Toyota Corporate Culture

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Toyota Corporate Culture AC420 Kaplan University Toyota Corporate Culture In the US, Toyota is investing, hiring employees, and making profits, while the US carmakers are cutting thousands of jobs and drowning into abyssal losses. An article by Charles Fishman highlights the features of the Toyota culture that explain this outstanding success. Because, and that’s important, it’s all about culture. “Toyota is not just another workplace, but a different way of thinking about work” (Fishman, 2006-2007). What is this culture made of? Competitiveness is not about competing with others. It is about improving yourself. Weak administrations (and people) look to the external to explain their misfortune. If they are not successful, it’s because the competition is so robust, or the boss is biased, or the employees are lazy, etc. “Toyota’s competitiveness is internal, self-critical. It is rooted in an institutional obsession with improvement, a pervasive lack of complacency with whatever was accomplished yesterday”, Fishman writes. There are 14 principles to the Toyota Way. The first is to “base your management decisions on long-term decisions and long-term philosophy, even at the expense of short term financial goals” (Liker & Hoseus, 2008). Other principles deal with process, such as creating a continuous process so that any problems will surface, avoiding overproduction by using the pull system and leveling out the workload. Their principles on people include encouraging development of leaders, workers and teams that understand the work, live the company philosophy and who are able to teach it to others. On problem solving and improvement, Toyota believes that decisions should be made by considering all options but the implementation should be swift (Liker & Hoseus, 2008). Toyota states their purpose as developing cars that not only take people go

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