Researchers and practitioners often talk about the difficulty of dealing with organizational culture and implementing cultural change. The NUMMI (New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc.)is one of the most famous instances of successful cultural transformation in management history. Drawing on your knowledge and experience related to both strategy and culture, discuss the challenges of replicating the NUMMI example in other settings. You can comment on questions such as:

* Why are success stories such as that of NUMMI so few and far between?

* Does the successful implementation of practices that were introduced by Toyota depend on the type of industry and/or tasks that are involved in production?

* Think of firms (or a particular organization) that could benefit from the kind of cultural transformation seen in the NUMMI case. What would be the specific challenges in implementing similar practices?

* Are there any challenges that are unique to today's business environment that would make it especially difficult to replicate the NUMMI experience?

(450 words)