Levis management ideas to improve teamwork in their company
There is a wide range of forces acting upon organisations which make the need for change
inevitable. These forces of change can be summarized in five broad concepts: changing
technology; knowledge explosion rapid product obsolescence; changing nature of the
workforce; and quality or working life. The organization under analysis is Levi jeans
manufacturer, USA, which represents one of dynamic and fast growing branches in the
United States and around the world.
Levi Strauss employed so-called modular manufacturing production process which
utilizing either teams or cells – has been up and running in the U.S. sewn products industry
for nearly a decade (Abend, 1999). The aim was to operationalize values through actions
designed, for example, to implement total quality and provide financial and
non-finan*ƒ‚¬cial rewards for expected behaviour, to improve productivity, to promote
and reward good teamworkю Using the value set as headings for reviewing individual and
team performance emphasizing that people are expected to uphold the values Levi
expected to improve manufacturing system.
Research into indus*ƒ‚¬trial psychology has changed to the examination of organization
psychology, with emphasis on groups and relations between groups. The emphasis was on
individual training and development, but it appeared that a broader out*ƒ‚¬look was
needed to consider the complete organization, concentrating on organizational, group and
interpersonal processes, and develop plans to improve the whole system.
Innovations in Levi have been prompted precisely by the need to have a continuous
workflow that the expensive technologies require, in order to be cost-effective. In order to