Running head: MCDONALD 1
MCDONALD 6
Unifying Company Culture
BUS 325: Global Human Resource Management
April 22, 2021
McDonalds
An organizations culture plays an important role to the success of an organization. The culture sets the manner in which people behave and determines the manner in which things are carried out within an organization. Organization culture is consists of the shared beliefs and values that are established by leaders and then communicated and reinforced by various methods and shapes the employee perceptions and behaviors within an organization. Since various organizations have different cultures, there is no one-size fits all cultural template that one needs to have to meet the needs of their organization (Watson, 1).
All successful organizations have been found to have strong organizational culture. The leaders of the organizations majorly focus on the organizational goals and the live their cultures daily and communicate their cultural identities to employees together with their new hires. Each organization have clear values with these values having to be communicate to every new employee whenever they arrive at the organization considering that they determine the manner in which organizations run. Ineffective culture could easily bring down an organization together with its leadership. Other common examples of negative cultures include the disengaged employees, high turnover and poor customer relations among other attributes (Watson, 1).
Mergers and acquisitions are some of the areas in where cultural issues develop. This is majorly because mergers incorporate two different existing cultures that could be in conflict and in other instances could lead to development of a dysfunctional culture after a merger. There are plenty of reasons mergers normally could fail. To prevent any negative impact of merges on culture, it is important that the various cultures are reconciled in order to build a common plat form for the future. Over the past mergers and acquisitions have changed the manner in which businesses are held (Carroll, 2).
McDonald’s organizational culture is in support of the company’s industry positioning goals. McDonald’s culture is used to attract qualified employees from various parts of the world. The company’s organizational culture defines its traditions, habits values and influences workers behaviors. To ensure business efficiency in the production and services the company organizational culture encourage learning. The continues cultural evolution reflects the firms effectiveness in applying corporate culture that enable it achieve desired levels of human resource capabilities. This condition highlights the significance of organization culture as a success factor in McDonald’s international business (Watson, 1).
The first step in unifying McDonald culture knows where they are going. It is important that the company identify its values through proper definition of the mission, vision and its values. The leaders should be very careful and ensure that they are able to identify the company’s values and put them in the mission statement.
The second step is to find the people that fit. It is important the McDonald hire employees that share the same values and vision for the company. It would also means that they have to hire people that have varied ways of thinking as a means to bring in different cultural experiences, which in the end strengthen cultural diversity (Watson, 1).
The third step is to help the employees to fit in. it is important to point out the fact that starting a new job is always stressful and it is important that McDonald employees and the management to help the new employees to fit in to the organization. It is important for experience employees to meet these new employees to provide them with the necessary information or knowledge in regards to the daily operations of the organization (Watson, 1).
The fourth step is setting the right example. McDonald needs to have their values being set on integrity, empathy and accountability. When leaders lead by example, the employees would follow in their example and thus good values trickles down the organization. The company needs leaders that can foster transparency, encourage communication in all levels of the organization and promote teamwork within the organization (Watson, 1).
The fifth step would be to integrate the values into the daily activities. During a merger, each company has its own values. It would be important these values be merged to ensure there are no conflicts. Advocacy for the new values should be done during company meeting. This ensures healthy culture and reinforces the values (Carroll, 2).
The sixth step McDonald would do is to give rewards and recognition. It is regarded as one of best ways for bringing cultural unity. Recognizing the efforts of other individuals, helps promote healthy competition, which is one of the values for McDonald Corporation (Carroll, 2).
The seventh step is to keep up with chances. It is important to point out that the organization constantly changes its workforce and thus the company has to change. It would be important for McDonald to avoid being rigid and accept the good ideas from new people that came in with the merger (Watson, 1).
The eight step is to foster feedback. It is important to point out that employees benefit from positive feedback, which is a good thing for the organization. Performance reviews, could be best help to provide the right feedback. Being open to feedback creates and environment where all employees can effectively contribute to the success of the company.
The steps provided above would best help to unify McDonald’s culture. Each step is justified by the fact that McDonalds is a rapidly growing company with many employees. Having to merge or acquire another company, would mean that they adopt people that have different set of skills and values. To effectively work together employees together with the leadership needs to know how to do it best.
References
Watson, J. L. (2020, November 4). Cultural globalization. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/science/cultural-globalization
Carroll, N(2013). "E-learning – the McDonaldization of education" (PDF). European Journal of Higher Education. 3 (4): 342– 356. doi:10.1080/21568235.2013.833405. S2CID 54702355
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CASE STUDY 6
CHEVRON’S INFRASTRUCTURE
EVOLUTION
Chevron Corporation (www.chevron.com) is one of the world’s leading
energy companies. Chevron’s headquarters are in San Ramon, California.
The company has more than 62,000 employees and produces more than
700,000 barrels of oil per day. It has 19,500 retail sites in 84 countries. In
2012, Chevron was number three on the Fortune 500 list and had more than
$244 billion in revenue in 2011 [STAT12].
IT infrastructure is very important to Chevron and to better support all
facets of its global operations, the company is always focused on improving
its infrastructure [GALL12]. Chevron faces new challenges from increased
global demand for its traditional hydrocarbon products and the need to
develop IT support for new value chains for liquid natural gas (LNG) and the
extraction of gas and oil from shale. Huge investments are being made
around the world, particularly in Australia and Angola on massive projects of
unprecedented scale. Modeling and analytics are more important than ever
to help Chevron exploit deep water drilling and hydrocarbon extraction in
areas with challenging geographies. For example, advanced seismic imaging
tools are used by Chevron to reveal possible oil or natural gas reservoirs
beneath the earth’s surface. Chevron’s proprietary seismic imaging
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technology contributed to it achieving a 69% discovery rate in
2011[CHEV12].
Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA)
Systems
Chevron refineries are continually collecting data from sensors spread
throughout the facilities to maintain safe operations and to alert operators to
potential safety issues before they ever become safety issues. Data from the
sensors is also used to optimize the way the refineries work and to identify
opportunities of greater efficiency. IT controls 60,000 valves at Chevron’s
Pascagoula, Mississippi refinery; the efficiency and safety of its end-to-end
operations are dependent on advanced sensors, supervisory control and data
acquisition (SCADA) systems, and other digital industrial control systems
[GALL12].
SCADA systems are typically centralized systems that monitor and
control entire sites and/or complexes of systems that are spread out over
large areas such as an entire manufacturing, fabrication, power generation,
or refining facility. The key components of SCADA systems include:
Programmable logic units (PLCs) that and remote terminal units (RTUs)
connected to sensors that convert sensor signals to digital data and
send it to the supervisory system
A supervisory computer system that acquires data about the process
and sends control commands to the process
A human-machine interface (HMI) that presents process to the human
operators that monitor and control the process.
Process meters and process analysis instruments
Communication infrastructure connecting the supervisory system and
RTUs and PLCs.
These are illustrated in Figure C6.1.
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Data acquisition occurs at the PLC or RTU level. This includes meter
readings and equipment status reports that are sent to the supervisory
system. The collected data is compiled and formatted by the HMI to enable
the operator to make determine whether adjustments to normal PLC or RTU
settings are needed. Current data may also be compared to historical data in
a SCADA database to assess trends or perform analytical auditing.
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In addition to Chevron refineries, SCADA are extremely important in
national infrastructures such as water supplies, pipelines, and electric grids.
Because attacks or damage to SCADA systems can affect large numbers of
people, ensuring adequate security is important.
Business Infrastructure Transformation
Because of the complexity of its operational processes and the IT that is
needed to support them, Chevron has traditionally been more infrastructure
than business focused. SCADA systems and digital industrial control systems
are critical IT infrastructure at Chevron’s refineries and will always play an
important role in monitoring and managing facility-based processes. These
also are among the first IT systems needed to support Chevron’s new value
chains for LNG and shale oil extraction. However, like any large corporation,
Chevron relies on a wide variety of business applications to run its
businesses.
As it is for most global businesses, SAP ERP is a key transaction
processing system at Chevron. Chevron has been using SAP for more than
two decades and it has played an important role in the development of SAP’s
vertical solutions for the hydrocarbon industry. There are more than 50
instances of SAP used by Chevron [SCRI11]. Most of these run on Oracle
databases. Some other key enterprise applications at Chevron include Ariba
Buyer, EMC Documentum, Informatica, MicroStrategy, multiple Oracle
applications [SCRI11].
Going forward, IT executives at Chevron would like to flip the company’s
traditional IT priorities so that the majority of the IT staff’s time and
attention is focused on improving business capabilities [GALL12]. To do this,
Chevron’s IT leaders have increasingly turned their attention to Web
services, software as a service (SaaS), and cloud computing to help it run its
business. Chevron considers mobility to be a game changer in how it
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delivers information and provides solutions and it is convinced that it can do
both without sacrificing security or reliability.
IT infrastructure at Chevron pervades every facet of its operations.
However, Chevron’s executives have not lost sight of the fact that IT is not
the company’s core competency. By moving business solutions to the cloud,
Chevron executives hope to help the company maintain its focus on its core
competencies.
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Chevron has used business-oriented Web services for several years.
Ariba Buyer, Salesforce.com, and Ketera’s price negotiation system are just
a few of the SaaS solutions that Chevron has woven into its IT architecture.
Chevron is interested in developing an integrated information network
that includes all of its major supply chain partners, both upstream and
downstream. Identify management has emerged as a priority at Chevron to
ensure secure data transfer among its business partners. A generic example
of an identify management system is illustrated in Figure C6.2. When users
at Chevron partners need to access Chevron’s intranet and/or SaaS data or
solutions, they are first cleared by an identity broker. The identity broker
authenticates the user and transparently provides a single sign on (SSO)
token that enables the partner to access Chevron’s intranet (2) or the
company’s SaaS solution providers (3).
Chevron hopes to better align its operations with those of its business
partners via its migration of business applications to the cloud. It hopes that
the business infrastructure transformation that is currently underway will
also lead to better IT and business alignment. As a global company, the
cloud may be an ideal platform for running the business.
In the years ahead, Chevron’s IT leaders expect mobility, analytics and
visualization, and social media to become critical aspects of its business
infrastructure. At the facilities level, advanced sensors and deeper
embedding of RTUs and PLCs within operations are foreseen [GALL12].
Technical appreciation of convergence network infrastructure will continue to
be important, but business literacy/savvy will be most important to the long-
term success of Chevron’s IT leaders.
Discussion Points
1. Do some Internet research on Chevron’s use of seismic imaging
technology. Briefly explain how it works and how it has helped
Chevron discover new oil and gas reservoirs.
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2. Do some Internet research on security vulnerabilities associated with SCADA and digital industrial control systems. Summarize the major
security concerns associated with these systems and steps than can be taken to enhance their security.
3. Discuss the pros and cons of moving enterprise-wide applications that
have traditionally been supported on premises to the cloud.
4. Do some Internet research on identify management and single sign on systems. Briefly explain how these work and why they are important in
business intranets and extranets.
5. Why is it increasing most important for a CIO or IT executive who oversees geographically distributed enterprise networks to be business
literate?
Sources
[CHEV12] Chevron.com “Seismic Imaging.” Retrieved online: at http://www.chevron.com/deliveringenegy/oil/seismicimaging.
[GALL12] Gallant, J. ”Chevron’s CIO Talks Transformation and Why IT
Leaders Should Smile.” April 12, 2012. Retrieved online at: http://www.cio.com/article/print/704095.
[SCRI11] Scribd.com. “Chevron Corporation CRUSH Report.” August 17,
2011. Retrieved online at http://www.scribd.com/doc/62481977/Chevron- CRUSH-Report-09A1.
[STAT12] Statistic Brain. “Chevron Company Statistics.” February 12, 2102.
Retrieved online at: http://www.statisticbrain.com/chevron-company- statistics/.
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