Organizational Management

FMC Corporation’s Green River facility is a large organization with many different product lines that cater to many different customers. The industry it serves is the chemical industry. With over 1,000 employees, they service over 100 customers with several different product lines. The Aberdeen facility on the other hand, has only 100 employees who service to only one customer with a single product. The Aberdeen facility, although small in numbers, has proven to be successful in growth and organizational effectiveness to the point that the Green River facility is interested in its organizational behaviors to incorporate them into their own facility. The Aberdeen facility was founded on the beliefs of participative management and empowerment (George & Jones, 2005) to its employees. The basic principle behind the success of this idea is trust. According to Bob Lancaster, the founder to Aberdeen’s management system, trust eliminates fear and allows employees to really focus on what is needed to be done as well as getting it done.

By organizing self managed teams (George & Jones, 2005) along with a team leader, employees are encouraged to manage many different aspects of their own organizational behavior. Employee selection is a rigorous process designed to attract people with not only technical skills, which is minor determining factor based on the philosophy that technical skills were easily trained, but a range of : personal skills, group skills, communication skills, problem solving skills, results orientation, and leadership skills (Clawson, 2005). These employees would have to be able to thrive in the environment were they are not needed to be told what to do, but to just do it.

Teams are designed to manage virtually every aspect of the plant. They schedule work hours, purchased materials and tools, planned work schedules, coordinated with other teams, evaluated team members performances, recommended salary increases, generate reports, and deal with virtually every problem that arises (Clawson, 2005). This is where trust is displayed. These teams are comparable to a family. Each person depends on each other to get jobs done within the team. They openly communicate and have meetings when necessary to discuss and resolve issues as they arise. There is no communication gap between management and teams. In other words, there is no long chain of people you have to go through before you can reach management.

Employees at the Aberdeen facility seem to be more satisfied with their jobs due to the fact that they appreciate the self-motivation and responsibility that makes them a valuable part of their team. Although there are occasions where people are not comfortable with not being told what to do in a work environment and do not like having responsibility, most of the employees thrive in this setting. They enjoy the reward structure which ranges from days off to pay increases. The structure of the Aberdeen facility allows for much room for employees to rise in the company. They have a structure that bases pay increases according to not only evaluations, but by getting certified for more duties and earning points for duties performed. The facility actually expects you to rise up the ranks after a certain amount of time. This facility is truly about making sure that not only are their employees satisfied because they know that overall production is higher when employees have job satisfaction, but they make sure that they are showing employees they are appreciated and valuable. The more you do, the more you will be rewarded.

Some of the issues Kenneth Dailey, manager of the Green River facility, may face while trying to incorporate Aberdeen’s system at the Green River facility will no doubt be challenging. One of the big issues I see off hand will be organizing