Organizational Behavior: Analysis of IDEO's Democratic Organizational Culture

Running head: ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR
ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR
Name of the Student
Author note

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ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR
YOUR NAME
PROFESSOR’S NAME
SUBJECT
DATE
DEEP DIVE
The film in the discussion is called Deep Dive and it is about how an organization has
been able to successfully implement a democratic organizational culture, rather than a
conventional corporate one, in which the leader of the team in the organization is in charge of
making the key decisions and his or her opinions and decisions matter the most in the
decision making process within the team ("IDEO: Shopping Cart Design Process"). The
organization shown in the documentary is called IDEO and is responsible for product design
for one of the top clients in the world. It is therefore responsible for designing products for a
lot of organizations in the world, ranging from Apple to even small retail stores in the
vicinity. It is for this reason that they have become a recognizable name in the industry of
product design.
This essay aims at analysing why there has been such success in the organization
despite the fact that it does not follow a corporate culture unlike most of the other corporate
organizations that have been successful in the business that they do. One of the employees in
the organization has said that he has refused to work in few of the best organizations in the
world due to the fact that according to him, working in IDEO is a lot more fun. The
documentary is based on designing a shopping cart for a nearby retail store, as there had been
a few identifiable problems with the existing design. Referring to the creative process model,
employees first recognize and understand the problem in the design of the existing shopping
carts. In the incubation stage, they just subconsciously keep sketching solutions that could be

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innovative. The illumination stage is where they collectively come up with a design that is
agreed upon by all. Lastly, in the verification stage, they evaluate whether the design solves
the problem and does not create any new loopholes. This is how the story of the company and
the work procedures have been revealed in the documentary. It is through this that the viewer
gets to know that IDEO believes in encouraging employees to design and feel free in the
environment as if they hold as much power in the company as the boss himself. Clearly, from
this, it could be made out that the main type of leadership in the organization that is prevalent
is that of Laissez Faire leadership, in which employees are given enough power to make sure
that the main thing that is to be done is to make the employees feel empowered to make
decisions for the team as well, and value those decisions (Wellman and LePine). This can in
turn be related to the expectancy theory of organizational behaviour, which would be
analysed in the later part of the essay.
The main success that has been achieved by the individuals in the film is that they
have been able to make complex designs and complete difficult projects within stipulated
deadlines, which has in turn helped the company immensely in maintaining client relations.
This could be attributed to how the employees are treated in the company. They are not
distinguished on the basis of seniority. In the company, every employee matters as much as
the boss himself, and every voice matters in the decision making processes in an equal
manner. This is the reason why the employees have been motivated to work in the company
and come up with ideas because they work in a free environment. Yerkes Dodson law states
that employee performance is the best at medium stress, and declines from there as stress is
increased (Chaby et al.). Here, the only stress is the challenge of the project, which is just
perceived as a medium stress, and the work culture imposes no other stress, which is why the
employees have been able to make sure that they succeed in the job that they do.