Managing People and Organization

Running head: MANAGEMENT
Managing People and Organization
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Introduction:
The report aims at providing a critical analysis into the case study of Semco based on
culture, leadership and strategic human resource management. Semco has been one of the most
successful manufacturing companies of Brazil (semco.com.br 2019). The company had initially
been autocratically styled that undertook experimentation with principles of democratic
management where people were put before the process. In other words, Semco built a newer
management style that was not dependent on any theory. It was also the first company to include
employee participation in the process of decision making. The company maintained a growth
rate of about 46.5 percent and a lower turnover rate close to around 2 percent. Culture is defined
as developing set of the cooperative values, attitudes and beliefs. Culture represents the means of
the business that an influence on the strategic direction of the business. Culture is believed to
influence management, decision and all the business functions from the accounting to the
production. The influence of the cultural factors on the business has been extensive and it
impacts the ways in which the employees are managed based on priorities and values. Culture
also has an impact on the functional areas of sales, distribution and marketing. It also has an
impact on the decision and analysis on the best ways in which the company might enter a newer
market. Leadership on the other hand represents the action that leads the people within
organization towards achievement of organizational goals. Leaders often do this through
influencing the behavior of the employees in various ways. A leader is believed to set a clearer
vision for organization, motivate employees and guide the employees through work process and
by building morale. Strategic human resource management include components of human
resource such as discipline, hiring, payroll and working with the employees in collaborative
manner for boosting retention, improve quality of work experience and maximizing mutual

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benefit of the employment for both the employees. In other words, strategic human resource
management represents the connection between the human resource of the company and the
objectives, goals and strategies. The aim of the strategic human resource management lies in
advancing flexibility, competitive advantage and innovation.
Discussion:
According to Guiso, Sapienza and Zingales (2015) corporate culture represents the
behaviors and beliefs which determines how management and employees of the company not
only interacts but at the same time handles the outside transactions of a business. The aspect of
corporate culture remains implied since it is not explicitly defined and developed naturally over
time from growing traits of employees hired by the organization (Hickman and Silva 2018). The
culture of the company is reflected in the business hours, dress code, and employee benefits,
office set up, hiring decisions, turnover, client satisfaction, and client treatment.
In this context, it can be said that the culture of Semco is autocratically styled, powerful
ruled and wisely obeyed. They had a fixed hierarchy, massive power distances and lack of room
for the use of creativity. Besides, the company had been bureaucratic with load of confidential
information that enabled playing power games with privileged few.
Achtenhagen, Melin and Naldi (2013) stated put across that awareness about the
organizational or corporate culture in business and organizations had an emergence in the year
1960s. However, the concept of ‘corporate culture’ was introduced in 1980 that became widely
known in 1990s. During these times, corporate culture has mostly been used by the sociologist,
managers and the other academics for describing the characteristics of the company. This
involved that the generalized behaviors and beliefs, value systems, employee communication,

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management strategies, work attitude and ambience. By the year 2015, corporate culture was
created by the founders, management and employees of the company and influenced by national
traditions and culture, international and economic trends, company product and size (Büschgens,
Bausch and Balkin 2013).
In regard to this, Pieterse (2019) put forward that there are various terms that relate to the
company being influenced by the multiple cultures under the influence of globalization and an
enhanced interaction at the international level in the present day business ambience. Cross
culture represents interaction of people from varied backgrounds of the business world while
culture shock is anxiety or confusion that is experienced by people while conducting the business
with the society instead of its own (Thomas and Peterson 2017). The reverse culture shock has
been realized by people spending lengthier times abroad and having difficulty in readjustment
once they return Presbitero (2016). Nevertheless, for creating cross cultural experience and
facilitating a productive and cohesive culture, companies are seen in devoting in depth resources
that includes specialized training for the improvement of the cross cultural business transactions.
Some of the examples of contemporary corporate culture in the 21st century in some of
the top companies like Apple, Netflix and Google involves introduction of lesser amount of
traditional strategies of management that involved fostering of creativity, problem solving and a
greater amount of freedom of the employees that contributed to the business success. Some
prominent examples of alternative strategies of management that notably affects the corporate
culture included holacracy that have been used at companies like Zappos while agile techniques
of management have been applied at the music streaming company known as Spotify. Holacracy
refers to the philosophy of open management that helps in eliminating job titles and other
traditional hierarchies (Golden, Pandey and O’Rourke 2017). Agile management is focused on