Rowe

Assignment #5 – Case: ROWE Program at Best Buy

Aaron D. Stewart

Dr Dennis R Darlak, PhD

Leadership and Organizational Behavior – BUS520

March 10, 2011

Describe the culture of Best Buy.

Successful organizational leadership makes an effort to establish corporate culture tailored to their goals and objectives, knowing that organizations that have strong corporate culture often have a competitive advantage. Andy Kohlberg CEO of Kisco Senior Living states “Without a strong culture, we would lose our competitive advantage” (Hellreigel & Slocum, 2011, p. 483). Organizational culture reflects the shared and learned values, beliefs, and attitudes of its members (Hellreigel & Slocum, 2011). Organizations often establish a corporate culture in an effort to increase loyalty, productivity and profitability. Despite organizational culture being difficult for employees to express in words most employees sense it and know it because it plays a pivotal role in their day to day business interactions. Organizational culture affects the company in every conceivable way, from ethical behaviors, diversity in the workforce, who gets promoted, how resources are allocated, and how careers are established or derailed. Like many other organizations Best Buy was in need of developing a corporate culture tailored to reducing the number of employee’s it had that felt they were overworked. Many employees started accepting part time employment to have the flexibility they needed. Best Buy used to embrace a Clan culture where members of the organization understand that their contributions to the organization may exceed contractual agreements such as hours per week. Employees were rewarded for being the individual who turned the lights on in the morning and turned them off at night, working long hours and sacrificing for the organization was seen as positive attributes of employees. As management seen the need to change the organizational culture of Best Buy it moved to a...