Distinctive Features of WL Gore's Organization and Management

This article discusses the unique organizational culture of WL Gore & Associates and its focus on innovation and quality. It explores the four guiding principles of fairness, commitment, freedom, and waterline that shape the company's management approach. The article also highlights the lattice organizational structure and the sponsor program implemented by WL Gore. It further examines the advantages and disadvantages of this approach and discusses its transferability to other companies.

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WL Gore & Associates
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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?
Answer- WL Gore and Associates are private enterprise that are both diversified
and global. They have a very unique organisational culture and they always focus on the
innovation and quality. They are committed to innovation and it shapes everything that it
does right from, imagining, discovering to inventing. It is a science and technology based
enterprise, with relationships and people at its core. It is founded by Wilbert L. (Urfa Bill)
Gore along with his wife Vieve (Schwendeman et al. 2017). The idea of Bill for Gore
enterprise started with his work with the PTFE compound called Teflon along with its
uses at the DuPont. While working with the PTFE, Bill realised that there can be a wide
range of capabilities of the products. He left the DuPont to start his work with the PTFE
and it was first taken into consideration in the sealants and wire coatings. It is also to
mention that WL Gore developed a wide number of product portfolio that was derived
from the PTFE like the GORE-TEX and this one of their widely known products. The
four power guiding principles of GORE are fairness, commitment, freedom and waterline.
At W.L Gore, a unique combination of the capabilities and resources all work
together in order to prevent the understanding of the competitors and the imitation of the
chosen strategy. This allows the company for deploying the competitive advantages in
different attractive industries. It is also to mention that the resource based model of this
organisation of the superior returns comprise of several steps and they include-
identifying the resources of the firm, determining the capabilities of the firm, determining
the level at which these capabilities and resources produce competitive advantage for the
organisation, locating a really attractive industry and then, selecting a strategy that

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matches the best with the unique capabilities of the firm and the most promising
opportunities present in the market for the company (Slintak and Tuckova 2016).
It is to note in this context that the success of this organisation is all because of its
unique culture. Work is conducted within the organisation differently. Employees at Gore
are all related to each other and there are absolutely titles, no formal hierarchy and even
no bosses in the organisation. Everyone works collaboratively within the organisation.
With the same, the decisions of promotion and compensation are all determined by the
peer rankings of the performance of one another. In order to avoid dampening of the
creativity of employee, the organisation has an organisational structure along with a
culture that goes completely against the conventional wisdom. Bill Gore has referred the
structure of the organisation as “lattice organisation” (Anderson et al. 2015). This
structure include several features as well. There is no assigned or fixed authority for
anyone. At the same time, there is no bosses in the organisation apart from only sponsors.
With the same, there are direct lines of communication, that is- person to person and
absolutely no intermediary. Moreover, there is a natural leadership within WL Gore. It is
just that everyone has the willingness to follow to others. The objectives in the
organisation are always set by the ones who must “make them happen” (Schwendeman et
al. 2017). The functions and the tasks of WL Gore are all organised by means of
commitments. Absolute avoidance of the control structure and hierarchical structure are
followed within the organisation.
The lattice structure of the organisation encourages the hands-on innovation and at
the same time, discourages the bureaucratic red tape by means of involving them closest
to the projects involved in the decision making process. Rather than having a pyramid of
managers and bosses, W.L Gore has a flat organisational structure. There are absolutely
no chains of command in the organisation and also, there is absence of predetermined

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communication channels as well. It sounds more like a self-managed structure of team at
a broader scale. Moreover, it is also to mention that WL Gore and Associates prefers to
think of different people who play significant parts in the organisation as being leaders
and not managers.
The founder of company Bill Gore did not believe in the idea of smothering the
company in the thick layers of the formal management. He believes that with the growth
of the company, he need to find different ways for assisting the new people as well as to
follow their progress. Hence, WL Gore and Associates came up with the program of
sponsorship or the “sponsor” program, which is, a human relations partnership in between
in experiences, incumbent and the newly hired and inexperienced employees. Before
hiring a candidate, associate at WL Gore needs to agree for becoming his or her sponsor
or someone that the others regard as the mentor (Steiber and Alange 2016). The role of
sponsors is to take his or her personal interest in the contributions, goals and problems of
the new associate by playing the role of both advocate and coach. He is the one to track
the progress of the new associates and offer him or her with encouragement and
assistance. He also points out their strengths and weaknesses and then advice them on the
basic of that. It is simply all about making improvements on the intrapersonal skills of the
new member in the organisation in order to help him get equipped with the organisation
and to bring out the best of him. It is also to note that the internal memos of WL Gore
describe a total of three types of sponsorship and they are- advocate sponsor, the starting
sponsor and the compensation sponsor. Associates can perform any of these three types of
sponsorship.
Being associate is a natural commitment to all the four basic principles of Human
Resource that are articulated by Bill Gore. It is also a key belief of the company. These
four principles are fairness, commitment, freedom and waterline. Firstly, fairness to one

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another and everyone that the company comes in contact with is important. Secondly,
freedom to help, encourage and allow the other associated for growing and developing in
terms of their scope of responsibility, skills and knowledge is always maintained and
followed within this enterprise. Thirdly, the potential of making own individual
commitments and keep them is always encouraged and followed. Lastly, the final
principle of WL Gore is consulting with the other associated prior to undertaking the
actions which have the potential of influencing the reputation of the organisation (Kelly
2019). All these principles underscore the vitality of creating, fostering and developing
high interpersonal skills for the employees at WL Gore.
2. What are the advantages and disadvantages of WL Gore's approach to
organization and management?
Answer- WL Gore and Associated has a very basic yet well thought management
and organisation structure which brings together a link of the other organisation which
have a wide range of company structure and outward appearance of being put together.
The organisation have set some set of rules and norms on the basis of the major focus and
it aims at providing an aggressive range of creativeness for the benefit of the company’s
employees. There are direct lines of communication, that is- person to person and
absolutely no intermediary. Moreover, there is a natural leadership within WL Gore. It is
just that everyone has the willingness to follow to others. The objectives in the
organisation are always set by the ones who must “make them happen”. The functions
and the tasks of WL Gore are all organised by means of commitments. Absolute
avoidance of the control structure and hierarchical structure are followed within the
organisation. The company have also enforced the sponsor program that comes to the
associated rather than supervisor or managers. It is a human relations partnership in
between in experiences, incumbent and the newly hired and inexperienced employees.

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Before hiring a candidate, associate at WL Gore needs to agree for becoming his or her
sponsor or someone that the others regard as the mentor. These sponsors is take his or her
personal interest in the contributions, goals and problems of the new associate by playing
the role of both advocate and coach. He tracks the progress of the new associates and
offer him or her with encouragement and assistance. He also points out their strengths and
weaknesses and then advice them on the basic of that (Schneider et al. 2017). It is simply
all about making improvements on the intrapersonal skills of the new member in the
organisation in order to help him get equipped with the organisation and to bring out the
best of him. It is also to note that the internal memos of WL Gore describe a total of three
types of sponsorship and they are- advocate sponsor, the starting sponsor and the
compensation sponsor. Associates can perform any of these three types of sponsorship.
The organisational structure of Gore have several advantages. Gore distributes the
power among all its employees belonging from all the levels and it follows
decentralisation. It gives all its employees the discretion of making fast and quick
decisions for solving the problems and at the same time, provide them with more input
related to the relevant solutions for the problems. This in turn allows the employees to
feel less alienated with the working environment. Moreover, the structure of the
organisation eliminates hierarchy and bureaucracy and this stifle the adaptation and
creativity (Gronning 2016). With the same, the employees also enjoy being a significant
part of empowered team rather than of different departments like the ones having in most
of the organisations. It improves the intrapersonal skills of the new member in the
organisation in order to help him get equipped with the organisation and to bring out the
best of himself.
With the same, the disadvantage to the employees would be the ones with a
background like the mechanistic model that comprise of having several supervisors to

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help the new candidates to find their way around the workplace. As WL Gore has an open
structure, here everyone is like a supervisor. So, the ones who are not used to or are not
habituated with such organisational structure would take some time to adjust. This might
result in their loss of interest as well. Not everyone is well equipped with such
organisational structure and working environment. Hence, this might result in the loss of
candidate (Hoffman and Shipper 2018). New workers often find it difficult to get adjust
to the lattice organisation structure and hence, they most of the time struggle from
shortage of stability. This organisation has never had any designations, positions, a
pecking order or any sort of orthodox arrangements that are linked with the enterprises of
its scope. With the same, the organisation also do not have any mission or vision and not
the code of ethic declarations. These are some of the significant elements of every
successful business today. Without having a strong vision, a company cannot plan its
business strategically. Vision and Mission helps in increasing the productivity and
efficiency in the organisation (Brinkshaw 2015). They are something that helps the
organisation to stay focused and keep everyone together in stressful times. They are some
important tools of strategic planning as they help in shaping the business strategy and for
achieving the desired future for the organisation.
3. To what extent is the WL Gore approach to organization and
management transferable to other companies? And if it is, to what types of
companies and why?
Answer: The structure of organisations are flatter. The economic trends and the
technological advanced mean that the work is significantly virtual and is globally
dispersed. With the same, it is also expected to be team based as well. Due to this, the
performance and the productivity get depended on the workforce on a significant level as
compared to more diverse than ever before. Taking the place of the ladder is the corporate

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lattice. This is because in this, the recognition, development and ideas in this type of
organisation flow where they are required to along with the diagonal, vertical and
horizontal paths. WL Gore is both diversified and global (Carlone 2017). It have a very
unique organisational culture and they always focus on the innovation and quality. It is
also committed to innovation and it shapes everything that it does right from, imagining,
discovering to inventing. Furthermore, the works are also conducted within the
organisation in different way. Employees at Gore are all related to each other and there
are absolutely titles, no formal hierarchy and even no bosses in the organisation.
Everyone works in collaborative manner within the company with no one to serve as a
boss. With the same, the decisions of promotion and compensation are all determined by
the peer rankings of the performance of one another. In order to avoid dampening of the
creativity of employee, the organisation has an organisational structure along with a
culture that goes completely against the conventional wisdom. Also, there is no mission
and vision. They all work towards better quality and top customer service (Hammell and
Kleiner 2015).
However, it is also to be noted that the approach to organisation and management is
not that easy to transfer to other companies due to certain reasons. Not all companies are
adaptable and flexible. Firstly, for extending such kind of management to the other
company, it is very important to become aware of the real values and objectives of that
company along with the behaviour of the company that it was following till date. With the
same, they need to ask themselves a question and that question is- “whether or not this
culture have engaged the people working in the organisation and whether or not it
promotes the spirit of cooperation. One of the very common mistake that the companies
make is to promote the values that are not followed. Furthermore, this organisational
structure do not provide a hierarchical structure, which is followed in majority of the

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companies like Goole, Microsoft, Amazon, Walmart etc. today. The challenges can also
include the issues related to forming compensation, talent management, reward structures,
forming compensation and motivating the employees.
The other model is the model of leadership. It is very important that the leaders stay
motivated. Their task would comprise of the things on the basis of which the rest of the
company would succeed (Hoffman and Shipper 2018). They need to give up the control
and the power for making way for a process which might seem chaotic in nature but it is
indeed the best way for having diverse perspectives and the joint teams for making
decisions. For example, employee motivation in most of the companies like Google is
increased through promoting them and changing their designations. This works as a major
contributor to enhance their workplace productivity of the employees at Google. But if
lattice organisation structure is implemented in such organisations, such motivation
systems would be hindered and they have to find out more effective and efficient way of
motivating their employees other than just providing incentives and recognition.
There could be several possible tensions and opportunities during the implementation
and maintenance of lattice organisation structure. For instance, the companies might face
difficulty while seeking legitimacy from the external partners, even though certain things
might function really well internally. Some related potential challenges might appear
when the company would try to implement flat lattice organisation but there would be
some individuals who would continuously exercise some type of power on informal basis.
Lattice organisations are boss less but managers do exit in ambiguous form. They discard
the managers and the role of their by replacing them with a significant system of
sponsorship and some ad hoc leadership (Schneider et al. 2017). This system would
produce a confusion regarding who is actually in charge of connection for the important
decisions. There is nothing about the fact that WL Gore has some remarkable

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achievements and it implementation of lattice structure in the organisation is very notable.
However, it is also believed that its flexibility in the work assignments and the rapid
differentiation into different products might have been possible due to core technological
capability which many other companies would lack. In absence of core capability, the
other enterprises would find that these practises that WL Gore follows would not work in
theirs. They need to be more structured and more layered system for the control and the
coordination of the activities as compared to that is seen in the company. Notwithstanding
this fact, informal work process and the direct communication are two of the most
important elements in fostering the creative activities and they should be implemented in
some or the other ways. Furthermore, most of the companies today have their own
mission and vision and their own cultural norms and code of ethics that the employees
working in the organisation are bound to follow (Anderson et al. 2015). Therefore, the
new workers who belong form other organisations or have worked for much longer
period in different organisational culture would often find it difficult to get adjust to the
lattice organisation structure and hence, they most of the time struggle from shortage of
stability. This organisation has never had any designations, positions, a pecking order or
any sort of orthodox arrangements that are linked with the enterprises of its scope. Hence,
it can be claimed that WL Gore’s approach to organization and management is not
transferable to other companies until and unless the companies change their
organisational structure.

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