Leading Change Good Sport

Leading Change: Good Sport, Managing Across the Organization

Good Sport is a company that manufactures fitness equipment such as treadmills, bikes, steppers, and rowers. The company is based in Coral Springs, Florida and was founded 15 years ago by Jason Poole. Poole now serves as the Chairman of Board. Good Sport makes and markets its products separately for two segments: the home and the institutional exercise equipment market. The institutional exercise equipment market includes hospitals, clubs, hotels, and corporations. In order to remain competitive, the company must consider the latest trends while designing and manufacturing new and unique products. During this process, the company's leadership plays a crucial role in initiating new ideas and influencing employees to accept changes.

Organizational Structure and Culture

The organizational structure in place at Good Sport is a hierarchical structure. A hierarchical organizational structure is a pyramid-shaped system that arranges the relations between the entities within an organization in a top-down way. Power, responsibility, and authority are concentrated at the top of the pyramid and decisions flow from the top downwards (Hierarchical Organization Structure, 2007). The company has a tall structure with a narrow span of control. The company is centralized meaning decisions are made at the top executive level. Communication is informal throughout the organization and there is direct supervision. The hierarchy is as follows: The Chief Executive Officer oversees four Vice Presidents of Research and Development, Production, Sales, and Finance. Each Vice President oversees a Senior Manager, and each Senior Manager is over a Team Manager in the same areas. The subordinates fall under each Team Manager.

According to McShane & Glinow, organizational culture is the basic pattern of shared assumptions, values, and beliefs governing the way employees within an organization think about and act on problems and opportunities (2005). Good Sport is an organization that values seniority and believes in promoting from within. The company also believed in exchanging information among departments. Within the company different cultures exist among the departments. For example, the sales department is more informal and enjoys meeting colleagues outside the office, whereas the production department likes to maintain a professional distance. The sales department is inspired by corporate icons and the production department is inspired by creative challenges. Both departments prefer to work independently and dislike interference and dictation by other departments. Although certain departments have their own cultures, they all hold the dominant values of the company.

The best organizational structure depends on the firm's environment. According to McShane and Glinow, organizational leaders formulate and implement strategies to define and manipulate their environments; these strategies directly shape the organization's structure (2005). The environment of an organization is its culture. Great leadership can strengthen organizational culture, which in turn creates a solid organizational structure. The fact that Good Sport has a hierarchical structure explains why each department has its own culture. Since the decision-making flows from the top down, each Vice President is able to set the culture and atmosphere for his/her department. Each department's culture is a direct reflection of the Vice President's personality and work style. Samuel Olsen, the vice president of sales, has a relaxed and outgoing personality. His informal working style is reflected within the sales department. Eartha Simpson initially started as the vice president of production and was eventually promoted to CEO. Eartha is flexible and innovative and inspires her team with creative challenges.

The hierarchical organizational structure is compatible with the culture in a few ways. The structure of the company consists of set departments controlled by different Vice Presidents. Each department's culture is more heavily influenced by departmental heads and not the CEO or Chairman of Board. Good Sport also established a training ground for upper level management by promoting from within. It was a disaster when the company appointed Karl Andersson as CEO. He was never mentioned before as an executive level manager so we have to believe that he was hired from the outside. The company proved to be more successful when Eartha, Vice President of Production, was promoted to CEO, which supports one of the pillars of the corporate culture.

Power Structures

The power structures that existed within Good Sport were legitimate power, referent power, and expert power. Legitimate power is an agreement among organizational members that people in certain roles can request certain behaviors of others (McShane & Glinow, 2005). The company's organizational structure is hierarchical meaning all decisions and influence flows from the top down. The corporate culture tenant of maintaining professional distance mirrors the hierarchical structure. The team managers deal directly with their senior managers and the senior managers directly with executive management. The information flows downward from the CEO through the levels of management to the team managers and subordinates. Referent power is the capacity to influence others based on the identification and respect they have for the power holder (McShane & Glinow, 2005). This was evident in Matt Fernandez, Senior Manager of Production. Matt was well respected by his peers. He had a significant level of influence over his subordinates because they liked and respected him. This example of referent power existed due to the company culture to value seniority and respect department superiors. The downward flow of influence and information is a direct result of the organizational structure. Expert power is an individual's or work unit's capacity to influence others by possessing knowledge or skills that they value (McShane & Glinow, 2005). The Senior Manager of R&D was able to persuade the production department to accept a new product by providing the facts and his knowledge regarding the prototype. This tactic of appealing to the production department with logic and reason supported the department's culture of being impressed only by facts. The use of expert power is a result of the functional aspect of a hierarchical structure. Each department is divided according to each individual's area of expertise.

Politics in the Workplace

Organizational politics did not exist heavily within Good Sport. McShane & Glinow define organizational politics as