Table of contents

1. Introduction of WL Gore & Associates Inc. 3
2. Distinctive features of WL Gore’s organisation and management 3
3. Consistency of Gore’s management approach. 5
4. Strengths and weaknesses of WL Gore’s approach to organisation and management 7
5. Transferability of WL Gore’s organisation and management style to other organisations 9
6. Conclusion. 10
7. References. 11

 

 

 

 

1.      Introduction of WL Gore & Associates Inc.

WL Gore & Associates Inc. is a U.S. global corporation specialising in discovery and product innovation. It was founded by Bill and Vieve Gore in Newark, Delaware in 1958 (Gore, 2018). It is proud of itself because of its contribution to the society in varied fields of life such as outerwear, medical devices, pharmaceutical and aerospace industries.

WL Gore is a very successful company with over 2,000 patents recognised worldwide. Recently, it was awarded as the 135^th America’s largest private company 2017 and the 149^th America’s best employer 2018 (Forbes, 2018). In order to gain these successes, it has believed in its typical management system which is sharply different from other established corporations.

Therefore, this report will make clear four main points, including what features are distinctive in WL Gore’s organisation and management, how these distinctive features support to Gore’s consistent management approach, strengths and weaknesses of the approach and the transferability of the approach to other companies.

2.      Distinctive features of WL Gore’s organisation and management

There are some features that help to build the distinction of WL Gore’s organisation and management. Firstly, from the case study itself of WL Gore & Associates, it is discovered that there is no job title and no hierarchy’s symbols given to Gore’s employees even Bill and Vieve who are founders of WL Gore. Specifically, all its employees are called “associates”, except board of directors and CEO which are legally required. There are also very few heads of functional departments such as HR and IT but these heads are chosen by other associates and they are considered as leaders (Mazal, 2014). This relates to another special strategy called emergent strategy. Following this strategy, leader will be emerged when a team comes together to discuss, debate, or bargain based on problems need to be solved. At this time, leader will be chosen by agreement of all other team members. As Terri, CEO of WL Gore expressed in an interview that when a person accumulates enough people who are willing to follow him, he will become a leader. However, the way leaders use their power of leadership is also different from other traditional organisations. At Gore, leaders’ responsibility is to help team members show their strengths and make them be successful. Leaders are also aware that if they do not follow Gore’s values, they easily lose their leadership (Dimopoulos, 2016).

Apart from this, Gore follows team-based structure. At Gore each associate will have a sponsor and this sponsor can be an associate of another sponsor. Additionally, an associate can be member of two or three groups of different projects. Thus, in this kind of organisational structure, people know each other. Specifically, members within a group know each other and members of this group also need to know members of that group. At the end of the day, there are many small basic organisational units forming based on specific products and communication is made by peer to peer, not employers to employees.

Last but not least, consensus decision-making is also a unique feature of Gore’ management style. Every group has rights to self-manage their teams. Because there is no supervisors and subordinates, members of a team will share responsibilities to each other and have rights to self-control their workload. Also, they are believed and authorised to make their own decisions without asking approval from top management, or they may consult with others if they feel the decisions may cause serious problems to Gore. However, at Gore decisions are made by agreements of all associates who involve in that specific project.

All the above features are so different compared to other traditional companies where leaders are assigned from the top, titles are fixed, and subordinates need to report everything to their leaders (Kelly, 2015). Moreover, most big organisations will have quite same management style. CEO or leaders will make decision and pass it down to their subordinates or teamers. Especially, they have strong voice, and power to fire or downgrade their subordinates that make others must follow them (Dimopoulos, 2016).

To be specific, C. R. Bard which is one of direct competitors of WL Gore has followed conventional style of management. Obviously, hierarchy and job titles are existing within Bard, including Board of Directors such as Chairman, Vice Chairman, CEO and COO (Bloomberg, 2018). Also, every division has its own manager. Unlike Gore, leaders at Bard are hired from outside the company through posts on job seeking websites such as Linkedin or they are appointed directly by the top management as promotion. Leaders at Bard have rights and power to make final decisions or give approval to implement employees’ ideas. That is why there is a distance in the relationship of employers and employees, and they cannot communicate from peer to peer compared to Gore’s case.

3.      Consistency of Gore’s management approach

The following table is made in order to do a comparison between the two forms of management and Gore’s management.

Feature	Mechanistic forms	Organic forms	WL Gore
Task definition	Inflexibility and specialisation required	Flexibility and broad definition	Flexibility and no specific direction given
Coordination and control	Regulations and instructions imposed vertically	Mutual adjudgment, common culture	Mutual adjudgment
Communication	Only vertical	Both vertical and horizontal	Both vertical and horizontal
Knowledge	Centralisation	Dispersion	Dispersion
Commitment and loyalty	To direct superiors	To company and its objectives	To company and follow its values
Environmental context	Stable with low technological uncertainty	Dynamic with significant technological uncertainty and ambiguity	Dynamic but quite chaotic

Source: (Grant, 2010)

According to the above table, it can be easily recognised that all features of WL Gore’s management style are similar to organic forms. In addition, the organic forms are relevant to McGregor’s theory X and Mintzberg’s adhocracy organisational type. Therefore, the two theories will be analysed before making comparison with Gore’s management style.

Theory Y is the theory created and developed by McGregor during the period of 1950s-1960s (IWER, 2018). This theory was built focusing on human and based on job motivation and management. This theory stresses on motivating and encouraging employees to come up to their tasks without directions of direct employers. By using this theory, managers can make influence on motivation and productivity of employee in several ways (Morse and Lorsch, 1970). From that, the employees can feel satisfied and best achieve their own goals by committing and involving in their company’s objectives. In addition, following theory Y, employee is considered as the most value of an organisation, and employers would not make an effort on structure or not try to control the employees closely. The employers will support the employees to be mature by paying less external control to the employees and letting them self-control. Consequently, the relationship between employers and employees more inclines to personal level (Hattangadi, 2015). It means the relationship would be improved and become better which will help to create a healthier working environment (Bayer, 2004). These are some key principles of theory Y as follows. Firstly, organisations should decentralise control and minimise management layers, delegate employees responsibility and give them rights of self-making decisions as well as partly self-controlling working environment. Secondly, enlarging the variety of job and giving chances to employees in order to satisfy their ego needs. Thirdly, supporting employees during the process of making decisions in order to bring out capacity of one’s initiative. Finally, appraising employees’ performance after letting them set their own objectives.

Adhocracy is an organisational form of flexibility, adaptability and informality which is identified thanks to no formal structure. It can be said that adhocracy is opposite to bureaucracy fashion. The term of adhocracy was first mentioned by Warren Bennis (Bennis, 1968) and its concept was developed by Henry Mintzberg. According to Mintzberg, adhocracy organisational form is very complex and dynamic (Mintzberg, 1989). Additionally, adhocracy and bureaucracy are different from each other. Mintzberg considered bureaucracy is a form of the past while adhocracy is the form of the future (Travica, 1999). Adhocracy can be flourished in varied environment, and deals well with problem solving and innovations (Mintzberg, 1989). However, advanced, complex and automated technological systems are required for its development (Travica, 1999). It is believed that adhocracy contains many characteristics which allow it respond faster than other traditional organisations, i.e. bureaucracy. Followings are some outstanding characteristics of it, including highly organic structure, no formal training, specialised job, specialised team, no clearly defined roles, mutual adjustment and non-bureaucratic culture, absence of hierarchy (Mintzberg, 1989 and Travica, 1999). In adhocracy organisational form, support staff is a very important part and the number of it is very large in order to support the complicated structure. Aside from that mutual adjustment is used as a way of coordination, and some selected models of decentralisation are maintained. Moreover, within this structure, formalisation and decentralisation have a tendency to be low and technostructure is small because technologists and technical experts are engaged in operative core of companies. Also, adhocracy organisations more involve in unusual tasks and sophisticated technology is used within these organisations because their key objectives are innovation so as to adapt to changing environments. Therefore, most adhocracy organisations are medium sized, including pharmaceutics, aerospace and electronics companies (Lunenburg, 2012).

As can be seen after the above analyses, Theory X of McGregor and Adhocracy of Mintzberg have some common features which are applied by Gore since its establishment. In the case study itself, it is mentioned that Bill Gore’s ideas about management were affected by McGregor. Gore values a lot on human rather than on system. It creates the best working environment for its associates. People are free to think, to talk, to be creative and to do what they desire if they give commitment and their tasks is based on Gore’s value. They can also choose where they want to belong to. At the end, they will receive as much as what they give because Gore is using mutual adjudgment to grade their associates. How much associates give and contribute to the company, it will fairly and transparently return to them. In conclusion, McGregor’s Theory Y and Mintzberg’s theory, which are more humanistic, are the two consistent theories within Gore.

4.      Strengths and weaknesses of WL Gore’s approach to organisation and management

The above distinctive features show that Gore is having lattice management style. This style flats organisational structure in order that information can collaboratively and transparently flow without being unconstrained by traditional top-down ladder. Additionally, it makes all individuals involve in the entire company by freely giving ideas and suggestions in all company’s areas (Benko and Anderson, 2011). In general, lattice companies are allowed to be more flexible, easily and quickly adapt when market conditions change. Moreover, these lattice organisation can take more advantages of their talents, minimise turnover rate and obviously increase productivity (Magloff, 2018).

Likewise, Gore gains many advantages thanks to apply and use the lattice management style. Firstly, this style fosters higher level of employee’s motivation because they are treated as owners of the company which makes them feel engage in the company. Furthermore, they can set their own objectives but these objectives should be not against the company’s values. In other words, they can be their own boss, and self-decide what they would like to work on and where they want to contribute so as to bring the best results (Dimopoulos, 2016). In this lattice structure, associates are encouraged to bring out their initiatives, be willing to take risks and make the best performance (Grant and Gale, 2007). However, they have to make commitment on what they decided and need to deliver it as they promised. Therefore, there also exists limitations that is every associate needs to be a self-disciplined person and knows how to self-define objectives. Everyone needs to have high awareness about being self-responsible for the company’s incredible outcomes (Dimopoulos, 2016). Secondly, there is no intermediate within the flat structure so the process of decision making will be faster. Fewer people that decisions need to be consulted with, lesser time is waste and quicker speed that problems are solved (Lombardo, 2018). Moreover, at Gore, associates are giving rights to get advice or what they need directly from any person who can support them to be successful (Dimopoulos, 2016). This builds a straight communication line within the lattice structure. Thirdly, the lattice also makes communication become clear and transparent. It is clear that when information is delivered through a string of mouths and ears, it will end up with distortion, puff or deflation. The more layers that information is passed across, the more misunderstanding or miscommunication will be made. Therefore, the lattice helps to avoid these matters because information will be delivered straight to the end person (Lombardo, 2018). Fourthly, less dominance and supervision are required. It is believed that heads or owners of organisations have to be able to control and monitor all things happened within their companies, not except their employees. Nevertheless, some studies have shown that the less time leaders spend for managing their followers, the more productive their followers can make since they are given higher sense of responsibility.

On the other hand, Gore is facing with several disadvantages of the lattice management style. First of all, management can easily be out of control, especially when number of associate is too out of proportion compared to number of leaders (Lombardo, 2018). It is obvious that people will always be responsible or perform perfectly within an organisation. Then, it will become worse if there is not enough people to control the situation. Although Gore tries to keep the maximum of 200 people for each manufacturing facility and many teams are divided within a facility; out of control is unavoidable sometimes. The next disadvantage could be work-relationship. When individuals belongs to several groups, it is not easy to keep connecting with all other associates on personal level, which is very crucial in building trust and promoting responsibility of employees for their works and their companies as a whole (Lombardo, 2018). Furthermore, at Gore as a person can play different roles such as associate or sponsor or leader in different groups at the same time, it creates chaos in their duties and the implementation of tasks. The other weaknesses are groupthink and conformity. It is a term of psychological phenomenon which arises within a group of individuals where every members try to lessen group conflicts and strive for consensus decisions within their group (Cherry, 2018). In several cases of groupthink, individuals try to leave their own beliefs and agree with opinions of other group members (Bloom, 2010). Although groupthink helps to increase the group cohesiveness, it could result in inefficient, unproductive or even disastrous outcomes because people may commit serious mistakes in case that all group members converge hurriedly (Janis, 1982 and Janis, 1983). In August, 2018, Cherry also stated that groupthink restraints individual opinions and initiatives, and finally controls innovation (Cherry, 2018). Lastly, conformity is an act happened when people try to match their attitudes, personal beliefs and behaviours with norms of their group (Cialdini and Goldstein, 2004). People are forced to consent and often make conformity because of the security and values of their group without realistic appraisal (McLeod, 2011). At the end, conformity could lead to bad results as same as groupthink because people need to think and act as they are in a group, and they need to compromise between themselves and their group members.

5.      Transferability of WL Gore’s organisation and management style to other organisations

As Kelly expressed in an interview, the lattice management style are still being evolved by Gore and Gore has not figured it all out. Therefore, if another CEO would like to apply the lattice, there are some points that they should follow. Firstly, managers need to understand the values which are embedded in their companies. They need to know what kind of behaviours are rewarded and strengthened during the time of operation of the companies? Are they cultures which are believed in and motivate employees? Do these cultures help to strengthen a collaborative spirit? Do they embolden knowledge sharing? All these things that managers should understand and tackle as the priority. There is a biggest mistake organisations can make is to enunciate all the great values but they do not live up to. Subsequently, people may feel cynic because the values are not same as what they can see every day from their managers (Dimopoulos, 2016). Secondly, it is a must that company should evaluate their leadership model. It is really vital to pay attention to the leaders’ motivation, the way they are rewarded and what they value. If the company ignores this point, it may bring troubles. The lattice style requires leaders acknowledge and implement their roles differently. They are not commanders or superiors, their responsibilities are to support others of their organisation successful. They need to throw away their power and manage to allow this disordered process to happen. Thus, the leaders can get several of different viewpoints as well as perceptions, and their teams can come together for decision-making (Dimopoulos, 2016). Thirdly, assessments and balances need to be transparent and clear for everyone. At Gore, the process has been viewed by all the peers; however, in another company’s case, it can be something else. One of the important thing should be embedded in the management practices is what reward and reinforce the values of the company. This should be the succession that companies should follow if they would like to apply Gore’s culture (Dimopoulos, 2016).

Actually, it is obvious that culture is one of the things that is difficult to be transferred and applied to another organisation. Because at the beginning, every organisation will build their own culture and if it does not bring bad things to the company, no company will accept to adopt new culture. Especially, people who are living with and within the culture, they might refuse to change because they may think their current culture is not bad and they are scared to change and adopt new one. However, some types of organisations that is impossible to transfer to Gore’s management are engineering firms, medical field organisations, designers or production teams and technology. Because these kinds of firms focus on human, creativity and innovation which are key things paid attention to by the lattice type.

Apart from culture, which is quite difficult to be transferred, innovation and technology are the things can be transferable. Because technology and innovation are the things that are easily imitated and they can be transferred to another technology based company.

6.      Conclusion

In conclusion, Gore’s lattice structure is considered as a new management style that can adapt with changing environment where people want to be free to be creative and be adjudged suitably and correctly. The lattice can bring both positive and negative to the company; however, it depends on what kind of company apply it. For those working on innovative and creative aspects such as IT, pharmacy, engineering and designers, the lattice can be an ideal but before applying it, there are some factors should be considered.

7.      References

Bayer, R. (2004). [online] Upperbay.org. Available at: http://upperbay.org/DO%20NOT%20TOUCH%20-%20WEBSITE/articles/employee%20management.pdf [Accessed 1 Oct. 2018].

Benko, C. and Anderson, M. (2011). The Lattice That Has Replaced The Corporate Ladder. [online] Forbes.com. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/2011/03/16/corporate-lattice-ladder-leadership-managing-hierarchy.html#1e7f4d4a3228 [Accessed 30 Sep. 2018].

Bennis, W. (1968). The temporary society. New York: Harper & Row.

Bloomberg.com. (2018). Health Care Equipment and Supplies – Company Overview of C. R. Bard, Inc.. [online] Available at: https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/committees.asp?privcapId=254131 [Accessed 29 Sep. 2018].

Cherry, K. (2018). Groupthink and Why We Strive for Consensus. [online] Verywell Mind. Available at: https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-groupthink-2795213 [Accessed 1 Oct. 2018].

Cialdini, R. and Goldstein, N. (2004). Social Influence: Compliance and Conformity. Annual Review of Psychology, 55(1), pp.591-621.

Dimopoulos, S. (2016). W.L. Gore: Lessons from a Management Revolutionary. [online] Linkedin. Available at: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/wl-gore-lessons-from-management-revolutionary-spiros-dimopoulos [Accessed 29 Sep. 2018].

Forbes.com. (2018). #149 WL Gore & Associates. [online] Available at: https://www.forbes.com/companies/wl-gore-associates/#3f312059b7da [Accessed 29 Sep. 2018].

Gore. (2018). The Gore Story | History and Information | Gore. [online] Available at: https://www.gore.com/about/the-gore-story#our-history [Accessed 28 Sep. 2018].

Grant, R. (2010). Contemporary strategy analysis. 7th ed. New Jersey: Wiley.

Grant, T. and Gale, T. (2007). International Directory of Company Histories. Farmington Hills: Saint James Press [Imprint].

Hattangadi, V. (2015). Theory X & Theory Y. International Journal of Recent Research Aspects, 2(4), pp.20-21.

IWER. (2018). Institute for work and employment research. [online] Available at: http://iwer.mit.edu/about/iwer-pioneers/douglas-m-mcgregor/ [Accessed 1 Oct. 2018].

Janis, I. (1982). Decision making under stress. New York: Free Press.

Janis, I. (1983). Groupthink. Small Groups and Social Interaction, 2, pp.39-46.

Kelly, T. (2015). What It’s Like To Lead A Non-Hierarchical Workplace. [online] Wbur.org. Available at: http://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2015/07/01/wl-gore-ceo-terri-kelly [Accessed 29 Sep. 2018].

Lombardo, C. (2018). 11 Key Advantages and Disadvantages of a Flat Organizational Structure | ConnectUS. [online] Connectusfund.org. Available at: https://connectusfund.org/11-key-advantages-and-disadvantages-of-a-flat-organizational-structure [Accessed 1 Oct. 2018].

Lunenburg, F. (2012). Organizational Structure: Mintzberg’s Framework. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SCHOLARLY, ACADEMIC, INTELLECTUAL DIVERSITY, 14(1).

Magloff, L. (2018). How Does a Lattice Organization Work?. [online] Smallbusiness.chron.com. Available at: https://smallbusiness.chron.com/lattice-organization-work-3846.html [Accessed 1 Oct. 2018].

Mazal, J. (2014). Flat and Fluid: How Companies Without Hierarchy Manage Themselves. [online] Medium. Available at: https://medium.com/@jorgemazal/flat-and-fluid-how-companies-without-hierarchy-manage-themselves-2da856304b27 [Accessed 28 Sep. 2018].

McLeod, S. (2011). Conformity. Simply Psychology.

Mintzberg, H. (1989). Mintzberg on Management: Inside Our Strange World of Organizations. New York: Free Press.

Morse, J. and Lorsch, J. (1970). Beyond Theory Y. [online] Harvard Business Review. Available at: https://hbr.org/1970/05/beyond-theory-y [Accessed 1 Oct. 2018].

Travica, B. (1999). New organizational designs. Stamford, Conn: Ablex Pub. Corp.

 

 

 

 

Table of contents

1. Introduction of WL Gore & Associates Inc. 3
2. Distinctive features of WL Gore’s organisation and management 3
3. Consistency of Gore’s management approach. 5
4. Strengths and weaknesses of WL Gore’s approach to organisation and management 7
5. Transferability of WL Gore’s organisation and management style to other organisations 9
6. Conclusion. 10
7. References. 11

 

 

 

 

1.      Introduction of WL Gore & Associates Inc.

WL Gore & Associates Inc. is a U.S. global corporation specialising in discovery and product innovation. It was founded by Bill and Vieve Gore in Newark, Delaware in 1958 (Gore, 2018). It is proud of itself because of its contribution to the society in varied fields of life such as outerwear, medical devices, pharmaceutical and aerospace industries.

WL Gore is a very successful company with over 2,000 patents recognised worldwide. Recently, it was awarded as the 135^th America’s largest private company 2017 and the 149^th America’s best employer 2018 (Forbes, 2018). In order to gain these successes, it has believed in its typical management system which is sharply different from other established corporations.

Therefore, this report will make clear four main points, including what features are distinctive in WL Gore’s organisation and management, how these distinctive features support to Gore’s consistent management approach, strengths and weaknesses of the approach and the transferability of the approach to other companies.

2.      Distinctive features of WL Gore’s organisation and management

There are some features that help to build the distinction of WL Gore’s organisation and management. Firstly, from the case study itself of WL Gore & Associates, it is discovered that there is no job title and no hierarchy’s symbols given to Gore’s employees even Bill and Vieve who are founders of WL Gore. Specifically, all its employees are called “associates”, except board of directors and CEO which are legally required. There are also very few heads of functional departments such as HR and IT but these heads are chosen by other associates and they are considered as leaders (Mazal, 2014). This relates to another special strategy called emergent strategy. Following this strategy, leader will be emerged when a team comes together to discuss, debate, or bargain based on problems need to be solved. At this time, leader will be chosen by agreement of all other team members. As Terri, CEO of WL Gore expressed in an interview that when a person accumulates enough people who are willing to follow him, he will become a leader. However, the way leaders use their power of leadership is also different from other traditional organisations. At Gore, leaders’ responsibility is to help team members show their strengths and make them be successful. Leaders are also aware that if they do not follow Gore’s values, they easily lose their leadership (Dimopoulos, 2016).

Apart from this, Gore follows team-based structure. At Gore each associate will have a sponsor and this sponsor can be an associate of another sponsor. Additionally, an associate can be member of two or three groups of different projects. Thus, in this kind of organisational structure, people know each other. Specifically, members within a group know each other and members of this group also need to know members of that group. At the end of the day, there are many small basic organisational units forming based on specific products and communication is made by peer to peer, not employers to employees.

Last but not least, consensus decision-making is also a unique feature of Gore’ management style. Every group has rights to self-manage their teams. Because there is no supervisors and subordinates, members of a team will share responsibilities to each other and have rights to self-control their workload. Also, they are believed and authorised to make their own decisions without asking approval from top management, or they may consult with others if they feel the decisions may cause serious problems to Gore. However, at Gore decisions are made by agreements of all associates who involve in that specific project.

All the above features are so different compared to other traditional companies where leaders are assigned from the top, titles are fixed, and subordinates need to report everything to their leaders (Kelly, 2015). Moreover, most big organisations will have quite same management style. CEO or leaders will make decision and pass it down to their subordinates or teamers. Especially, they have strong voice, and power to fire or downgrade their subordinates that make others must follow them (Dimopoulos, 2016).

To be specific, C. R. Bard which is one of direct competitors of WL Gore has followed conventional style of management. Obviously, hierarchy and job titles are existing within Bard, including Board of Directors such as Chairman, Vice Chairman, CEO and COO (Bloomberg, 2018). Also, every division has its own manager. Unlike Gore, leaders at Bard are hired from outside the company through posts on job seeking websites such as Linkedin or they are appointed directly by the top management as promotion. Leaders at Bard have rights and power to make final decisions or give approval to implement employees’ ideas. That is why there is a distance in the relationship of employers and employees, and they cannot communicate from peer to peer compared to Gore’s case.

3.      Consistency of Gore’s management approach

The following table is made in order to do a comparison between the two forms of management and Gore’s management.

Feature	Mechanistic forms	Organic forms	WL Gore
Task definition	Inflexibility and specialisation required	Flexibility and broad definition	Flexibility and no specific direction given
Coordination and control	Regulations and instructions imposed vertically	Mutual adjudgment, common culture	Mutual adjudgment
Communication	Only vertical	Both vertical and horizontal	Both vertical and horizontal
Knowledge	Centralisation	Dispersion	Dispersion
Commitment and loyalty	To direct superiors	To company and its objectives	To company and follow its values
Environmental context	Stable with low technological uncertainty	Dynamic with significant technological uncertainty and ambiguity	Dynamic but quite chaotic

Source: (Grant, 2010)

According to the above table, it can be easily recognised that all features of WL Gore’s management style are similar to organic forms. In addition, the organic forms are relevant to McGregor’s theory X and Mintzberg’s adhocracy organisational type. Therefore, the two theories will be analysed before making comparison with Gore’s management style.

Theory Y is the theory created and developed by McGregor during the period of 1950s-1960s (IWER, 2018). This theory was built focusing on human and based on job motivation and management. This theory stresses on motivating and encouraging employees to come up to their tasks without directions of direct employers. By using this theory, managers can make influence on motivation and productivity of employee in several ways (Morse and Lorsch, 1970). From that, the employees can feel satisfied and best achieve their own goals by committing and involving in their company’s objectives. In addition, following theory Y, employee is considered as the most value of an organisation, and employers would not make an effort on structure or not try to control the employees closely. The employers will support the employees to be mature by paying less external control to the employees and letting them self-control. Consequently, the relationship between employers and employees more inclines to personal level (Hattangadi, 2015). It means the relationship would be improved and become better which will help to create a healthier working environment (Bayer, 2004). These are some key principles of theory Y as follows. Firstly, organisations should decentralise control and minimise management layers, delegate employees responsibility and give them rights of self-making decisions as well as partly self-controlling working environment. Secondly, enlarging the variety of job and giving chances to employees in order to satisfy their ego needs. Thirdly, supporting employees during the process of making decisions in order to bring out capacity of one’s initiative. Finally, appraising employees’ performance after letting them set their own objectives.

Adhocracy is an organisational form of flexibility, adaptability and informality which is identified thanks to no formal structure. It can be said that adhocracy is opposite to bureaucracy fashion. The term of adhocracy was first mentioned by Warren Bennis (Bennis, 1968) and its concept was developed by Henry Mintzberg. According to Mintzberg, adhocracy organisational form is very complex and dynamic (Mintzberg, 1989). Additionally, adhocracy and bureaucracy are different from each other. Mintzberg considered bureaucracy is a form of the past while adhocracy is the form of the future (Travica, 1999). Adhocracy can be flourished in varied environment, and deals well with problem solving and innovations (Mintzberg, 1989). However, advanced, complex and automated technological systems are required for its development (Travica, 1999). It is believed that adhocracy contains many characteristics which allow it respond faster than other traditional organisations, i.e. bureaucracy. Followings are some outstanding characteristics of it, including highly organic structure, no formal training, specialised job, specialised team, no clearly defined roles, mutual adjustment and non-bureaucratic culture, absence of hierarchy (Mintzberg, 1989 and Travica, 1999). In adhocracy organisational form, support staff is a very important part and the number of it is very large in order to support the complicated structure. Aside from that mutual adjustment is used as a way of coordination, and some selected models of decentralisation are maintained. Moreover, within this structure, formalisation and decentralisation have a tendency to be low and technostructure is small because technologists and technical experts are engaged in operative core of companies. Also, adhocracy organisations more involve in unusual tasks and sophisticated technology is used within these organisations because their key objectives are innovation so as to adapt to changing environments. Therefore, most adhocracy organisations are medium sized, including pharmaceutics, aerospace and electronics companies (Lunenburg, 2012).

As can be seen after the above analyses, Theory X of McGregor and Adhocracy of Mintzberg have some common features which are applied by Gore since its establishment. In the case study itself, it is mentioned that Bill Gore’s ideas about management were affected by McGregor. Gore values a lot on human rather than on system. It creates the best working environment for its associates. People are free to think, to talk, to be creative and to do what they desire if they give commitment and their tasks is based on Gore’s value. They can also choose where they want to belong to. At the end, they will receive as much as what they give because Gore is using mutual adjudgment to grade their associates. How much associates give and contribute to the company, it will fairly and transparently return to them. In conclusion, McGregor’s Theory Y and Mintzberg’s theory, which are more humanistic, are the two consistent theories within Gore.

4.      Strengths and weaknesses of WL Gore’s approach to organisation and management

The above distinctive features show that Gore is having lattice management style. This style flats organisational structure in order that information can collaboratively and transparently flow without being unconstrained by traditional top-down ladder. Additionally, it makes all individuals involve in the entire company by freely giving ideas and suggestions in all company’s areas (Benko and Anderson, 2011). In general, lattice companies are allowed to be more flexible, easily and quickly adapt when market conditions change. Moreover, these lattice organisation can take more advantages of their talents, minimise turnover rate and obviously increase productivity (Magloff, 2018).

Likewise, Gore gains many advantages thanks to apply and use the lattice management style. Firstly, this style fosters higher level of employee’s motivation because they are treated as owners of the company which makes them feel engage in the company. Furthermore, they can set their own objectives but these objectives should be not against the company’s values. In other words, they can be their own boss, and self-decide what they would like to work on and where they want to contribute so as to bring the best results (Dimopoulos, 2016). In this lattice structure, associates are encouraged to bring out their initiatives, be willing to take risks and make the best performance (Grant and Gale, 2007). However, they have to make commitment on what they decided and need to deliver it as they promised. Therefore, there also exists limitations that is every associate needs to be a self-disciplined person and knows how to self-define objectives. Everyone needs to have high awareness about being self-responsible for the company’s incredible outcomes (Dimopoulos, 2016). Secondly, there is no intermediate within the flat structure so the process of decision making will be faster. Fewer people that decisions need to be consulted with, lesser time is waste and quicker speed that problems are solved (Lombardo, 2018). Moreover, at Gore, associates are giving rights to get advice or what they need directly from any person who can support them to be successful (Dimopoulos, 2016). This builds a straight communication line within the lattice structure. Thirdly, the lattice also makes communication become clear and transparent. It is clear that when information is delivered through a string of mouths and ears, it will end up with distortion, puff or deflation. The more layers that information is passed across, the more misunderstanding or miscommunication will be made. Therefore, the lattice helps to avoid these matters because information will be delivered straight to the end person (Lombardo, 2018). Fourthly, less dominance and supervision are required. It is believed that heads or owners of organisations have to be able to control and monitor all things happened within their companies, not except their employees. Nevertheless, some studies have shown that the less time leaders spend for managing their followers, the more productive their followers can make since they are given higher sense of responsibility.

On the other hand, Gore is facing with several disadvantages of the lattice management style. First of all, management can easily be out of control, especially when number of associate is too out of proportion compared to number of leaders (Lombardo, 2018). It is obvious that people will always be responsible or perform perfectly within an organisation. Then, it will become worse if there is not enough people to control the situation. Although Gore tries to keep the maximum of 200 people for each manufacturing facility and many teams are divided within a facility; out of control is unavoidable sometimes. The next disadvantage could be work-relationship. When individuals belongs to several groups, it is not easy to keep connecting with all other associates on personal level, which is very crucial in building trust and promoting responsibility of employees for their works and their companies as a whole (Lombardo, 2018). Furthermore, at Gore as a person can play different roles such as associate or sponsor or leader in different groups at the same time, it creates chaos in their duties and the implementation of tasks. The other weaknesses are groupthink and conformity. It is a term of psychological phenomenon which arises within a group of individuals where every members try to lessen group conflicts and strive for consensus decisions within their group (Cherry, 2018). In several cases of groupthink, individuals try to leave their own beliefs and agree with opinions of other group members (Bloom, 2010). Although groupthink helps to increase the group cohesiveness, it could result in inefficient, unproductive or even disastrous outcomes because people may commit serious mistakes in case that all group members converge hurriedly (Janis, 1982 and Janis, 1983). In August, 2018, Cherry also stated that groupthink restraints individual opinions and initiatives, and finally controls innovation (Cherry, 2018). Lastly, conformity is an act happened when people try to match their attitudes, personal beliefs and behaviours with norms of their group (Cialdini and Goldstein, 2004). People are forced to consent and often make conformity because of the security and values of their group without realistic appraisal (McLeod, 2011). At the end, conformity could lead to bad results as same as groupthink because people need to think and act as they are in a group, and they need to compromise between themselves and their group members.

5.      Transferability of WL Gore’s organisation and management style to other organisations

As Kelly expressed in an interview, the lattice management style are still being evolved by Gore and Gore has not figured it all out. Therefore, if another CEO would like to apply the lattice, there are some points that they should follow. Firstly, managers need to understand the values which are embedded in their companies. They need to know what kind of behaviours are rewarded and strengthened during the time of operation of the companies? Are they cultures which are believed in and motivate employees? Do these cultures help to strengthen a collaborative spirit? Do they embolden knowledge sharing? All these things that managers should understand and tackle as the priority. There is a biggest mistake organisations can make is to enunciate all the great values but they do not live up to. Subsequently, people may feel cynic because the values are not same as what they can see every day from their managers (Dimopoulos, 2016). Secondly, it is a must that company should evaluate their leadership model. It is really vital to pay attention to the leaders’ motivation, the way they are rewarded and what they value. If the company ignores this point, it may bring troubles. The lattice style requires leaders acknowledge and implement their roles differently. They are not commanders or superiors, their responsibilities are to support others of their organisation successful. They need to throw away their power and manage to allow this disordered process to happen. Thus, the leaders can get several of different viewpoints as well as perceptions, and their teams can come together for decision-making (Dimopoulos, 2016). Thirdly, assessments and balances need to be transparent and clear for everyone. At Gore, the process has been viewed by all the peers; however, in another company’s case, it can be something else. One of the important thing should be embedded in the management practices is what reward and reinforce the values of the company. This should be the succession that companies should follow if they would like to apply Gore’s culture (Dimopoulos, 2016).

Actually, it is obvious that culture is one of the things that is difficult to be transferred and applied to another organisation. Because at the beginning, every organisation will build their own culture and if it does not bring bad things to the company, no company will accept to adopt new culture. Especially, people who are living with and within the culture, they might refuse to change because they may think their current culture is not bad and they are scared to change and adopt new one. However, some types of organisations that is impossible to transfer to Gore’s management are engineering firms, medical field organisations, designers or production teams and technology. Because these kinds of firms focus on human, creativity and innovation which are key things paid attention to by the lattice type.

Apart from culture, which is quite difficult to be transferred, innovation and technology are the things can be transferable. Because technology and innovation are the things that are easily imitated and they can be transferred to another technology based company.

6.      Conclusion

In conclusion, Gore’s lattice structure is considered as a new management style that can adapt with changing environment where people want to be free to be creative and be adjudged suitably and correctly. The lattice can bring both positive and negative to the company; however, it depends on what kind of company apply it. For those working on innovative and creative aspects such as IT, pharmacy, engineering and designers, the lattice can be an ideal but before applying it, there are some factors should be considered.

7.      References

Bayer, R. (2004). [online] Upperbay.org. Available at: http://upperbay.org/DO%20NOT%20TOUCH%20-%20WEBSITE/articles/employee%20management.pdf [Accessed 1 Oct. 2018].

Benko, C. and Anderson, M. (2011). The Lattice That Has Replaced The Corporate Ladder. [online] Forbes.com. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/2011/03/16/corporate-lattice-ladder-leadership-managing-hierarchy.html#1e7f4d4a3228 [Accessed 30 Sep. 2018].

Bennis, W. (1968). The temporary society. New York: Harper & Row.

Bloomberg.com. (2018). Health Care Equipment and Supplies – Company Overview of C. R. Bard, Inc.. [online] Available at: https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/committees.asp?privcapId=254131 [Accessed 29 Sep. 2018].

Cherry, K. (2018). Groupthink and Why We Strive for Consensus. [online] Verywell Mind. Available at: https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-groupthink-2795213 [Accessed 1 Oct. 2018].

Cialdini, R. and Goldstein, N. (2004). Social Influence: Compliance and Conformity. Annual Review of Psychology, 55(1), pp.591-621.

Dimopoulos, S. (2016). W.L. Gore: Lessons from a Management Revolutionary. [online] Linkedin. Available at: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/wl-gore-lessons-from-management-revolutionary-spiros-dimopoulos [Accessed 29 Sep. 2018].

Forbes.com. (2018). #149 WL Gore & Associates. [online] Available at: https://www.forbes.com/companies/wl-gore-associates/#3f312059b7da [Accessed 29 Sep. 2018].

Gore. (2018). The Gore Story | History and Information | Gore. [online] Available at: https://www.gore.com/about/the-gore-story#our-history [Accessed 28 Sep. 2018].

Grant, R. (2010). Contemporary strategy analysis. 7th ed. New Jersey: Wiley.

Grant, T. and Gale, T. (2007). International Directory of Company Histories. Farmington Hills: Saint James Press [Imprint].

Hattangadi, V. (2015). Theory X & Theory Y. International Journal of Recent Research Aspects, 2(4), pp.20-21.

IWER. (2018). Institute for work and employment research. [online] Available at: http://iwer.mit.edu/about/iwer-pioneers/douglas-m-mcgregor/ [Accessed 1 Oct. 2018].

Janis, I. (1982). Decision making under stress. New York: Free Press.

Janis, I. (1983). Groupthink. Small Groups and Social Interaction, 2, pp.39-46.

Kelly, T. (2015). What It’s Like To Lead A Non-Hierarchical Workplace. [online] Wbur.org. Available at: http://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2015/07/01/wl-gore-ceo-terri-kelly [Accessed 29 Sep. 2018].

Lombardo, C. (2018). 11 Key Advantages and Disadvantages of a Flat Organizational Structure | ConnectUS. [online] Connectusfund.org. Available at: https://connectusfund.org/11-key-advantages-and-disadvantages-of-a-flat-organizational-structure [Accessed 1 Oct. 2018].

Lunenburg, F. (2012). Organizational Structure: Mintzberg’s Framework. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SCHOLARLY, ACADEMIC, INTELLECTUAL DIVERSITY, 14(1).

Magloff, L. (2018). How Does a Lattice Organization Work?. [online] Smallbusiness.chron.com. Available at: https://smallbusiness.chron.com/lattice-organization-work-3846.html [Accessed 1 Oct. 2018].

Mazal, J. (2014). Flat and Fluid: How Companies Without Hierarchy Manage Themselves. [online] Medium. Available at: https://medium.com/@jorgemazal/flat-and-fluid-how-companies-without-hierarchy-manage-themselves-2da856304b27 [Accessed 28 Sep. 2018].

McLeod, S. (2011). Conformity. Simply Psychology.

Mintzberg, H. (1989). Mintzberg on Management: Inside Our Strange World of Organizations. New York: Free Press.

Morse, J. and Lorsch, J. (1970). Beyond Theory Y. [online] Harvard Business Review. Available at: https://hbr.org/1970/05/beyond-theory-y [Accessed 1 Oct. 2018].

Travica, B. (1999). New organizational designs. Stamford, Conn: Ablex Pub. Corp.

 

 

Table of contents

1. Introduction of WL Gore & Associates Inc. 3
2. Distinctive features of WL Gore’s organisation and management 3
3. Consistency of Gore’s management approach. 5
4. Strengths and weaknesses of WL Gore’s approach to organisation and management 7
5. Transferability of WL Gore’s organisation and management style to other organisations 9
6. Conclusion. 10
7. References. 11

 

 

 

 

1.      Introduction of WL Gore & Associates Inc.

WL Gore & Associates Inc. is a U.S. global corporation specialising in discovery and product innovation. It was founded by Bill and Vieve Gore in Newark, Delaware in 1958 (Gore, 2018). It is proud of itself because of its contribution to the society in varied fields of life such as outerwear, medical devices, pharmaceutical and aerospace industries.

WL Gore is a very successful company with over 2,000 patents recognised worldwide. Recently, it was awarded as the 135^th America’s largest private company 2017 and the 149^th America’s best employer 2018 (Forbes, 2018). In order to gain these successes, it has believed in its typical management system which is sharply different from other established corporations.

Therefore, this report will make clear four main points, including what features are distinctive in WL Gore’s organisation and management, how these distinctive features support to Gore’s consistent management approach, strengths and weaknesses of the approach and the transferability of the approach to other companies.

2.      Distinctive features of WL Gore’s organisation and management

There are some features that help to build the distinction of WL Gore’s organisation and management. Firstly, from the case study itself of WL Gore & Associates, it is discovered that there is no job title and no hierarchy’s symbols given to Gore’s employees even Bill and Vieve who are founders of WL Gore. Specifically, all its employees are called “associates”, except board of directors and CEO which are legally required. There are also very few heads of functional departments such as HR and IT but these heads are chosen by other associates and they are considered as leaders (Mazal, 2014). This relates to another special strategy called emergent strategy. Following this strategy, leader will be emerged when a team comes together to discuss, debate, or bargain based on problems need to be solved. At this time, leader will be chosen by agreement of all other team members. As Terri, CEO of WL Gore expressed in an interview that when a person accumulates enough people who are willing to follow him, he will become a leader. However, the way leaders use their power of leadership is also different from other traditional organisations. At Gore, leaders’ responsibility is to help team members show their strengths and make them be successful. Leaders are also aware that if they do not follow Gore’s values, they easily lose their leadership (Dimopoulos, 2016).

Apart from this, Gore follows team-based structure. At Gore each associate will have a sponsor and this sponsor can be an associate of another sponsor. Additionally, an associate can be member of two or three groups of different projects. Thus, in this kind of organisational structure, people know each other. Specifically, members within a group know each other and members of this group also need to know members of that group. At the end of the day, there are many small basic organisational units forming based on specific products and communication is made by peer to peer, not employers to employees.

Last but not least, consensus decision-making is also a unique feature of Gore’ management style. Every group has rights to self-manage their teams. Because there is no supervisors and subordinates, members of a team will share responsibilities to each other and have rights to self-control their workload. Also, they are believed and authorised to make their own decisions without asking approval from top management, or they may consult with others if they feel the decisions may cause serious problems to Gore. However, at Gore decisions are made by agreements of all associates who involve in that specific project.

All the above features are so different compared to other traditional companies where leaders are assigned from the top, titles are fixed, and subordinates need to report everything to their leaders (Kelly, 2015). Moreover, most big organisations will have quite same management style. CEO or leaders will make decision and pass it down to their subordinates or teamers. Especially, they have strong voice, and power to fire or downgrade their subordinates that make others must follow them (Dimopoulos, 2016).

To be specific, C. R. Bard which is one of direct competitors of WL Gore has followed conventional style of management. Obviously, hierarchy and job titles are existing within Bard, including Board of Directors such as Chairman, Vice Chairman, CEO and COO (Bloomberg, 2018). Also, every division has its own manager. Unlike Gore, leaders at Bard are hired from outside the company through posts on job seeking websites such as Linkedin or they are appointed directly by the top management as promotion. Leaders at Bard have rights and power to make final decisions or give approval to implement employees’ ideas. That is why there is a distance in the relationship of employers and employees, and they cannot communicate from peer to peer compared to Gore’s case.

3.      Consistency of Gore’s management approach

The following table is made in order to do a comparison between the two forms of management and Gore’s management.

Feature	Mechanistic forms	Organic forms	WL Gore
Task definition	Inflexibility and specialisation required	Flexibility and broad definition	Flexibility and no specific direction given
Coordination and control	Regulations and instructions imposed vertically	Mutual adjudgment, common culture	Mutual adjudgment
Communication	Only vertical	Both vertical and horizontal	Both vertical and horizontal
Knowledge	Centralisation	Dispersion	Dispersion
Commitment and loyalty	To direct superiors	To company and its objectives	To company and follow its values
Environmental context	Stable with low technological uncertainty	Dynamic with significant technological uncertainty and ambiguity	Dynamic but quite chaotic

Source: (Grant, 2010)

According to the above table, it can be easily recognised that all features of WL Gore’s management style are similar to organic forms. In addition, the organic forms are relevant to McGregor’s theory X and Mintzberg’s adhocracy organisational type. Therefore, the two theories will be analysed before making comparison with Gore’s management style.

Theory Y is the theory created and developed by McGregor during the period of 1950s-1960s (IWER, 2018). This theory was built focusing on human and based on job motivation and management. This theory stresses on motivating and encouraging employees to come up to their tasks without directions of direct employers. By using this theory, managers can make influence on motivation and productivity of employee in several ways (Morse and Lorsch, 1970). From that, the employees can feel satisfied and best achieve their own goals by committing and involving in their company’s objectives. In addition, following theory Y, employee is considered as the most value of an organisation, and employers would not make an effort on structure or not try to control the employees closely. The employers will support the employees to be mature by paying less external control to the employees and letting them self-control. Consequently, the relationship between employers and employees more inclines to personal level (Hattangadi, 2015). It means the relationship would be improved and become better which will help to create a healthier working environment (Bayer, 2004). These are some key principles of theory Y as follows. Firstly, organisations should decentralise control and minimise management layers, delegate employees responsibility and give them rights of self-making decisions as well as partly self-controlling working environment. Secondly, enlarging the variety of job and giving chances to employees in order to satisfy their ego needs. Thirdly, supporting employees during the process of making decisions in order to bring out capacity of one’s initiative. Finally, appraising employees’ performance after letting them set their own objectives.

Adhocracy is an organisational form of flexibility, adaptability and informality which is identified thanks to no formal structure. It can be said that adhocracy is opposite to bureaucracy fashion. The term of adhocracy was first mentioned by Warren Bennis (Bennis, 1968) and its concept was developed by Henry Mintzberg. According to Mintzberg, adhocracy organisational form is very complex and dynamic (Mintzberg, 1989). Additionally, adhocracy and bureaucracy are different from each other. Mintzberg considered bureaucracy is a form of the past while adhocracy is the form of the future (Travica, 1999). Adhocracy can be flourished in varied environment, and deals well with problem solving and innovations (Mintzberg, 1989). However, advanced, complex and automated technological systems are required for its development (Travica, 1999). It is believed that adhocracy contains many characteristics which allow it respond faster than other traditional organisations, i.e. bureaucracy. Followings are some outstanding characteristics of it, including highly organic structure, no formal training, specialised job, specialised team, no clearly defined roles, mutual adjustment and non-bureaucratic culture, absence of hierarchy (Mintzberg, 1989 and Travica, 1999). In adhocracy organisational form, support staff is a very important part and the number of it is very large in order to support the complicated structure. Aside from that mutual adjustment is used as a way of coordination, and some selected models of decentralisation are maintained. Moreover, within this structure, formalisation and decentralisation have a tendency to be low and technostructure is small because technologists and technical experts are engaged in operative core of companies. Also, adhocracy organisations more involve in unusual tasks and sophisticated technology is used within these organisations because their key objectives are innovation so as to adapt to changing environments. Therefore, most adhocracy organisations are medium sized, including pharmaceutics, aerospace and electronics companies (Lunenburg, 2012).

As can be seen after the above analyses, Theory X of McGregor and Adhocracy of Mintzberg have some common features which are applied by Gore since its establishment. In the case study itself, it is mentioned that Bill Gore’s ideas about management were affected by McGregor. Gore values a lot on human rather than on system. It creates the best working environment for its associates. People are free to think, to talk, to be creative and to do what they desire if they give commitment and their tasks is based on Gore’s value. They can also choose where they want to belong to. At the end, they will receive as much as what they give because Gore is using mutual adjudgment to grade their associates. How much associates give and contribute to the company, it will fairly and transparently return to them. In conclusion, McGregor’s Theory Y and Mintzberg’s theory, which are more humanistic, are the two consistent theories within Gore.

4.      Strengths and weaknesses of WL Gore’s approach to organisation and management

The above distinctive features show that Gore is having lattice management style. This style flats organisational structure in order that information can collaboratively and transparently flow without being unconstrained by traditional top-down ladder. Additionally, it makes all individuals involve in the entire company by freely giving ideas and suggestions in all company’s areas (Benko and Anderson, 2011). In general, lattice companies are allowed to be more flexible, easily and quickly adapt when market conditions change. Moreover, these lattice organisation can take more advantages of their talents, minimise turnover rate and obviously increase productivity (Magloff, 2018).

Likewise, Gore gains many advantages thanks to apply and use the lattice management style. Firstly, this style fosters higher level of employee’s motivation because they are treated as owners of the company which makes them feel engage in the company. Furthermore, they can set their own objectives but these objectives should be not against the company’s values. In other words, they can be their own boss, and self-decide what they would like to work on and where they want to contribute so as to bring the best results (Dimopoulos, 2016). In this lattice structure, associates are encouraged to bring out their initiatives, be willing to take risks and make the best performance (Grant and Gale, 2007). However, they have to make commitment on what they decided and need to deliver it as they promised. Therefore, there also exists limitations that is every associate needs to be a self-disciplined person and knows how to self-define objectives. Everyone needs to have high awareness about being self-responsible for the company’s incredible outcomes (Dimopoulos, 2016). Secondly, there is no intermediate within the flat structure so the process of decision making will be faster. Fewer people that decisions need to be consulted with, lesser time is waste and quicker speed that problems are solved (Lombardo, 2018). Moreover, at Gore, associates are giving rights to get advice or what they need directly from any person who can support them to be successful (Dimopoulos, 2016). This builds a straight communication line within the lattice structure. Thirdly, the lattice also makes communication become clear and transparent. It is clear that when information is delivered through a string of mouths and ears, it will end up with distortion, puff or deflation. The more layers that information is passed across, the more misunderstanding or miscommunication will be made. Therefore, the lattice helps to avoid these matters because information will be delivered straight to the end person (Lombardo, 2018). Fourthly, less dominance and supervision are required. It is believed that heads or owners of organisations have to be able to control and monitor all things happened within their companies, not except their employees. Nevertheless, some studies have shown that the less time leaders spend for managing their followers, the more productive their followers can make since they are given higher sense of responsibility.

On the other hand, Gore is facing with several disadvantages of the lattice management style. First of all, management can easily be out of control, especially when number of associate is too out of proportion compared to number of leaders (Lombardo, 2018). It is obvious that people will always be responsible or perform perfectly within an organisation. Then, it will become worse if there is not enough people to control the situation. Although Gore tries to keep the maximum of 200 people for each manufacturing facility and many teams are divided within a facility; out of control is unavoidable sometimes. The next disadvantage could be work-relationship. When individuals belongs to several groups, it is not easy to keep connecting with all other associates on personal level, which is very crucial in building trust and promoting responsibility of employees for their works and their companies as a whole (Lombardo, 2018). Furthermore, at Gore as a person can play different roles such as associate or sponsor or leader in different groups at the same time, it creates chaos in their duties and the implementation of tasks. The other weaknesses are groupthink and conformity. It is a term of psychological phenomenon which arises within a group of individuals where every members try to lessen group conflicts and strive for consensus decisions within their group (Cherry, 2018). In several cases of groupthink, individuals try to leave their own beliefs and agree with opinions of other group members (Bloom, 2010). Although groupthink helps to increase the group cohesiveness, it could result in inefficient, unproductive or even disastrous outcomes because people may commit serious mistakes in case that all group members converge hurriedly (Janis, 1982 and Janis, 1983). In August, 2018, Cherry also stated that groupthink restraints individual opinions and initiatives, and finally controls innovation (Cherry, 2018). Lastly, conformity is an act happened when people try to match their attitudes, personal beliefs and behaviours with norms of their group (Cialdini and Goldstein, 2004). People are forced to consent and often make conformity because of the security and values of their group without realistic appraisal (McLeod, 2011). At the end, conformity could lead to bad results as same as groupthink because people need to think and act as they are in a group, and they need to compromise between themselves and their group members.

5.      Transferability of WL Gore’s organisation and management style to other organisations

As Kelly expressed in an interview, the lattice management style are still being evolved by Gore and Gore has not figured it all out. Therefore, if another CEO would like to apply the lattice, there are some points that they should follow. Firstly, managers need to understand the values which are embedded in their companies. They need to know what kind of behaviours are rewarded and strengthened during the time of operation of the companies? Are they cultures which are believed in and motivate employees? Do these cultures help to strengthen a collaborative spirit? Do they embolden knowledge sharing? All these things that managers should understand and tackle as the priority. There is a biggest mistake organisations can make is to enunciate all the great values but they do not live up to. Subsequently, people may feel cynic because the values are not same as what they can see every day from their managers (Dimopoulos, 2016). Secondly, it is a must that company should evaluate their leadership model. It is really vital to pay attention to the leaders’ motivation, the way they are rewarded and what they value. If the company ignores this point, it may bring troubles. The lattice style requires leaders acknowledge and implement their roles differently. They are not commanders or superiors, their responsibilities are to support others of their organisation successful. They need to throw away their power and manage to allow this disordered process to happen. Thus, the leaders can get several of different viewpoints as well as perceptions, and their teams can come together for decision-making (Dimopoulos, 2016). Thirdly, assessments and balances need to be transparent and clear for everyone. At Gore, the process has been viewed by all the peers; however, in another company’s case, it can be something else. One of the important thing should be embedded in the management practices is what reward and reinforce the values of the company. This should be the succession that companies should follow if they would like to apply Gore’s culture (Dimopoulos, 2016).

Actually, it is obvious that culture is one of the things that is difficult to be transferred and applied to another organisation. Because at the beginning, every organisation will build their own culture and if it does not bring bad things to the company, no company will accept to adopt new culture. Especially, people who are living with and within the culture, they might refuse to change because they may think their current culture is not bad and they are scared to change and adopt new one. However, some types of organisations that is impossible to transfer to Gore’s management are engineering firms, medical field organisations, designers or production teams and technology. Because these kinds of firms focus on human, creativity and innovation which are key things paid attention to by the lattice type.

Apart from culture, which is quite difficult to be transferred, innovation and technology are the things can be transferable. Because technology and innovation are the things that are easily imitated and they can be transferred to another technology based company.

6.      Conclusion

In conclusion, Gore’s lattice structure is considered as a new management style that can adapt with changing environment where people want to be free to be creative and be adjudged suitably and correctly. The lattice can bring both positive and negative to the company; however, it depends on what kind of company apply it. For those working on innovative and creative aspects such as IT, pharmacy, engineering and designers, the lattice can be an ideal but before applying it, there are some factors should be considered.

7.      References

Bayer, R. (2004). [online] Upperbay.org. Available at: http://upperbay.org/DO%20NOT%20TOUCH%20-%20WEBSITE/articles/employee%20management.pdf [Accessed 1 Oct. 2018].

Benko, C. and Anderson, M. (2011). The Lattice That Has Replaced The Corporate Ladder. [online] Forbes.com. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/2011/03/16/corporate-lattice-ladder-leadership-managing-hierarchy.html#1e7f4d4a3228 [Accessed 30 Sep. 2018].

Bennis, W. (1968). The temporary society. New York: Harper & Row.

Bloomberg.com. (2018). Health Care Equipment and Supplies – Company Overview of C. R. Bard, Inc.. [online] Available at: https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/committees.asp?privcapId=254131 [Accessed 29 Sep. 2018].

Cherry, K. (2018). Groupthink and Why We Strive for Consensus. [online] Verywell Mind. Available at: https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-groupthink-2795213 [Accessed 1 Oct. 2018].

Cialdini, R. and Goldstein, N. (2004). Social Influence: Compliance and Conformity. Annual Review of Psychology, 55(1), pp.591-621.

Dimopoulos, S. (2016). W.L. Gore: Lessons from a Management Revolutionary. [online] Linkedin. Available at: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/wl-gore-lessons-from-management-revolutionary-spiros-dimopoulos [Accessed 29 Sep. 2018].

Forbes.com. (2018). #149 WL Gore & Associates. [online] Available at: https://www.forbes.com/companies/wl-gore-associates/#3f312059b7da [Accessed 29 Sep. 2018].

Gore. (2018). The Gore Story | History and Information | Gore. [online] Available at: https://www.gore.com/about/the-gore-story#our-history [Accessed 28 Sep. 2018].

Grant, R. (2010). Contemporary strategy analysis. 7th ed. New Jersey: Wiley.

Grant, T. and Gale, T. (2007). International Directory of Company Histories. Farmington Hills: Saint James Press [Imprint].

Hattangadi, V. (2015). Theory X & Theory Y. International Journal of Recent Research Aspects, 2(4), pp.20-21.

IWER. (2018). Institute for work and employment research. [online] Available at: http://iwer.mit.edu/about/iwer-pioneers/douglas-m-mcgregor/ [Accessed 1 Oct. 2018].

Janis, I. (1982). Decision making under stress. New York: Free Press.

Janis, I. (1983). Groupthink. Small Groups and Social Interaction, 2, pp.39-46.

Kelly, T. (2015). What It’s Like To Lead A Non-Hierarchical Workplace. [online] Wbur.org. Available at: http://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2015/07/01/wl-gore-ceo-terri-kelly [Accessed 29 Sep. 2018].

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