Ford Motor CompanyOrganization Challenges, Structure, Culture,

Life Cycle and Recommendations

Greg Bermon, Kevin Granville, Joe Sanford, Dave Westwood

12/10/2010

Table of Contents

Topic Page

Introduction 3

Organization Challenges 3

Organization Structure 7

Organization Culture 12

Organization Life Cycle 17

Recommendations 21

Group Challenges 22

Conclusion 23

Work Log 24

Works Cited 25

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Introduction

This document will discuss how Ford Motor Company’s organization works. It

will go into further detail about the organization’s culture, its life cycle, and the

challenges it faces. Also Ford’s main goal “Ford is here to serve”, will be looked at in

greater detail on how they try to fulfill what they say. Ford Motor Company has been in

the automotive industry since1903. All of the ups and downs since that year have made

Ford the large corporation it is today. Those ups and downs will also be analyzed in

greater detail. (Wikipedia)

Organization Challenges

The first challenge that will be discussed is how Ford had to restructure their

company, mortgage all of their assets, and sell some of their divisions. The second

challenge is maintaining the high legacy cost that Ford provides. The third and final

challenge is international expansion. The specific countries that will be discussed are

China and Germany.

Restructuring of the Company

In 2008 the global economy as a whole crashed. One of America’s biggest

industries, auto manufacturing, became crippled from it. While GM was receiving

government money to rebound, and Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge found their solution by selling

their company to Italian automaker Fiat. Ford however took a different approach to

rebound, and restructure. The controlling board of Ford decided to restructure the

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company. To gain the assets needed to do this, Ford chose to mortgage a large portion of

its assets. One of the first items of Ford that was mortgaged was the Blue Ford Oval that

that is used as the logo on all ford cars. The next step for Ford restructuring was to start

cutting jobs. Roughly the job cut per month estimate was around 1000 employees and

discontinue hiring for a few years. The next step was for Ford to bail out all of its major

suppliers so that they can continue to produce goods for Ford’s assembly lines to still

function. Then Ford invested $ 1.6 billion into developing better smaller/economy cars,

since Ford’s focus for the past 15 years has been in the mustang development, and the

SUV/truck development. One of the biggest steps that ford took next was selling off all of

its recently acquired brands, Aston Martin, Land Rover, Jaguar, and Volvo. Aston

Martin was sold to a British consortium led by Prodrive chairman David Richards. Land

Rover and Jaguar were sold to Tata Motors which is an automaker based in India. Volvo

was later sold to Zhejiang Geely Holding Group for $1.8 Billion dollars. After those

lines were sold off Ford’s next step to raise more funding was to start selling some

divisions. One major division sold off was the drive shaft division. The drive shaft

division was sold to a company called Neapco, which is a leading manufacturer of

automotive driveshafts for OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer), performance and

aftermarket Industries. Since the beginning of restructuring Ford has seen sales that have

been up about 43%, which shows that their efforts are paying off.

Legacy Costs

One of Ford’s major challenges today is keeping up with its high legacy costs. Its

legacy costs include paying their former employees retirement funds and healthcare

coverage. Ford spends an extremely generous amount of money to give its former

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employees health and retirement benefits. This idea was implemented because it

minimized the problem of government-funded social security programs. It also gave

significant incentives for loyalty in the eyes of the employee. The idea of offering this to

Ford’s former employees was an idea based on the constant growth of the company. Over

the past years, Ford has had a significant decline, making it increasingly difficult to

provide this “legacy plan” to its former employees. (autoblog)

These legacy costs are designed along the idea of “cradle-to-grave” care. This

basically means that the company is obligated to take care of their life-long employees

and the life-long employees rely on Ford as their main source of income. The pension

plans created for these employees, however, have not adapted well to the current

economic situation.

In 2009, Ford offered buyout and retirement packages to all 41,000 of it US

employees. This was an attempt to reduce the amount of workers because they had more

workers than it needed to produce the cars that it sells at this time. At the time of this

article, Ford had 634 blue-collar employees on lay-off. The contract that the United Auto

Workers union has with ford includes the workers getting most of the pay they would

earn in a year, depending on seniority in the company. After the first year the employees

would receive portions of the next year’s wages before finally being removed from the

payroll. This is an example of how well they treat their employee’s that have been laid

off.

The buyout packages offered to employees consisted of 50,000 dollars cash and

include the choice of either 25,000 dollars towards a vehicle or 20,000 extra dollars cash.

This package also included basic health coverage for 6 months.

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The retirement package includes 40,000 dollars for their skilled workers and

20,000 for their non-skilled workers. Eligibility for this package was that you had to

either work in Ford for 30 years, be 55 years old or older, and have 10 or more years of

work with the company, or they could be 65 with one year of service.

These incredibly high standards for factory employees are the reason that the

company is in such problems with their high “legacy cost”. All of these packages are

extremely costly to the company and add up with the extreme amount of people that work

for them. (autoblog)

International Expansion

One challenge that Ford Motor Corporation is facing is international expansion.

While they have been growing in sales domestically, they are also trying to expand into

markets in both China and Europe. In China, they are looking to partner with other

companies in order to grow in the emerging Chinese market due to their recent economic

growth. In Europe, they already have a foothold in the market, but they are looking to

capture more of it through technological advancements. Both of these markets are a

challenge that Ford will be facing in the coming years.

As the economy and market for automobiles expands in China, many US

automakers have been trying to tap this emerging demand. Although Ford has had

operations in China since 1913, in the past few years, Ford has teamed up with Changan

Automobiles to create Changan Ford Mazda Automobiles. Soon, Changan will be

producing small vehicles that are more in demand in the highly populated metropolises of

China. In addition, Mei-Wei Cheng, the CEO of Ford Motor China, has stated that they

soon will begin production of engines in China. These engines will be used to help meet

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the growing demand of vehicles in the country.

In Europe, Ford is looking to expand by being more technologically and

environmentally minded. By 2013, the company plans to have hybrid vehicles ranging

from commercial to consumer types. Also, by 2012, they plan to have a fully electric

model of the Focus available as well. Ford has been working with companies and

universities such as Scottish and Southern Energy and Strathclyde University in order to

create the zero-emissions Ford Focus. Meanwhile, in Germany, Ford is participating in

the Cologne-Mobil project. This project is for researching the effect of electric cars on

urban air quality, traffic safety, and electric supply infrastructure. It is obvious that

throughout Europe Ford is looking to move to the head of the pack when it comes to

environmentally safer cars. The challenges that Ford is facing from this global expansion

are entering a market where they don’t have the same name recognition as existing

companies and creating the infrastructure and supply chain to supply vehicles to these

foreign markets.

After seeing all of the detail in depth, you can tell that some of the challenges

Ford faces are extremely difficult to manage. Many other corporations than Ford deal

with the same issues, if not worse. Ford seems to be doing well in the long run, although

it has a long time until it fixes the majority of its short run issues.

Organization Structure

There are several aspects of the structure of an organization. These include

contextual dimensions of the organization, goals and missions, and the actual structure of

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the organization itself. Contextual dimensions include the number of employees in an

organization, the amount of money they earn, and the value of their total assets, as well as

the environment the organization is in.

Contextual Dimensions

The Ford Motor Corporations currently has approximately 198,000 employees

worldwide, even after many of the employees were laid off in previous years, as well as

some divisions of the company being sold to others. The total sales for 2009 were

$118,308,000 and the total assets for 2009 were 194,850,000. For the past five years the

total sales were approximately $586,640,000 and the total assets for the past five years

were approximately $969,660,000. While the fact that the size of the company has been

decreasing over the years, it does not reflect on how the company has been performing.

Large portions of the employees of Ford are still employed in the same job, but are now

working for the corporations that have acquired some components of Ford. In addition,

out of the three largest manufacturers of automobiles in the United States, Ford is the

only one that did not receive any government funds in order to stay afloat when the

industry was affected by economy. Instead, their move to “part out” the company greatly

helped them continue to grow financially. (Hoover’s)

The environment of Ford includes competitors, customers, and suppliers. Ford has

many competitors in all of the different markets that they are present. For example, in the

United States, competitors of Ford include Toyota, General Motors, Honda, and other

automotive manufacturers that are present in the country. Ford competes in markets for

both personal vehicles as well as the light truck industry. In both of these markets, the

customer base is a very large amount of the population. Vehicles for personal

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transportation are for every member of the public that requires them, while the light

trucks are for customers in professions such as construction and landscaping. Ford creates

some of their components in house, with suppliers providing raw materials. They also

rely on outside companies to provide pre-assembled components for their vehicles.

Mission and Goals

Throughout the years, Ford has changed its mission and goals several times. This

is due to the rapid change of the automobile market and Ford’s desire to keep pace within

the market. Currently, part of their mission statement declares “We are a global family

with a proud heritage passionately committed to providing personal mobility for people

around the world. We anticipate consumer need and deliver outstanding products and

services that improve people's lives.” (wiki.answers.com) While maintaining a forward

stance concerning customers’ needs and desires, they also express the desire to provide

solutions for every individual to be able to procure transportation. The mission statement

itself shows the goals of the corporation as well.

Ford also has an expanded mission statement that is based on “One Ford: One

Team, One Plan, One Goal.” The team is defined as the global corporation as a whole,

working together to achieve satisfaction of customers, employees, dealers, stakeholders,

and all others involved with the company. The plan is to take an aggressive stance on

restructuring to ensure profitability while offering a wide range of vehicles. Also, they

want to concentrate on speeding up development of improvements that the customers

both need and want. Finally, the goal is to create a profitable company that everyone can

profit from. (Farfan)

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Structure of Ford Motor Company

Ford’s organization structure can be classified as a Product Division structure,

which means that there is a centralized set of support functions that service the needs of a

number of different product lines, and each product division utilizes the services of the

central support function. For example in fords organizations the support function or back

bone of the corporation would be as follows from top to bottom: Chairman, CEO,

Director, European Director. Then on the same level are the: VP of product development

of Ford Europe, VP of purchasing for Ford Europe, Chief Marketing Officer, Senior Vice

President of Volvo Cars, VP Marketing Ford Europe, VP Communications and Public

Affairs, VP European Sales Operations, VP Strategic Planning, and then for each product

division there is a VP to head it up and it goes down the chain to the factory employees.

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Structure of a Competitor: General Motors

The structure of General Motors is very similar to that of Ford. Like Ford, GM

uses a Product Division structure. The CEO presides over all of the Vice Presidents of the

many different divisions that General Motors has. From there, there are executives

responsible for more specific portions of the division, such as marketing and finance.

Both General Motors and Ford have been operating with structure successfully, as it

maintains a clear identity of each portion of the company. Also, it allows each division to

operate without concerns about other divisions in the company. This leads to greater

productivity within each division, which adds to overall productivity of the company as a

whole.

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However, not every company in the same environment as Ford uses the same

structure. For instance, Toyota Motor Corporation uses a market structure because it

leads to more efficient manufacturing. Grouping people and resources in two ways

simultaneously, by both function and product, allows for this efficiency. These groups

are composed of two-boss employees as they report to two superiors, the product team

manager and the functional manager. Within these teams each person is able to perform

all jobs and all members can easily be rotated without any delay to production.

Organization Culture

Ford Motor Company has organizational culture that is unlike many organizations

today. The organization’s culture of Ford Motors is extremely ethical. It is composed of

the organizational values and norms, the people in the company, the organizations ethics,

and its social responsibility.

Values and Norms

Ford Motor Company strongly believes in keeping strong organization values and

norms. According to Ford’s current president, one of the main goals Ford has in

maintaining organization values is to make sure that every employee knows that Ford

Motor Company’s main goal is that “Ford is here to serve”. Whether it is its customers or

employees, they are here to better peoples’ lives. Another value that is constantly told to

Ford employees is to keep in constant communication with everyone to keep everybody

in the loop. Maintaining communication helps accelerate performance, which is key in an

economy that is currently on the rebound.

In the training of Ford employees, a decent amount of work and influence by

Henry Ford is still used to teach employees the values and norms of the company. Three

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famous lines by Henry Ford are used repeatedly throughout training. Those lines are:

Getting together is beginning, keeping together is progress, and working together is

success. Also in part of the training there are eight norms listed for employees to know

and understand so that performance in the workplace can be optimized those norms are:

1) Help each other be right, not wrong, 2) look for ways to make ideas work, not for

reasons that they won’t, 3) don’t make negative assumptions, 4) help each other win and

take pride in victories, 5) speak positively about each other, 6)maintain a positive

attitude, 7) do everything with enthusiasm, 8) and have fun!

Having strong organizational values and norms in place with all the Ford

employees is extremely important for a company in a weak economy to accelerate and be

successful. Without these values and norms the quality of the work would not be able to

meet the standards that Ford is so proud of.

Factors That Affect Culture

The organizational culture of a company is made up by a variety of different

factors. Those factors include the personal and professional characteristics of people

within the company, the companies’ organizational ethics, the property rights that the

company gives to its employees, and the structure of the company. These factors greatly

differ between every company and organization, giving each organization or company its

own individual culture.

You can tell a lot about a company by taking a look at the people that form it. One

good example for an individual in Ford Motors would be a chief engineer for the 2011

Ford Explorer, Jim Holland. Jim Holland attended college to gain a degree as an architect

and worked in the construction trade as a carpenter. This man gained skills, knowledge,

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and expertise in his field of construction that gave him the upper hand on his competitors

in the field of architecture. Another individual in the company that helps distinguish Ford

would be Melvin Betancourt. Melvin is the exterior design manager for the new Ford

Explorer. Melvin brings an individual factor to the company because he draws his

motivation in urban architecture and Latin dance. His interest in cars started from his

collection of Hot Wheel cars that he started when he was only 6 years old and continues

to this day. He received a bachelor’s degree from Detroit’s College for Creative Studies

(CCS) in the transportation design program. Melvin’s individual approach and creative

design help shape Ford into the innovative company that it is today. (Faces)

One major factor that influences a Ford’s organizational culture is the company’s

organizational ethics. Breaches of ethics listed in the company’s code of policies and

ethics include corporate opportunities, compliance with laws, rules and regulations,

encouraging the reporting of any illegal or unethical behavior, and compliance

procedures. Another breach of ethics would be conflict of interests. Conflict of interests

can include relationship of company with third parties, compensation from non-Company

sources, gifts, and personal use of Company assets. Confidentiality is also part of the

code of ethics. This means that members of the company that are entrusted with secret

company information must keep that information secret. This code of ethics gives Ford

the ability to operate as a legitimate business within the confines of an ethical one.

(Policy)

Another factor that shapes organization culture would be property rights that the

organization gives to employees. According to the Pearson Custom Business Resources

book, the definition of property rights is “the rights that an organization gives to its

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members to receive and use organizational resources” (Pearson). Ford, as well as many

other corporations, has many standards in regards to intellectual property rights.

According to Ford’s corporate conduct standards, “it is the policy of the company to

secure and protect its intellectual property rights, and to take appropriate action against

any individual or group making unauthorized use of our rights” (Code of Conduct). This

implies that Ford takes highly on their “intellectual” property rights, to where they are

willing to take action on any party trying to infringe them. To have better knowledge on

intellectual property rights, “It is a term referring to the distinct types of creations of the

mind for which property rights are recognized-and the corresponding fields of law”

(Wikipedia). Ford does not have any direct information in regards to employee’s property

rights, however much of the standards about “intellectual” property rights are intertwined

with the property rights of employees.

The other factor that shapes organizational culture would be the organization

structure. Ford has a product division structure as its organization structure. Ford

delegates the production of their parts to different smaller companies. For example, the

exterior parts to the car are made at one location while the engine is produced in another.

This gives Ford the opportunity to give more specific attention to each individual piece

that goes into their product. A product division structure according to Jones chapter 6 “is

characterized by the splitting of the manufacturing function into several different product

lines or divisions; a centralized set of support functions then services the needs of all

these product divisions” (Jones). The organizational structure effects the organization

culture because the culture is the “the specific collection of values and norms that are

shared by people and groups in an organization and that control the way they interact

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with each other and with stakeholders outside the organization” (Wikipedia). The

structure is how the corporation is assembled, so the “norms and values” are going to

revolve around how the company is structured. Also the way people interact with each

other is going to be based off of who they interact with in regards to how the corporation

is structured. If someone needs to talk to upper management, they will do it in the way

the company is structured.

Social Responsibility

Ford Motor Company has been regarded as one of the top twenty-five socially

responsible companies in the world. They accomplish this through many different

actions, such as researching sustainability, addressing environmental impacts of the

company, and making working conditions a high priority within the company. In addition

to the ranks it has achieved for social responsibility, even the Dow Jones Sustainability

Index has included Ford as a global leader in responsibility.

First, Ford’s stance on helping reduce the impact of their products on the

environment is one responsibility they are very focused on. In 2008, Ford released a press

release stating that by 2020, they planned to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions by at

least 30 percent for light duty passenger cars and trucks. In addition, Ford, along with

other US automotive manufacturers, has agreed to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 60 to

80 percent by 2050. Ford and its shareholders both agreed that these were the proper

steps for Ford to take to further their social responsibility in the automotive

manufacturing community and society as a whole.

Second, Ford believes that human rights and proper working conditions are

important not just because it is the correct thing to do, but it will also promote a stronger

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business as a whole. As Ford has expanded into emerging foreign markets, it prides itself

on maintaining the same rights and conditions throughout the world. They have

established a code of basic working conditions, which includes fair work hours, no forced

or child labor, fair compensation, minimal impact on other countries, and many other

facets. Ford also employs third parties to ensure that these practices are being upheld.

Ford is committed in many ways to promote and maintain social responsibility

throughout the company and the world. While the environment and working conditions

are two main parts of Ford’s beliefs, they have many other responsibilities that they feel

are important. Because of their strong involvement, they are considered one of the most

socially responsible companies in the world, and continue to seek out more ways to

improve all societies they impact.

Organization Life Cycle

The organizational life cycle of Ford Motor Company can be analyzed through its

current stage in its life cycle and by its interactions with other companies. The current

stage is determined through looking at recent activity in the company and the interactions

are determined through the isomorphism that takes place between Ford and its

surrounding organizations. Ford is still considered a young company on the scale of the

organizational life cycle. The only phase that Ford has passed through is the start-up

phase. During this phase, Ford motor company was started by Henry Ford in 1899.

Current Life Cycle Stage

Ford is currently in the growth stage. We can tell it is in this stage because they

are trying to climb back to the point that they were at before recent economic decline.

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Technically, it could be said that this is a rebirth due to the fact that Ford had to sell off a

lot of its assets. A good example, according to the New York Daily News and

seekingalpha.com, is that Ford sold off the brands Volvo, Jaguar, Aston Martin and Land

Rover to try to cut costs and stop the company from hemorrhaging money. Also, the

company has spent a massive amount of money in research and development in order to

make their cars more desirable to the consumer while having a better chance at

competing with the popular foreign car companies to gain back their market share.

Not only has all this time, money, and effort been spent on making Ford’s product

line more desirable, but also the company has completely reorganized in hope of finding

more efficient ways of turning a profit. One way Ford was able to accomplish this goal

was by selling off divisions of the company to smaller companies and forming a

partnership with them. In doing this, Ford has profited in two ways. The first is that Ford

can now produce its vehicles at a much faster rate through delegation. The second profit

is the increased quality of the vehicles and parts because of the specific attention and

specialization of the smaller companies.

Going into more detail with Ford’s life cycle would include a look into the

organization’s product life cycle for the Taurus itself. Changing one product within the

entire product line can affect whom Ford targets with specific parts of their overall

product lineups. According to referenceforbusiness.com “the terms product life cycle

and industry life cycle both refer to the four stages of birth, growth, decline, death.”

(referenceforbusiness.com) The Taurus model has been around for a long period of time,

and has had many ups and downs throughout its existence. It has already been through

one life cycle, the last manufactured model of the car, beginning in 1986 and ending in

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2007. It has since been replaced with the Fusion and the full-size Five Hundred because

the sales of the Taurus were declining in the early 2000s. The Taurus came back in 2008

with a new model and the start of a new life cycle. Currently the Taurus is in the growth

stage of the product life cycle just as Ford is in its growth stage of the organizational life

cycle. Ford has had many ups and downs throughout its life and has been looking at a

good turn around recently.

Mimetic Isomorphism

Throughout the history of Ford Motor Corporation, there have been many types of

mimetic isomorphism between Ford and its competitors. Mimetic isomorphism is when

an organization emulates others in its environment to try to increase productivity and

sales. Ford has tried the emulation of other competitors while the competitors have tried

to emulate Ford as well. For example, Ford copied General Motors with their employee

discount program. Also, as the Toyota Motor Company began to grow, they built their

manufacturing process around the assembly line created by Henry Ford.

In 2005, General Motors announced an employee discount pricing plan during

June. During this month, the volume sales grew by forty-one percent. Ford took notice of

the increase in sales, and attempted to copy General Motors, hoping for the same

response. However, since Ford had the discount after General Motors, and Chrysler had

announced a similar deal, it created issues for Ford. For example, the saturation of

advertising from Ford’s competitors made it both expensive and difficult for Ford to reap

the same sales benefits that General Motors had found. After all of the sales were

complete, Ford had failed to repeat the same success that General Motors had. If Ford

had gone beyond mimetic isomorphism and tried to go a step further than General

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Motors, it may have increased sales even higher. (FordDirect.Com)

When Toyota was developing their system for manufacturing, they took many of

the ideas that Ford established with their ideas of mass production. The original Ford

model of production was to create many of the same items on one assembly line. Through

this method, Ford could continue to mass-produce many of the same components and

products in a consistent manner. However, when Toyota was beginning to manufacture

vehicles, they did not have the same resources as Ford did. They copied the mass

production system that Ford had developed over the years, and modified it. Instead of

constantly creating the same parts over and over, Toyota uses the same lines with

interchangeable parts. This allows them to create what is needed when it is needed, and

nothing extra. By copying and then improving this system, Toyota used mimetic

isomorphism to its advantage. (Scribd)

One type of isomorphism that is experienced by Ford would be coercive isomorphism.

Coercive isomorphism is change that is the result of formal or informal pressure exerted

on the organization by an outside source that the organization usually has financial

dependence on. One would think that Ford, being such a large and powerful company,

would not have such issues. This however, is not the case.

Coercive Isomorphism

Ford motors experiences coercive isomorphism when being influenced by the

Government. Congress has a large amount of power in Ford Motors because of its

financial stake in the company, along with the other companies in the Detroit Three. The

pressure that congress exerts is that the companies under its power are pushed to make

cars that are more fuel-efficient.

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The fuel efficiency that congress is looking to achieve would be excellent for the

consumer and for the environment, but not so much for Ford Motor Company. The

reason that car manufacturers have not all made fuel-efficient vehicles is because they

have yet to find a cost efficient way to do so. Creating and manufacturing a fuel-efficient

vehicle is extremely costly to the company and turns a far lower profit when sold.

Producing these cars often involves making the cars too expensive for the average

American citizen in this poor economy.

Another form of coercive isomorphism that has faced Ford Motors is the

influence from Foreign Nations, specifically South America. Due to protectionist

government measures that differ between countries, Ford could only produce certain cars

in certain countries. Due to these pressures from the South American nations, Ford of

Brazil and Ford of Argentina were forced to merge their operations with Volkswagen to

form the Company Autolatina in 1987. This gave them the ability to share models and

produce there different models in the Autolatina plants. This business venture was not as

fruitful as the company had once hoped and had to be dissolved in 1995.

As you can see, Ford Motor Company has a very complex and interesting

organizational life cycle. This is shown through its vast steps through the life cycle and

through its strategic isomorphism with other companies.

Recommendations

Ford in the past few years has made a lot of headway in recovering from the

market crash, and trying to turn a profit. Some of the steps Ford has taken were:

mortgaging all of its assets, selling off four of its luxury car divisions, focusing on how to

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better compete with all of the other automakers, and lastly to grow their overseas

markets.

One major step Ford took was to offer employees buyouts of their retirement

plans. The offer specifically was geared towards Ford employees who were 55 years of

age and older and have worked at Ford for at least 33 years. Employees would get

$50,000 and $25,000 towards any Ford vehicle they would like to buy, or they could get

$20,000 on top of the $50,000 sum. Plus they get 6 months of full health benefits. What

we would recommend for this is that the employees should be offered more cash for a

settlement because with living expenses $50,000 is not enough to retire on or live off of

for more than a year. Also 6 months of healthcare is not enough especially with the rising

cost of healthcare and the small amount of money that the employees are getting it would

be hard for them to afford health coverage. We felt as a group that employees should get

$90,000 plus depending on their job and health benefits for 1- 2 years, plus a decent

amount of company stock. Company stock would be good for the company because then

you have the ex-employees helping decide on where and how Ford can improve,

ultimately making the company more successful by working on any known inside issues

that the ex-employees bring up.

Other than the buyouts of employee retirement plans there hasn’t been much else

we could say that could be recommended to Ford because they are making a comeback in

their markets and turning a profit.

Group Challenges

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As a group we only faced a few challenges or first challenge is that no one in the

group really knew each other very well so communication was a problem at first but as a

group we overcame that and started talking to each other more and more and surprisingly

became decent friends by the end of the semester. Second our fifth group member

dropped the class half way through the semester and on his last assignment just copied

and pasted information from the internet without citing it or telling anyone else in the

group. This left us in a rough spot because of this we got a lower grade than we expected

and had to recover from that lower grade by putting in even more effort that before,

which we did. Our last challenge was to make sure that the information we were finding

as a group was accurate, and that all of our sources were cited to make sure that the

integrity was kept in the project. After we had resolved those three challenges everything

ran smoothly and we all worked extremely well together.

Conclusion

Ford has faced many challenges throughout its life cycle. It has survived and

conquered those challenges to make it one of the largest corporations existing today. To

better elaborate on that note, Ford is ranked eighth in the 2010 American Fortune 500 list.

Now that the organization has been examined in the areas of its culture, life cycle, and

challenges, most can predict where Ford is headed in the long-run. Ford will not fail to

remain one of the largest automotive corporations, and that is what sets it apart from

others such in the industry.

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Work Log

Organization Challenges

Name Contribution PercentageGreg Bermon Challenge 1 and Analysis 100%Kevin Granville Challenge 2 and Analysis 100%Joe Sanford Challenge 3 and Analysis 100%Dave Westwood Work on all challenges and analysis 100%

Organization Structure

Name Contribution PercentageGreg Bermon Explain the Organizational Structure of General

Motors100%

Kevin Granville Explain the Organizational Structure of Ford Motors

100%

Joe Sanford Develop Organizational chart for General Motors, Analyzing the contextual dimensions of the organization, discuss the organizations missions and goals

100%

Dave Westwood Develop Organizational chart for Ford Motors 100%

Organization Culture

Name Contribution PercentageDave Westwood Professional and personal characteristics of

people within organization, organizational ethics, title page

100%

Kevin Granville Property rights, structure of organization 100%Greg Bermon Values and Norms, works cited 100%Joe Sanford Organizational approach to social responsibility 100%

Organization Life Cycle

Name Contribution PercentageKevin Granville Life Cycle Analysis 100%Greg Bermon Life Cycle Analysis 100%Joe Sanford Mimetic Isomorphism 100%Dave Westwood Coercive Isomorphism 100%

Final Paper

Name Contribution PercentageGreg Bermon Recommendations, group challenges 100%Kevin Granville Introduction and conclusion 100%Joe Sanford Final assembly and organization 100%Dave Westwood Final assembly and organization 100%

24

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