Gore Essay

541 Words3 Pages
How does Gore achieve cross-business fit across its diverse product divisions? What role does culture play in controlling its decentralized operations? Management innovation has evolved due to W.L. Gore, the maker of Gore-Tex and a host of other pioneering materials and products as diverse as synthetic vascular grafts, Elixir guitar strings, and Glide dental floss. Having a lattice with self-managed teams is how Gore achieved cross-business fit across its diverse product range. Gore conceived of the company as a “lattice” connecting every individual in the organisation to every other. At Gore, there would be no layers of management, information would flow freely in all directions, and personal communications would be normality. And individuals and self-managed teams go directly to anyone in the organisation to get what they needed to be successful. As Gore has grown, it has imposed some structure: the CEO, four major divisions, a number of product-focused business units, and the usual business support functions, each with a recognised leader. But it is flat, with self-managed teams as the basic building blocks, and no management layers. Job descriptions are general and Gore employees generally refer to Gore’s commitment to keeping its operations small and informal is one key to allow for this cross-business fit. It generally doesn’t allow a facility to grow to more than 200 people. Gore maximises opportunities for cross-functional collaboration by having R&D specialists, engineers, salespeople, engineers, chemists and machinists work in the same plant. Even Gore’s headquarters has remained simple and intimate. As Gore has expanded geographically, email and the like have become necessary. But even so, global teams are brought together on a fairly regularly basis, to build and sustain relationships. Gore was on a set of principles and beliefs that

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