Chose and research an organisation with a particular focus on a Essay

Chose and research an organisation with a particular focus on a current HRM issue or process - Essay Example It is based in Japan but has spread its business to many countries in the wave of globalization. It has strong presence in United States and North America. Sales in these regions provide more than 70% of the profit worldwide. This increasing market share and rapid growth is not without its drawbacks. I have selected Toyota motors because of the recent disaster the company faced. Toyota automobile is famous for its quality but had to recall nine million cars worldwide. In addition to the obvious financial loss there was also huge loss of public image as well. The issue was mismanaged and handled poorly which tarnished the brand reputation in the public eye. It caused the company to touch the lowest ever sales in more than a decade. According to business week estimates because of this recent recall Toyota is facing $ 155 million per week and Toyota has lost almost $30 billion in stocks. In the long run the company can lose hundreds of billions of dollars because of this problem. So who is responsible for such a huge loss? On the outset it seems a great technical fault. Engineers, technicians, quality assurance people seems to be the most obvious people responsible for this disaster. The mechanical issue which affected eight models of Toyota is not the sole responsibility of the people associate with the design department, or technical staff producing faulty pedals and onboard computers. Can only technical staff be blamed for this disaster? Were Toyota leaders unaware of this mechanical fault? If they were unaware shouldn’t they be blamed for their unawareness? However, this is not the scenario. With the much hyped up Toyota production system (TPS) how such negligence is possible. TPS is known all over the world for its quality. Toyota production system (TPS) is also defined as the lean production system which emphasizes on cost cutting. It utilizes half the human capital, investment in machinery, manufacturing space and engineering hours as compared to mas s production system. Toyota production system brought the current Japan economic preeminence. This production system developed by Toyota was followed by many other industries and organizations which brought the economic profits for Japan. Just in time (JIT) production was the rationale behind Toyota production system. The major goal of TPS was cost cutting with sub goals like quality control, quality assurance and respect for humanity in terms of utilizing human resource to achieve cost objective. 2(Alavudeen & Venkateshwaran, 2008) With such renowned and successful TPS such mechanical fault was not expected. There is enough evidence that the Toyota leaders were aware of this mechanical fault long before any action was taken. This behavior suggests that the managers were actually trying to hide the issue which resulted in such disaster. With so much emphasis on cost cutting and setting it as the primary objective in TPS was probably the root cause for this disaster. If the root caus e of this failure is bad decisions by employees, ignoring a known issue, mishandling it in public then instead of just blaming the technical staff we should try to identify what made them behave like this. And the question arises to justify the rationale behind such decisions. If we make an attempt to understand the behavior then the role of HR becomes prominent. What was lacking or deficient or simply