Yvonne Liu
# 41181116
January 30, 2008
Case Analysis – Culture
Chapter 4 – General Semiconductors
1. I think the action that had the greatest impact on changing the culture at General
Semiconductor was with Ronald Ostertag’s decision to replace almost every
member of the senior team before his management due to their offensive public
arguments. I believe this action really shook up the foundations for the company
and created immense insecurity amongst his employees. However, I felt Ostertag
had the mindset that culture is easily interchangeable, what he neglects to notice
was that culture needs to be learned and cannot be simply changed.
2. I think General Semiconductor needed change in its company in order to thrive,
but not necessarily changing it’s entire culture because even though culture is not
static and it constantly changes within each culture, it also has many levels and
when “changing the culture” of a company, I felt like General Semiconductor
overlooked the three levels of cultures which consisted of Assumptions, Values,
and Artifacts, and naively assumed culture can be easily changed.
3. If I were Ronald Ostertag, I would not have been rash to replace the senior
management as quickly due to public arguments and embarrassments. Simply
because by firing a large amount of authorities that have been with the company
only stirs up uncertainty and your employees cannot function to their fullest when
they are uncertain of their future with the company and if they will be the next to
be asked to leave. Also, if I were Ronald Ostertag, I would have considered the
high and low context cultures. It is obvious that General Semiconductors were a
very successful company with employees all over the world and with that comes
with immense diversity within the company. Since most of its employers are in
Asia, and considered as high context culture, Ostertag should have reconsidered
his approach, which is what I would have done.
4. Like Ronald Ostertag, I would want to measure my outcome to change the culture
by testing if the program I have implemented was effective or not. In Ostertag’s
case, his implementation to enforce the “our tasks” which were the core values of
General Semiconductor have shows 36-39% of development, which is essentially
effective in a 6,000 people company. In my case, I would want to relate back to
cultural adaptation and check if the employees have successfully transitioned
through the five phases and achieved balance between the two. Unfortunately for
General Semiconductors and Ostertag’s effort, it proved to be not enough to keep
the company with its management and eventually was taken over by Vishay
Intertechnology.