Leading Change Paper

Leadership paper

The company in the simulation named Good Sport which is a Florida based manufacturer of fitness equipment such as treadmills, bikes, steppers and rowing equipment. Basketball player Jason Poole founded Good Sport 15 years ago. Good Sport has fifteen years of experience in providing excellent products to clients. The company has been successful marketing its exercise equipments to hospitals. Good Sport has also succeeded to provide equipments for clubs, hotels and residences into North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. The latest interactive holistic exercise equipment which developed by research and development (R&D) department is named XtendSport. Good Sport has four departments, R&D production, sales, and finance. Any new equipment need to be approved by each of the four departments before it can go to production. To continued succeed, Good Sport should consider the latest trends by designing and manufacturing new products.

Organization structure in Good Sport is the one which we see most frequently in corporations. The previous CEO Marvin Wallace led Good Sport and was in charge of production, R&D, sales, and finance departments. Each of the departments has their own vice president, senior manager and lower manager. Lower managers need to report to the senior managers, and senior managers need to report to the vice president, and finally report to the CEO. It means commands and decisions flow down from the CEO through certain management levels to employees. Therefore, within the company of Good Sport, it is a hierarchical or tall organizational structure. The hierarchy in an organization defines the ordered relation in term of power in decision making on a set of members in the organization (Shiba, 2002). The benefit of using hierarchical organizational structure is middle managers serve a valuable function by controlling work activities and managing corporate growth The disadvantage of using hierarchical organizational structure is too many level of managers cost too much (McShane & Von Glinow, 2004).

Organizational culture is the basic pattern of shared assumptions, values and beliefs that govern behavior within a particular organization. Organizational culture is a deeply embedded form of social control. It is the “social glue” that bonds people together and makes them feel part of the organizational experience. (McShane & Von Glinow, 2004). Good Sport’s has a dominant culture which is the high power distance, because most decisions go from the owner through certain management levels to employees. This dominant culture is shared most widely by the organization members. Good Sport also values in exchanging information among departments and value in contributing to society through promoting the benefits of fitness. Meanwhile, each department at Good Sport has its own subcultures culture which located throughout its departments. Like the production department is more formal, they like keeping distance between each others. In contrast, sales department is more informal, they like meeting colleagues outside the office. The sales department can be motivated by corporate images and the production department can be motivated by challenges work. Both departments like working independently and they don’t like interference by other departments. Although each of them holds its own subcultures, they still place the dominant culture on the top.

“Companies with strong cultures generally perform better than those with weak cultures, but only when the cultural content is appropriate for the organization's environment” (McShane & Von Glinow, 2004). Organizational structure and culture at Good sport will have a significant impact on how the company conducts business. The corporate culture of power distance also required maintaining professional distance to match the hierarchical structure. Culture represents the internal environments in the organization, organizational structure need to adopt and support the culture across the organization. “Organizational structures are frequently used as tools for change. Structures support or inhibit communication and relations across the organization” (McShane & Von Glinow, 2004).

To some extent, I think the hierarchical or tall organizational structure is compatible with the culture. The organization structure of Good sport consists of four departments which controlled by different vice presidents. Culture in each department is influenced by departmental heads or vice president. Good Sport also has a training course for vice president by promoting from within. The organizational culture of Good Sport will be in consistency when the company promotes CEO from one of departmental heads or vice president instead or hire someone outside. Therefore, the hierarchical or tall organizational structure supports the corporate