Contents

Introduction................................................................................................................ 2
Innovation and Creativity........................................................................................... 2
Organizational culture............................................................................................. 2
Attitude to risk......................................................................................................... 2
Organizational Learning.......................................................................................... 2
Learning culture...................................................................................................... 2
Technical knowledge............................................................................................... 3
Measuring Performance.............................................................................................. 3
KPI........................................................................................................................... 3
Team vs. groups...................................................................................................... 3
Communication....................................................................................................... 3
Collaboration and team decision making................................................................4
Motivation of groups................................................................................................ 4
Organizational Changes.............................................................................................. 4
Mergers and acquisitions......................................................................................... 4
Managing Change................................................................................................... 4
Unfreezing............................................................................................................... 4
Movement............................................................................................................... 4
Refreezing............................................................................................................... 4
References.................................................................................................................. 6

Activity 3

Introduction
As per the requirement of Activity 3, the organization that I have chosen to analyze
in the lights of the literature required is Toyota Motors which is a Japanese
Automobile company. The firm was founded in 1937, as a subsidiary of Toyota
Industries (Toyota.com, 2014).

Innovation and Creativity

Organizational culture
Organizational culture can be best described as behavior of individuals inside a firm
and how their actions are perceived. The culture of a firm includes the vision of the
company, its norms, language etc. It depicts a trend of cumulative behavior and
provides guidelines that are to be followed by individuals within a firm. Thereby it is
essential that the corporate culture is devised in such a way which promotes
innovation and creativity. A study conducted by (Martins and Terblanche, 2003)
indentified various determinants of strategy which influence creativity and the role
that norms and beliefs play.
When Toyota is being assessed it is important to mention the works of (Tushman
and O'Reilly, 2002) , who advocate that companies like Toyota practice a strong
culture which emphasis on creativity. This is enforced by a few shared values which
have a strong intensity to re-affirm self belief and provide a culture that promotes
innovation for the organization.

Attitude to risk
The idea of risk and ownership has shown immense research. Businesses which are
small need a lot of risk enduring attitude, because each risk person will respond to
risk in a certain way.
In order to deal will with this Toyota has resorted to implanting the following
strategies. (Krijnen, 2007) explains that it has given confidence to its employees by
training every subordinate to become quality control inspector, this means they
have empowered employees to give them confidence so they can better establish a
risk enduring profile .The second strategy effectively incorporated by Toyota is to
incorporate building quality in the office structure. They have also stressed on doing
production in small quantities so that task accumulation doesnt put the pressure on
employees and minimize risk.

Organizational Learning
Organizational learning is a field of information within an enterprise theory which
provides research on how to study and adapt various theories.

Learning culture
Learning culture within an organization is the establishment of a certain kind of
culture that facilitates the learning of the employees and continuously strives for
further improvement to maintain competitiveness within the business world.
However several factor such as a lack of time limit the potential of an organization
to incorporate a learning culture (Senge, 1999). One of the primitive reasons behind
the success of Toyota motors is its prevailing learning culture; they follow a three
stop process of first identifying root causes and taking countermeasures, this is
followed by responsibility and self-reflection, and lastly, through effectively utilizing
the policy employment. Hence, by being able to understand why problems emerge
and continuously adapting, Toyota has laid great emphasis on the learning culture
(Dolcemoscolo, 2004).

Technical knowledge
Technical knowledge can be defined as the specialized, skilled knowledge with
regard to a certain field. Furthermore, an elaboration of it is the ability to be able to
complete complex tasks as a result of the specific knowledge held by an individual.
One example of this is the Toyota Technical Department Corporation (TTDC) which is
an autonomous department of Toyota motors provides specialized, technical
knowledge for enhanced performance and innovation to the Toyota Motor Corp
(Corp., 2014).

Measuring Performance
KPI
Key performance indicators are the specific variables that are analyzed to appraise
the performance of an organization; these include figures such as those that relate
to sales. Toyota on the other hand, resorts to several factors with regard to their
production plants to analyze performance spread over past trends these include:
the energy usage, usage of water, volatile organic compounds being discharged and
waste (Toyotauk.com, 2014).

Team vs. groups

Groups generally share information in order to facilitate the course of action
whereas teams go beyond their job description and thus have more joint
accountability than groups. Furthermore, in groups, input normally equals output
while in teams output tends to be exceeded by input. Groups tend to have neutral
energy present while teams radiate positive energy (Buchanan and Huczynski,
1985). When every employee tends to act as a mechanism of kaizen; they radiate
positive energy and work in teams complimenting each other beyond their primitive
obligations. Another example to illustrate this notion is that each manager is

designated the role of a quality assurance manager, which is a form of job

enrichment and initiates the organizational citizenship behavior.

Communication
Communication can be defined as the transfer for ideas as well as the meanings
from an individual to another; it begins with the sender encoding the message
through a channel, which is decoded by the receiver and if necessary, acted upon.
This can be horizontal (same level) or vertical (different levels, upward or
downward) (Buchanan and Huczynski, 1985). In the case of Toyota, lateral
communication is encouraged; ideas were explicitly exchanged between managers
to act in a manner that was problem solving, or for the fulfillment of specific
purposes (Morschett, Schramm-Klein and Zentes, 2010).

Collaboration and team decision making

Team decision making comes about when individual efforts are well coordinated
allowing for effective decisions being made. Decisions are made in a
complementary manner with each member going beyond the original duties laid out
(Buchanan and Huczynski, 1985). Illustrating Toyota's relevance would be to
suggest that business decisions are joined with real operations that consolidate
criticism and thought from operation line to management method and reflect
management decisions in operation (Nohria and Ghoshal, 1994).

Motivation of groups
Group motivation generally comes about due to efforts of an explicit leader; who
ensures that groups do not lose a sense of their direction. Work is divided and
members complete their own tasks that have been given to them and are kept
focused towards he common goal striving to achieve mutual benefit. An essential
way to motivate employees within Toyata has been to minimize sectionalism and to
maximize the employee engagement through empowering and team spirit (Rother,
2010).

Organizational Changes
Mergers and acquisitions
This is when one organization acquires another existing organization. This can again
be of several kinds, these include vertical integration (acquiring an organization at a
backward or forward integration), vertical (acquiring at the same level of industry),
and conglomerate (diversified organization being taken over). In the specific case of
Toyota, it is not at all unknown to mergers with it making acquisitions that are well
beyond a hundred whilst continuing to maintain few corporations in Japan (Toyota
Motor Corporation, 2006).

Managing Change
With regard to change the Lewins three step model imparts essential insight. These
three steps are unfreezing, movement and lastly, refreezing (Burnes, 1996).

Unfreezing
This is the prevalent status quo; efforts are made to overcome the pressures of
both, individual resistance as well as the group conformity.

Movement
Here, the driving forces come into play where forces direct towards the desired
stage where the organization would want to be and fends off and restraining forces.

Refreezing
This relates to Stabilizing the change that has occurred by being able to balance the
driving and restraining forces.
With regard to change management; over the years several strategies have been
incorporated which have been refrozen in order to stabilize change such as; just in
time (JIT), kaizen, Autonomation and Pokayoke (Allan, Gold and Reese, 2014).

References
Burnes, B. (1996). Managing change. London: Pitman.
Buchanan, D. and Huczynski, A. (1985). Organizational behavior. Englewood Cliffs:
Prentice Hall international.
Senge, P. (1999). The dance of change. New York: Currency/Doubleday.
Martins, E. and Terblanche, F. (2003). Building organisational culture that stimulates
creativity and innovation. European Journal of Innovation Management, 6(1), pp.6474.
Dolcemoscolo, D. (2004). A look into Toyota's learning organization. RELIABLEPLANT.
[online] Available at: http://www.reliableplant.com/Read/13439/toyota-learningorganization [Accessed 20 Nov. 2014].
Corp., T. (2014). TTDC Toyota Technical Development Corp. / Company Information /
Company Philosophy and Guiding Principles. [online] Toyota-td.jp. Available at:
http://www.toyota-td.jp/en/corporate/philosophy/ [Accessed 20 Nov. 2014].
Morschett, D., Schramm-Klein, H. and Zente
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s, J. (2010). Strategic international

Nohria, N. and Ghoshal, S. (1994). Differentiated fit and shared values: Alternatives
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Allan, M., Gold, D. and Reese, D. (2014). Application of Toyota''s Principles and Lean
Processes to Reservoir Management: More Tools to Overload the Toolbox or a Step
Change in Our Business?. SPE Economics & Management, 6(02), pp.067-087.
Rother, M. (2010). Toyota kata. New York: McGraw Hill.

Toyotauk.com, (2014). Toyota and The Environment. [online] Available at:

http://www.toyotauk.com/environment/toyota-and-theenvironment.html#sthash.ONKah1tO.dpuf [Accessed 20 Nov. 2014].
Toyota.com, (2014). New Cars, Trucks, SUVs & Hybrids | Toyota Official Site. [online]
Available at: http://www.toyota.com/.