Founder Responsibility to the environment is an important ethical value that is pursued at by the founder of Patagonia. Most decisions made by the founder of Patagonia are based on their expected impact on the environment. Besides, the organization promotes a culture of individualism where each employee has a responsibility to make decisions on their own and also do what is right in whenever the position they occupy. It is not the founder and CEOs sole responsibility to decide on how to protect the environment and run the organizations operations. He espouses individualism and employee independence. The company values an outgoing culture due to the nature of its business and as a way of promoting a favorable environment for employees to work under minimal stress.
How to implement Patagonias values in a factory that the company plans to open in Peru and staff with local workers
One of the considerations a prospective entrepreneur in Peru needs to acknowledge is that the culture favors hierarchical organization structure. As such, allocation of duties, supervision of employees, and coordination of duties takes place from the center. This is likely to bring a conflict with the current organizational structure that emphasizes on decentralization. That is, giving employees a lot of autonomy may derail operations as they often end up seeking directions from the leadership whenever management issue arises because it is ingrained in their culture. This problem can be mitigated by hiring managers with excellent communication skills. Effective Communication would minimize the need to seek the bosss interventions every time an issue arises. As a result, cases, where employees shy from facing the manager due to the cultural tendency to fear of authority, would be avoided.
Another area of conflict is the collective cultural dimension. As indicated in Yvon Chouinard, Patagonia has adopted an individualistic culture. In other words, the top management does not issue regular instructions to employees on what do. Such cultural framework has the potential of causing problems in an environment where people lead a collective culture such as the case of Peru. In a collective cultural dimension, groups matter most. Here, a well-considered strategy to build a culture where employees act as groups but think individually is most ideal. As Chouinard advises, the best way to do this is to build consensus. A consensus involves going through a raft of issues with the employees and agreeing on what to do for the best interest of the organization, employees and that of the environment. This means that expectations from the top management must be clear to employees from the onset and an agreement with the various teams is made on how to fulfill those expectations. By so doing, one would make the Peruvian employees feel that the collective aspect of their culture is appreciated while encouraging creativity in solving organizational issues.
Another area that prospective investors in Peru need to consider is how Peru culture treats ambiguity.US culture espouses direct communication while Peruvians accommodate indirect communication. Any potential conflict this regard can be avoided if there is extensive employee involvement in the process of decision making. Employee involvement is an important ingredient in management as it helps managers make early identification of the issues affecting employees as well as get employees perspectives on matters related to operations and policy. Matters of operations and policy require that top management is directly involved. However, in an environment (that is the Peruvian culture) where people bestow a lot of respect to authority, and people have a culture of indirect communication, managerial problems are likely to arise as these employees may be cowed facing the top leadership and reveal the issues they may be facing at the workplace. As a result, such persons are likely to keep problems with themselves, and this means trouble for the organization. So, involving makes them feel part of the policy-making process and design operations that go hand-in-hand with their values.
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