1. Based on the case of Toyota and BMW, compare their business strategy; organization structure; organizational culture; Job analysis and design; job interface in work system; expected role behavior; required skills, knowledge and abilities of workers; required job attitude of workers; and propose the Human Resource Management Practice for both Toyota and BMW accordingly from the theory of Schuler and Jackson 1987 (Recruitment and Selection; Training and Development; Compensation and Rewards; Performance Management) Provided case: ENTER THE WORLD OF BUSINESS - Designed to Be Number 1: Toyota and BMW

In the first quarter of 2001, Toyota surpassed General Motors as the top auto producer in the world. This was a well-anticipated event, and the role that organizational design and job design played in Toyota's success has been publicized in many business case studies. Toyota developed an obsession for details, and after many years of study and continuous improvement, the company has developed thousands of pages of documentation that lays out precisely what needs to be done for every step of each job to ensure the highest level of reliability in its trucks and cars. As head of European operations, Shinichi Sasaki, bores, "Every decision at every stage must be done properly'. and detailed organizational charts that plot where responsibility for various decisions rests are constantly scrutinized and updated.

A stark contrast to this approach to job design and organizational design can be found in Munich. Germany, home of BMW. Indeed, many have labelled BMW the "anti-Toyota" because whereas Toyota does all it can to simplify and standardize work procedures and decision making, BMW embraces complexity. This difference can be traced to BMW business strategy, where CEO Helmut Planke notes that "I cannot recall having seen a clear and convincing correlation between size and success. Our own goal is clear: to be the leader in every premium segment of the International automotive industry. This strategy to be the top producer in a niche category, and not the largest producer overall, leads BMW to take a different approach to how it structures work relative to Toyota.

First, in terms of organizational design, BMW is organized not in tall pyramid-shaped structures with many levels of management. Instead, its structure is very flat and structured around cellular networks that are constantly in flux.These networks are typically composed of project-oriented, cross-functional teams, and the emphasis is on lateral communication across various specializations, rather than vertical communications up and down the hierarchy. This is supported by the design of factories themselves, which are often filled with wide open spaces, flooded with natural light, and where the physical layout promotes movement patterns among line workers, engineers, and quality experts that result in spontaneous communication and collaboration. With a network you get the powerful ability to leverage knowledge quickly to bear on solving problems and this may be the only way to effectively manage BMW's kind of complexity.

Indeed, the choice of the larger organizational structure trickles down and strongly influences that nature of individual jobs. Unlike Toyota, which relies on highly detailed and formalized descriptions of processes that are written down and are to be closely adhered to, BMW teams are given wider ranging responsibilities for making their own decisions about work procedures, which often vary across different teams. Rather than finding the "one best way" and then incrementally improving this one method continuously, work teams at BMW are more entrepreneurial and often compete with each other to come up with the best methods for different tasks. Managers in this context are not presumed to have all the answers, instead, their central role is to ask the right questions, give the teams the resources to find the right answers themselves, and then judge them on the relative success.

In the end, the choices that BMW has made with respect to organisational design and job design have allowed it to become one of the most flexible producers of high-performance and highly customized automobiles serving the top end of the market. The fluid, bottom-up, approach to work practices motivates its workforce to come up with fresh new ideas that anticipate and shape customer preferences rather than simply respond to them. Thus, while Toyota was celebrating become number 1 in volume, with profit margins of over 8 percent in 2006, BMW is actually number 1 in terms of profits. As Ernest Bauman, head of personnel at BMW states, People talk about innovation in products but what is underestimated is innovation in processes and organizations.