company is. This is based on the fact that employees address each other by their first name and they are not obliged to disclose all information to their superiors, building company cohesiveness. It can also be seen that the company is well managed due to their sales level and ability to expand throughout the globe. These practices have broken the stereotypes taught in business school.
2) As unique as these companies are to one another, the competitive edge focuses around two main factors which are differentiation and quality. The primary goal of W.L. Gore was to create differentiated products to satisfy customer needs using PTFE and ePTFE methods and styles, clearly using a broad differentiation strategy as they appealing to a variety of customers in the areas of Electronics, Fabrics, Industrial Materials and Medicine. …show more content…
Gore is that of their differentiated approach to leadership. This included many aspects such as having a variety of leaders such as plant leaders and functional leaders to handle various special tasks without consolidation of higher management. Also the reduction of job titles and hierarchy level allowed for better flow of information in the company which meant that there were faster transfers of information between associates which would contain ideas that the company can use to maintain or improve their current competitive advantage. Another aspect to maintaining their competitive advantage was through the use of rewards which were linked to achieving their goals and