Professional Documents
Culture Documents
2010
HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT COVENTRY UNIVERSITY
Contents
1.0 Abstract........................................................................................2
2.0 Introduction.................................................................................3
4.1 Culture..............................................................................................6
4.2 Structure...........................................................................................8
4.4 Leadership......................................................................................11
4.5 Recruitment....................................................................................12
5.0 Conclusion.................................................................................22
Reference........................................................................................25
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1.0 Abstract
Toyota Motor Corporation (TOYOTA) is an automotive manufacturing
market, Toyota leads the development of the global automotive industry through its
excellent products and management system. This report adopts the SWOT analysis to
understand the situation and the future opportunities of the company. Then the
company’s structure, culture and strategy are discussed to assist the analysis of this
company. Toyota tries to provide the best service to its customers and dedicate to the
customers as their tradition. The company delivers this through working as teams, no
Some human resource management aspects of Toyota show that how the
company manage its human resource. These aspects comprise recruitment, training
and some recommendations are given in this report. Because of its excellent human
resource management, Toyota attracts many talents to work for it. Effective human
in the enterprises. Toyota can’t succeed without the support of human resource
management.
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2.0 Introduction
Toyota Motor Corporation (TOYOTA) is an automotive manufacturing
enterprise which was founded by Kiichiro Toyoda in 1937 and belonged to Mitsui
industrial tycoons. Kiichiro Toyoda was born in Japan and graduated from Tokyo
world's top ten automotive companies and largest automobile company in Japan.
Since 2008 Toyota Motor Corporation gradually replaced General Motors as the
largest car manufacturer in the world (Toyota 2010). Its brands include Lexus, Toyota
Early brands such as Toyota, Crown and Corolla are very famous, recent
Cressida, Lexus also attract many customers. Toyota's logo of three ellipses is used
from the beginning of 1990. The large oval means the earth, the other two ellipses
million in FY 2010 and sales result are 7.237 million vehicles (Toyota 2010).
Currently, Toyota is the largest car company in the world, playing a pivotal role in
automotive industry.
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SWOT analysis is the method which lists major internal strengths, weaknesses,
external opportunities and threats closely related to the objective through surveys,
then arranges these elements according to matrix form (Bratton and Gold 2003).
Researchers can use systematic analysis to match various factors and analyze them in
order to draw the corresponding conclusions which usually involve a certain degree of
decision-making.
Using this method, the researchers can investigate the situation of objectives
enterprise. The enterprise’s products cover automobiles, steel, machine tools and so
on. During last few years, the company continuously develops its products. However,
the rising prices of raw materials and other cost negatively impact the performance of
Motor Corporation.
Strengths Weaknesses
• Global brand • Weak performance in Asia
in products problems
• Stable quality
Opportunities Threats
• New market in China or • Competition in global
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Indian market
Strengths:
Toyota’s brand can be the most recognizable in many countries and areas. Since
the enterprise established, the company has successfully attracted the customers
around the world. Through great effort for the past many years, Toyota becomes the
leading provider of automobile products. Toyota has its market leadership because of
products’ stable quality which has been the customers’ favorite. Toyota always
and development, Toyota always provides new products to satisfy different customer
needs. The company can gain a significant competitive position in the market with
these advantages.
Weaknesses:
is weaker than other regions. Toyota’s market, sales and production in Asian
countries are lower than developed countries during last few years. For instance, in
2009, the sales in U.S.A are 1.770 million vehicles while the sales in China are 0.716
million vehicles (Toyota 2010). Reducing sales and profit of Toyota in Asian
countries indicate the company should improve its operations in this area to gain the
automotive market. Besides the weak performance in Asia, the quality problems
Opportunities
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opportunities for Toyota. Asian counties, such as China, India, continuously develop
.increase. If Toyota can grasp opportunities in Asia, the company will develop further
Due to the increase of oil prices, economic crisis and other reasons, the demand
of hybrid electric vehicles and small cars keeps growing in the future, which will
aggrandize the company’s revenue and the competitive strength in the market. For
Threats:
In 2008, the economic crisis engulfed the entire world, especially in developed
countries. Until now, the economy is recovering slowly. The economic crisis has
brought about the slowdown of demand to automotive products and rising raw
material prices. Shrinkage of the market affects the company, for instance, customers
choose to buy their new products more cautiously and decrease the frequency of
replacement, the US sales declined from 2.620 million vehicles in 2007 to 1.770
million vehicles in 2009 (Toyota 2010). Besides these, the intense competition from
its large rivals, such as Ford and Honda mounts the large pressure on Toyota. The
rising of raw material prices indicates that the component and production cost will
increase which will reduce the company’s future profit and cash flows.
4.1 Culture
Every enterprise has its own particular culture, organizational culture is the soul
of the enterprise, which successfully reflects the pursuit of the enterprise and spirit of
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enterprise’s employees.
Schein (1990) gave a useful definition of culture which is suitable for Toyota:
a given group as it learns to cope with problems of external adaptation and internal
integration that has worked well enough over time to be considered valid and
therefore can be taught to new members the way to perceive, think, and feel in
These principles reflect the integration of Toyota's goals, beliefs, the pursuit,
philosophy and values of Toyota, and give expression to the spirit of Toyota. During
decades, Toyota has been under the guidance of these principles to operate its
business. This enterprise culture has been firmly entrenched in Toyota employees’
minds, thereby form unified values, shared beliefs and the same personal goals of all
Toyota are dedicated, working hard and constantly improving productivity to create
outstanding achievements.
The company tries to provide the best service to its customers and dedicate to the
customers as their tradition. Toyota keeps on pursuing high quality products and
service to satisfy the customers. The company delivers this through working as teams,
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no matter local teams or global teams (Liker, Hoseus 2008). The relationship between
the customers and employees, the reputation and the trust can be the importance
from weak to strong, from general to excellent, because of promoting the company’s
culture to provide customers with better products. However, with the development in
recent years, Toyota's culture gradually changes which brings some problems. Recent
leaders of Toyota might become a little greedy and impulsive, pay attention to the
rapid development and slack off in quality management. High-speed expansion, rapid
development and expanding global market share particularly in North America, have
become the theme of Toyota in recent 10 years, while the company culture that the
older generation created gradually decreases. This situation leads to the quality
problems of car mats, accelerator pedal and brakes which cause damage of reputation.
It is difficult for Toyota to rebuild the good reputation. These problems need to be
4.2 Structure
Organizational structure is the fixed pattern of relationships within the various
can help the enterprise produce good performance. If the enterprises have the poor
structure, no matter how excellent employees are, the enterprises will fail to gain the
market share.
In 1936, Toyota produced its first AA Sedan, after 70 years development, Toyota
becomes one of the world's top ten car companies. Through learning and the
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introducing European technology and management mode, Toyota quickly masters the
After 1990s, in order to promote the demand of quick response to market, Toyota
introduced "the 21st century organizational reform plan”. After the reform, Toyota
abolished the level of kachoo (section supervisor) and introduced project management
system, which substantially increase the proportion of the personal capacity in the
personnel evaluation (Liker, Hoseus 2008). R & D departments have reduced from 49
to 27, which makes the communication between the ministers become more
convenient; chief engineers used to coordinate with 12 departments, now only six
departments, the amount of coordination decreased 30%; the staffs were authorized to
expand the scope of their responsibility, so they can think about the problems from
the overall view of the automobile. Surplus employees who were generated from
business reduction, were assigned to the new higher creative projects (Steven, H. Kent
1999). These changes swept away the tedious and complicated operations in Toyota,
renew vigor and innovation within Toyota, and improve Toyota's core
reorganized into four development centers, within each center the company still
implements strong matrix organizational structure and project management. The first
center is responsible for rear-drive platform and vehicle development; second center
is responsible for front-wheel drive platform and related development; the third center
is responsible for functional vehicles, the platform of light trucks and related models’
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also reduce the number of projects which the managers are responsible for from 15 to
5, therefore the managers have more time to coordinate with chief engineers, and pay
technology sharing; chief engineers and managers report to the same superior together
which decreases conflicts and contradictions; through the establishment of the fourth
center, the fourth center simplifies the work of other three centers to avoid the
situation that previous R & D departments were responsible for the development of
In order to spend the time with each employee, to establish a relationship of trust
and train the capacity of solving problems, Toyota has found 5 is the ideal span of
control for a work team (Liker, Hoseus 2008). But there are different sizes of the
teams in Toyota, most of teams own 6 to 8 members. Toyota chooses to consider the
employees as the most important parts at the top of organizational structure. The
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problems in the company’s human resource issues. For instance, because of the
recruitment of new employees and retirement of many senior leaders, the company
worries that its thrift, rigorous culture will be lost and exhausted, these cultures have
played a crucial role to be successful. In the past years, Toyota hires about 40,000
workers, who know little about the company culture. Besides this, the recent leaders
of Toyota become a little greedy and impulsive, pay attention to the rapid
development and slack off in quality management, which causes the quality problems
around the world. The leaders should consider the market situation more cautiously.
4.4 Leadership
Leadership can be described as a combination of a series of acts which will
inspire people to follow the leaders and their orders. According to the definition of
military and in multinational companies, even a small family. Leadership exists in all
areas, which is the core of everything people do (Armstrong 2005). In the period of
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Even if an enterprise has very high performance in other areas, with poor leadership,
the enterprise will lose the market. The good leadership behaviors include the
Toyota cultivates leaders within the company and searches suitable people,
completed work and good interpersonal skills. They believe that leaders must be the
model of company's philosophy and ways of doing things, then the leaders can train
employees who completely understand and support the company's culture to be next-
generation leaders. Toyota would prefer to cultivate a leader from enterprise internal
principle implies that the solution of problem is to personally see the actual situation
and own first-hand information. No matter in any aspects, the leaders should be the
one always in the place of operation. In today’s Toyota, leaders must personally
observe that the materials are sent to the production process, must personally view the
on-line operators are using security lights to request support and when it is necessary,
suspend the production line, and so on (Liker, Hoseus 2008). Toyota requires the
leaders to go out of the offices, investigate the existing problems, lead executives to
stores, look for the evidence of waste in Toyota, search encumbrance of providing
value to customers, and communicate with distributor to deal with the pricing strategy
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Business leaders instruct, impart and support the team employees who are doing
value-added work. In other words, the leaders services for the team. Their duties are:
they should strengthen enterprise’s common objectives, identify the team functions
and tasks, provide coaching, help the team to solve problems, and ensure the team to
4.5 Recruitment
Competition among modern enterprises increasingly becomes cruel and fierce, if
enterprises must constantly adjust and replace the employees quickly. Successful
recruitment can find the suitable job-seekers legally and effectively to meet the
formation of the enterprise. Effective recruitment can enhance the employees’ quality,
improve the personnel structure, simultaneously bring new management ideas into the
organization, and increase new vitality to the organization, even cause major
recruitment lays a solid foundation for future training, evaluation, wages, labor
employees who have responsibility, the company has made great efforts to achieve
this objective. In general Toyota's recruitment system can be divided into six stages,
the first five stages of recruitment last about 5 to 6 days, including the initial
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interpersonal skills and decision-making capacity. Finally, in the sixth stage, the new
development potential, employees will accept tight attention and training in different
aspects.
Toyota's recruitment philosophy is to choose the right, not the best (Liker, Meier
2007). Like other multinational companies, Toyota recruits fresh university graduates.
Toyota promotes life-long employment. Because the company provides stable work,
good benefits, and employee turnover rate is extremely low, the company is very
additional detail and persuasive quantitative analysis reports are needed. Generally if
there is no increased business, the plans are difficult to get the approval from
personnel department.
From a comprehensive recruitment system, first, Toyota not only needs the skills
of employees but also examine the values of employees and investigate the
the company emphasizes continuous improvement, basic skills test, psychological test
period, Toyota provides employees the opportunity to choose to stay or not, at the
cooperation. It can mobilize all the resources and intelligence of team members, and
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automatically eliminate all the discord and injustice, simultaneously it will give those
sincere and selfless dedicators the appropriate returns (Stredwick 2005). If the team
complicated, most work depends on team working. In Toyota, flexible team working
has become one common form of organization, sometimes the same person
simultaneously belongs to different teams which are responsible for different tasks.
Large team which promotes Toyota's new product development plan, which consists
members work together, greatly reducing the time of new products introduction and
providing higher quality, lower cost. Because a lot of problems have been fully
considered from the beginning, before the problems bring the troubles, the problems
have been solved by professionals. The small team is a first-line production unit.
About 5 to 8 employees build a basic production team, which is led by a team leader,
the members help each other to complete production tasks together as shown in
Figure 2.
In Toyota, the team working is truly implemented the daily operation. Many
companies have taught the various methods to solve difficult problems, and set up the
team to hold regular meetings for improvement suggestion. Toyota has effectively
integrated this way with the daily management system together. In engineering, in
the problems becomes a habitual working style (Steven, Kent 1999). All employees
have been incorporated into the working teams, the team leaders are responsible for
the whole team, and summarize the results of everyday work. The team working
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Toyota pay attention to the mentor employees, the company developed the
comprehensive staff training and mentoring system to support the team members to
become outstanding employees. Some people think that training for staff development
This approach resembles a skill training system. The daily guidance uses mentoring
approach. All new employees are also mentored with Toyota’s mode, accepting the
guidance from senior employees. The senior employees are responsible for mentoring
all things, this approach produces very good results, the time of mentoring is usually 6
months (Liker, Hoseus 2008). During the work, daily life, professional employees
give the new employees guidance and attention, and coordinate new employees’
interests, expectations and objectives lead to different levels of conflict, which has a
the members understand each other, and solve all the problems through collaboration.
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policies, and situation, establish a mature and complete communication system, and
employees understand their strengths and weaknesses, which can also help the
managers to understand the employees well. The leaders should communicate with
represent the company and their behavior can influence the company’s performance.
managers should be mutual trust rather than against each other. Employees and
world-class company.
employees. Group activities within the company are based on the characteristics of
employees, and divide employees into smaller groups. Small groups allow
participants to be more casual and have intimate contact, which is very helpful to train
the thought of team working (Liker, Hoseus 2008). An employee can participate in
employees can carry out social activities and have the opportunity to communicate
with each other at the same time. For these group activities, the company builds the
gymnasium, assembly hall, meeting rooms and other facilities for free use. The
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groups are elected by each other. Therefore every employee has the opportunity to be
a leader and bring his ability into full play. These gatherings have a common
condition that is these groups become places of interaction where the employees
communicate with each other, self-inspire, and effectively use spare time to
results in a certain period. In the enterprises, the performance of the employees can be
considered as the quantity and quality of completed work, cost and other contributions
especially those which are competitive and powerful, use a variety of preferential
policies, benefits, fast promotion and other efficient methods to attract and retain
giving full play to their talents and wisdom. Scientific motivation system contains a
competition mechanism.
objectives of appraisal and evaluate the degree of achievement (Jeffrey H., Kentaro
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2000). Through the interview, the leaders understand which kind of support the
employees need, and employees’ attitude, abilities and areas for improvement during
brings forward expectancy of future work, the employees can correct the
shortcomings. In fact, performance appraisal can assist the employees to achieve the
Toyota's motivation system not only contains the collectivism of the Japanese
emphasizes the corporate values which are mutual trust, practice and the team
working. For instance, in addition to stable employment, there are ubiquitous rewards
for employees (Norman 2008). Toyota emphasizes the reward and a lighter
punishment, Toyota establishes many policies about the punishment, but the leaders
seldom punish the employees. Besides these, the personnel training system and
motivation makes the employees continuously develop their potential and improve
their performance.
staff handbook. Toyota uses the staff handbook to introduce the situation and history
to employees. Then handbook helps the employees to understand the company culture
and basic policies of behavior standards. Employees’ responsibility and related rights
are also mentioned in the handbook. Toyota uses the staff handbook to ensure the
employees clearly understand their responsibility, related rights, rewards and so on,
then according to the policies of the handbook, Toyota gives employees relevant
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rewards and punishment every year. The use of staff handbook gives employees better
understand of their position and the company's culture, therefore employees further
pleasant working atmosphere (Liker, Hoseus 2008). Toyota provides a clean and safe
working environment to employees. The leaders keep commitment of healthy and safe
been almost perfect (Liker, Hoseus 2008). No matter salary or benefits, Toyota is one
of the most competitive companies. Once the employees come into Toyota,
employees can get welfare form retirement to death, the company has considered the
situation of employees. Employees’ salaries closely are related the appraisal results of
businesses.
lack of leadership in many organizations has become the biggest obstacle to the
further development.
support this mission, Toyota always focuses on the future of the automobile industry.
Simultaneously Toyota’s vision toward the year 2020 is to reexamine the relationship
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between nature and industry and to help promote efforts toward finding a harmonious
balance between the cycles of nature and the cycles of industry. To continuously
develop, Toyota has formulated its “global vision 2020”, which provides a vision for
Toyota’s position in the world in 10 to 20 years. Toyota’s vision for the future is to be
the leading company in the automotive industry which cares about the local
responsive, more agile, more flexible workforce. To achieve this, companies must be
more effective in the quest for talent, allocating resources, assessing performance, and
build core competencies and skills. The human resource management plan of Toyota
In author’s opinion, the core talents, good communication within the company,
the preparation of the leadership should the success factors of the company’s
leaders. In order to continuously develop in the automotive market, Toyota also can
put the talent recruitment in its change management plan, the company attracts talent
to work for Toyota, therefore the company can keep the ascendancy in the global
market.
in order to connect the employees’ performance with their salary and welfare well.
Toyota has many branches around the world, the company should take suitable
activities to meet the local employees’ requirement to make sure they love working in
Toyota.
circulation smooth. Good communication helps the managers understand what the
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employees are thinking, improves experience sharing among the employees. Good
communication makes the company and the employees work efficient. In the change
management plan, the company should take some actions to improve the
private.
responsibility to the employees, the environment and the community. The company
could develop its business with the consideration that its products could influence the
environment and communities. With these responsibilities, Toyota could have a great
achievement.
5.0 Conclusion
Toyota tries to provide the best service to its customers and dedicate to the
customers as their tradition. The company delivers this through working as teams, no
matter local teams or global teams. The relationship between the customers and
employees, the reputation and the trust can be the importance factors to a company’s
existence.
new reform plan in 1990, which substantially increases the proportion of the personal
capacity in the personnel evaluation. Toyota has found 5 is the ideal span of control
for a work team, most of Toyota’s teams own 6 to 8 members (Liker, Hoseus 2008).
Compared with the traditional organizational forms of enterprises, Toyota places the
The SWOT analysis of Toyota shows the situation of the company, and the
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opportunities in the global market. Toyota has the strong competition in the market,
because of its global brand, service and stable quality of products around the world.
However, some adverse factors continuously affect the company, as the competition
in global market, rising raw material prices and so on. There are still some
weaknesses in Toyota, such as weak performance in Asia and some quality problems.
This report focuses on the human resource management in the company, some
and mentoring, performance and motivation, mission and vision plan, and other HRM
employees enjoy working in the company and the company has its own advantages.
the situation of the company and company’s human resource management, some
relationship.
own performance evaluation system, makes employees know how to use it and
learn about current and future business needs, finally enables employees to assess
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conditions.
Human resource management can help companies achieve their main strategic
objectives: reducing costs and adding value of the products through satisfying
customer needs better. Development of human resource has become the key to
success in large enterprises. However, when the human resources and their capacities
are accepted by the market, the human resources can be turned into realistic
create the best working environment for every employee and give employees the best
rewards, therefore employees will be able to create more profit and wealth for the
management, with high-quality personnel, the enterprises can ensure their outstanding
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Reference:
1. Amos, Trevor, Ristow, Adrian, Ristow, Liezl, and Pearse, Noel J. (2008) 3rd edn.
4. Bodek, Norman (2008) Toyota managers know the road to Lean is by way of
5. Bratton, John and Gold, Jeffrey (2003) 3rd edn, Human Resource Management:
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8. Dyer, Jeffrey H. and Nobeoka, Kentaro. (2000) Creating and Managing a High-
9. Liker, Jeffrey K., Hoseus, Michael, and the Center for Quality People and
Organizations (2008) Toyota culture: the heart and soul of the Toyota way, New
York: McGraw-Hill.
10. Liker, Jeffrey K. and Meier, David P. (2007) Toyota talent: developing your
12. Spear, Steven, Bowen, H. Kent (1999) Decoding the DNA of the Toyota
Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann.
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10/08/2010].
<http://www.Toyota.co.jp/en/about_Toyota/in_the_world/pdf2008/02Toyota_glo
<http://www2.Toyota.co.jp/en/about_Toyota/in_the_world/pdf2010/databook_en
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