Distinctive Features of WL Gore's Organization and Management

Running head: COMPETITIVE STRATEGY AND INNOVATION
COMPETITIVE STRATEGY AND INNOVATION
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COMPETITIVE STRATEGY AND INNOVATION1
1. What are the distinctive features of WL Gore's organization and
management and to what extent do they represent a consistent management
approach based upon identifiable principles?
WL Gore and Associates is multinational organization from the United States that deals
in the innovation and discovery of products. The organization was founded in the year of 1958
by Bill and Vieve Gore in the city of Newark, Delaware. WL Gore and Associates has proudly as
well as successfully contributed in various sectors of the society like pharmaceuticals, medical
devices, outwear and aerospace industries. It consists more than 2,000 patents throughout the
world and has been awarded with the titles of the 149th best employer and the 135th largest
private company of America. In order to achieve the success, WL Gore and Associates has solely
depended on its typical management system that is totally different from the rest of the
developed corporations in and around the world. The organization possess some distinctive
features which helps them to be differentiated from other organizations from the same
background or same industry. The management of WL Gore and Associates also gets
differentiated from the management of other similar companies due to those specific features.
The first and foremost of those distinctive features is that there is absence of any kind of job title
or symbol of hierarchy in WL Gore and Associates. The founders of the organization, Bill and
Vieve also has no symbol of hierarchy to the employees of the organization. All the employees if
the organization area called associates, except the Chief Executive Officer and the board of
directors, which are legally required to be in the hierarchy for any kind of organization. This
helps to create a working atmosphere where everyone can feel free to talk with the other people,
who actually are holding the senior ranks in the organization. The functional departments like the
information technology and human resource department also consist of very few number of

COMPETITIVE STRATEGY AND INNOVATION2
employees in WL Gore and Associates and those people are selected by the other associates of
the company and are considered as leaders (Kostopoulos, Spanos and Prastacos 2013). This
system in the WL Gore and Associates can be associated with another strategy within the
organization, which is termed as emergent strategy. It is the strategy which develops when a
business enterprise takes a series of actions, which follows a consistent pattern or form of
behaviour with the flow of the time, irrespective of particular intentions. This strategy is needed
when a team or a group of people of WL Gore and Associates meets in order to debate, discuss
or bargain based on the problem raised which needs to be solved, and a leader is required to
carry on the whole process. The leader would be selected by the agreement or sanction of all
other employees of that particular team or group. It has been expressed in an interview by Terri,
the Chief Executive Officer of WL Gore and Associates, that a leader is chosen in their
organization when he or she is willingly followed by the associates. And the ways by which the
leaders of WL Gore and Associates uses their powers varies from other traditional organizations
in the market place in and around the world (Nawaz and Khan 2016). The roles and
responsibilities of the leaders in WL Gore and Associates is to help the group members by
showing their strengths and places of improvement and make them successful in their
professional life. This is a kind of motivating the associates of the organization to give their best
so that the productivity of WL Gore and Associates can be increased. The leaders are also
conscious about the fact that if they are not capable enough to reflect the mission and values of
WL Gore and Associates, they have to lose their position as the leader of the organization. It can
be stated as the first and foremost duty of the leaders to follow the business objectives as well as
the values of the organization.

COMPETITIVE STRATEGY AND INNOVATION3
Apart from this, WL Gore and Associates follows team-based organizational structure. A
team based structure in the business enterprises that puts all the employees or the associates on
the same employment level into groups of teams that are able to perform particular job functions.
In the organization of WL Gore and Associates, each associate possesses a sponsor and all this
sponsors are eligible to become an associate of another sponsor. Apart from this, an associate is
also eligible to become member of two or more teams which are involved in various projects at a
same time. People who are working in an organization wold be able to know each other by
following this kind of organizational structure (Wakabi 2016). The management of WL Gore and
Associates also gets differentiated from the management of other similar companies due to those
specific features. The first and foremost of those distinctive features is that there is absence of
any kind of job title or symbol of hierarchy in WL Gore and Associates. This wold help in team
bonding as well as the bonding of one person with the other people, and would help to possess a
healthy working atmosphere, which wold help to increase the productivity of the organization
and gain a competitive edge over others. Particularly, the members within a team or a group are
able to know each other in this kind of organizational structure, which is necessary in modern
competitive corporate culture. It can be said that there are a number of small basic organizational
units which are forming based within the company on the particular products apart from
maintaining communication as like peers to peers and not as like employees to employees
(Cunningham, Salomone and Wielgus 2013).
Lastly, the organization of WL Gore and Associates follows consensus decision making
process, which is another unique characteristic followed as the management style of WL Gore
and Associates (Chiclana et al 2013). The authority is given to every group or team of the
organization to self-manage their teams, so that work flow can be maintained in a smooth basis