Sitting on John J. Ferriola’s desk at Nucor’s headquarters in Charlotte is a greeting card. Yellow, with bright green, pink, and blue flowers, it’s from Diane Williamson, a line worker at Nucor’s plant in Darlington, S.C. Inside it says, “Thank you for caring about me and my family.” In the past few months, Ferriola, Nucor’s chief operating officer, and his boss, CEO Daniel R. DiMicco, have received hundreds of similar cards and e-mails from their staff of 22,000. It’s hard to imagine too many other C-Suite types getting thankyou notes by the basketload these days. But while rivals have laid off thousands, Nucor has shown remarkable loyalty to its people, eschewing layoffs altogether. Despite a dismal fourth quarter, the company paid out a special one-time bonus in January 2009 of $1,000 or $2,000 per worker, reward for a record 2008. Total cost to Nucor: $40 million. In March the company paid an additional $270 million in 2008 profit sharing. “We’re making money. We’ve got jobs,” says Michael May, a seven-year veteran of Nucor’s Crawfordsville (Ind.) plant. “Financially, Nucor employees are still better off than most.” But not as well off as they once were. After years of record-setting profits, Nucor is struggling just like the automakers, appliance manufacturers, and builders that buy its steel. In the fourth quarter of 2008, its mills went from running at 95% of capacity to 50% practically overnight, as credit-squeezed customers slashed orders. “It was something none of us had ever seen before,” says DiMicco.

Questions 

1. What factors likely contribute to employees’ job satisfaction and organizational commitment at Nucor? 

2. How would you describe Nucor’s organizational culture? 

3. Which terminal and instrumental values do you think are important in Nucor’s culture? 

4. How might managers’ levels of emotional intelligence influence how they treat employees at Nucor?