Introduction
Tesla is a leading global car manufacturing institution, as it is known. As of 2021, the company is valued at over 50 billion dollars, the figures might sound like an illusion, but there is more to the numbers than what meets the eye. The company has also become just the sixth company to reach a market cap of over 1 trillion dollars; this valuation indicates the standards that the company has set in the market over the years and the level of results that they achieve.
Tesla has a background history of where the idea was incepted when it was formed and all the millstones it has had to go through to become one of the biggest corporates in the whole of America and worldwide. The company also has a well-defined set of visions, missions, and goals that help guide most of the activities they promote; these goals also guide and monitor the staff and leaders at the company.
Company History
Tesla is now an established brand in numerous companies and has clean energy as one of its main agendas. Tesla has its headquarters in the United States of America and Texas. Tesla was formally founded in July 2003 by two compatriots, Marc Tarpenning and Martin Eberhard. The company was formerly known as Tesla motors. The name was an homage to the famous scientist and inventor Nikola Tesla, credited for many electrical and physics inventions and innovations.
The company had a significant change in ownership in February of 2004 when Elon Musk bought and became the majority shareholder when he bought shares worth $6. 5million.The company’s first CEO was Martin Eberhard before Elon Musk took over as CEO in 2008. With Elon Musk as CEO, the company acquired a Tesla energy branch. The company had numerous founders, five to be precise; out of the five founders, not all became successful with the company.
Elon Musk, the first major investor in the automobile giant, is widely known for his involvement with the company as the CEO. He is also credited with some of the designs and engineering that go into the products. Before Elon Musk took over complete control, he was involved in a court case with former CEO Martin Eberhard, who sued him for being dismissed from the company in 2009; eventually, the case was settled between the two individuals, and since then, the company has set on the trail of preaching and empowering clean energy and zero-emission cars, investing in the production of clean energy and other sectors that are linked through its other sub-companies or branches (Ohnsman, 2021).
Company Vision and Values Mission
As a company and institution that exists and interacts with a human, Tesla has a specific goal that guides most of its productions and agendas. The Vision of Texas is to encourage or motivate the transition to clean energy by building the most significant and most compelling car company in the whole of amerce and the whole world.
In most corporates or organizations, some visions and targets help shape the overall impression of the institution to everyone interested in it. Tesla, like many other institutions in various fields, has appropriately used its vision statement to clearly outline their objectives and targets to their prospective audience while at the same time maintaining a more approachable and compelling image. The vision statement for Tesla clearly defines its objectives in pioneering zero-emission cars and the steps to achieve the goal.
The only issue with the vision statement is that it does not cover the other sub-branches that fall under Tesla’s brand, for instance, clean energy in homes or other appliances using batteries; this project falls under Tesla’s other branch, named tesla energy. The Vision statement is as essential to the company’s image as the products produced. Tesla’s smaller units or companies may need a clearer vision and mission ideas to guide them and their prospective customers (Rowland, 2022). Tesla’s mission is to accelerate the incorporation of sustainable or easy transport by scaling up the production of affordable and environment-friendly electric cars.
The Tesla mission statement also clearly elaborates on the company’s goals and mission and the activities they are performing to ensure that the goals or mission are attained within the set constraints (Rowland, 2022). The company has expanded and grown considerably, and at some point, questions may be raised about the relevance of some of the statements, goals, or objectives compared to their activities. The company values are well-defined within its vision and mission statements. These values bind the company with the society or community around them because they indicate what operations the company conducts, what the company tolerates, and what the community should expect
The organizational structure of Tesla.
Tesla is a significant global organization and business that employs over 100000 employees in its various institutions or branches. The company also handles and manages numerous transactions that need to be addressed. An organizational structure is fundamental to any business or institution that loos to expand operations and effectively manage all its operations without encountering difficulties.
Organizational structures differ, and companies or businesses must select the structures that suit their mode of operations and the employees within the organization. An organizational structure also has to consider the people impacted by the company and its products. An effective organizational structure ensures that every member and person involved with the company plays their role. Organizational structures usually highlight and define roles for all the members ranking from high to casual workers. The system also explains what is expected of them in other domains like social and organizational specifications.
Tesla employs an organizational structure that pushes for internal growth. The tesla organizational structure also supports business growth; this is distinctive and can be attributed to the market success that the company has consistently recorded. As already defined, organizational structure dictates how the various departments and branches of an institution, and in this case business organization, interact with each other and how the inner organizational components interact with outer or foreign features or entities like customers and other outsiders (Meyer, 2018).
Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, is widely recognized for his role in the company; this may paint a picture to the outer audience that he is the one who runs most of the business alone. While that may be true, it is factual that a board and other managers play a significant role in making the company loo as effective as it appears to other people. The leadership of the top executives in companies mostly depends on the type of board behind them. For an executive to be effective, they must be backed by an equally effective and expansive board of directors and managers.
Effective organizational structures help companies to adapt to changes and situations encountered. For instance, a global expansion case may be ideal for a company to expand and exploit more profitable opportunities. Still, at the same time, the increase leaves the company vulnerable to other complex challenges posed by different environments and markets. Tesla’s corporate structure also supports the Vision and mission statement defined by the company. All the components in the company or organization have to interact by complementing each other; the organizational structure must complete different corporate segments or sectors, the sales, and marketing faction, the human resources faction, and other sectors of the organization.
Tesla’s organizational structure implementation can be defined as the U-form organizational structure. This structure has distinctive features. In the U-form organizational structure, all the business operations are managed or run as a central unit, meaning that most decisions are structured and come from a hierarchy (Yingyi Qian, 2006). Most of the findings and activities of Tesla within the USA originate from the Tesla headquarters in Austin, Texas. The Tesla structure encloses all the activities, positions, and even hierarchies lie CEOs and managers. Tesla’s international branches are allowed some form of autonomy since they exist in foreign nations and must also comply with some of the requirements from those nations; hence they have some details differing from those branches within the USA.
Tesla’s structure is mainly detailed with functional units that act as departments that manage all the relevant domains of the company. All the disciplines or divisions work towards implementing and achieving the visions, values, and mission of the Tesla Inc. institutions. The two central corporate values that are worked towards by all the company factions are automotive and energy generation and storage (Cuofano, 2022). These two divisions help design and define Tesla’s primary production and marketing ideology.
Tesla also has a geographical structure that dictates its markets and financial reporting, which comprises four major zones: Unites states of America, China, Norway, and others. In this case, the other contains the rest of the countries where there are tesla stocks and where it operates; this organizational structure has been adequate, at least financially, for the tesla organization. The Tesla organization has gone through changes in its robust system over history; for instance, the first CEO of the company was Martin Eberhard before Elon Musk, who is the current CEO too over the operations. Elon Musk also doubles down as the product architect and the company director.
Elon Musk also holds other roles in branches or institutions owned by the Tesla Inc. company. For instance, he is the chairman of the solar city, a company acquired by Tesla. Zachary J. Kirkhorn is the chief financial officer for the Tesla organization and is relatively new to the role. Jerome Guillen is another vital individual to the Tesla organization and takes up the position of President of automotive for Tesla. Andrew Baglino acts as the chief technology officer at Tesla, while JB Straubell acts as a senior advisor for the organization (Maverick, 2020). All these individuals are essential to the operations of the Tesla organization and implement various roles that ensure that the Tesla structure is maintained. At the same time, the Vision, mission, and values are also kept intact.
Human Resources, Company Culture and conflict resolution for Tesla Inc.
The human resource department, or HR as it is commonly known, is vital for any organization. The HR department manages and helps maintain harmony in the workplace.HR ensures coordination of tasks and roles is efficient, and it also goes a further step and communicates any decisions from the board to the appropriate recipients.HR also ensures that the staff maintains and implements company policies and values. It also provides that the interactions and relations between people at the workplace are healthy and effective for the company’s operation and the organization’s interests. The stated roles of HR make it a critical department or sector for any organization that wants to achieve optimal working conditions for its employees.
Tesla, just like many other corporate institutions and businesses, has an HR or human Resource department that helps coordinate the activities and employees. The Tesla HR department has a vast pool of individuals within the whole department who help implement the policies. The HR team includes; Janelle Diaz, Eryn Bergquist, Gina Rosario, Carla Supanich, Tracy Desmond, David Sabes, Tiffany Hart, and Rama Muthu. Ryan Arnold, and Danielle Nichols (Tesla Human Resources, 2022). All these individuals serve in specific roles within the HR department; the Tesla HR department is one of the highest-scoring departments for the organization compared to the employee ratings for the departments in the institution. The HR department at Tesla is responsible for maintaining and pushing teamwork and team spirit; it is also tasked with keeping an appropriate workplace culture for all employees. The HR department at Tesla also impacts the type of working environment the workers have to go through; most of the workers rate it as excellent and manageable for them. Hence the HR team at Tesla can be said to be effective.
Texture has an exciting and well-defined company culture and requirements for employees. The company’s cultural norms are used to ensure continuity and to help integrate newer members into the organization’s already existing system. The organizational culture at Tesla can be defined as innovative and problem-solving-oriented. This culture is evident through its top managers and the Chief executive officer of the company, Mr. Elon Musk, who claims to be an innovator and expert. The HR department maintains harmony and ensures that the employee’s policies, structures, and culture are upheld by the employee, as already stated.
Most of the mentality and operational guidance come from the top management and are trickled down through the appropriate departments and the HR department. Most members or employees at Tesla have eventually also inherited or adapted to the company’s long-standing culture of being innovative and technology-oriented. Tesla’s organizational culture and structure are employed in the company’s production and other vital sectors. The company adapts to the latest trends in the market and the surrounding environment. In this case, Tesla notes and reacts to the trending and upscaling issue of global warming and carbon emission; they, in turn, use these details in their production to come up with efficient electric cars that can serve the role of transportation buts still help in reducing global warming through zero emission.
The organizational culture implemented by Tesla is very efficient in terms of employee motivation to develop practical problem-oriented products that profit the organization while still solving the problems. The Tesla company has outlined six features that define its organization’s culture and what is expected of all Tesla employees. These feature of the organization’s culture includes; moving fast, speed and being first is essential to Tesla’s target of being a pioneer and maintaining its status, so identifying the loopholes in the market and working on them quickly is critical to the organization and its mission, Vision and value (Meyer, Tesla Inc.’s Organizational Structure & Its Characteristics (Analysis), 2018). The second feature of the Tesla organizational culture is ‘do the impossible’ this feature details the Tesla company employees’ urge to come up with specific and market-oriented products. This feature motivates and encourages employees to build or construct top-notch products that stand out in the market for their high quality and incredible ability, like the vehicles and other Tesla products that are widely preferred by many in the market. The third feature of the Tesla company culture is ‘Constantly innovate’ This feature defines and elaborates The Tesla company’s need and effort that they maintain in being inventive and innovative.
The feature for innovation also reminds or deploys Tesla employees to constantly or continually keep coming up with new concepts and ideas to keep Tesla innovative and relevant in the market. The fourth feature is ‘Reason from “First principles” this feature is another important factor in the culture of the Tesla organization and is recommended by the organization’s top management. Reasoning from the first principle entails identifying and analyzing problems from their roots or where they begin and then coming up with appropriate techniques or solutions to the problems (Meyer, Tesla Inc.’s Organizational Culture & Its Characteristics (Analysis), 2019).
The fifth feature is ‘think like owners.’ This feature encourages employees to put effort and commitment to their craft and roles in the company by making decisions that benefit the company in the long run. This culture for Tesla is another positive approach to how the executive and the various departments manage the company effectively. Making the employees feel like owners and making them feel like their decisions and actions significantly impact the company’s operations.
The final feature of Tesla’s culture is ‘We are ALL in. This feature reinstates the message of unity to all the employees and stakeholders in the organization. Like all the other covered features of Tesla’s organizational culture, even this encourages unity and teamwork. The main goal or agenda of Tesla’s culture is to encourage teamwork and effort from the employees by making them feel included and impactful in the decisions and milestones achieved by the company (Meyer, Tesla Inc.’s Organizational Culture & Its Characteristics (Analysis), 2019). These said features of the Tesla organizational culture have positive and negative implications for other employees and the operations of Tesla. The recruitment process at Tesla has its settings just like other companies. A degree is not a minimum requirement to be employed at Tesla, but there are other tests that an individual has to pass with a GPA of 85% or higher. Showing basic skills is an advantage, and being inventive and innovative is another factor that may advantage an individual interested in being recruited at Tesla.
Individuals have to go through tests and interviews with the employer. In most cases, the interviews are used by employers to test the technical skills possessed by a potential employee. One of the key skill requirements is the ability to drive; creativity is also an added advantage. The job requirement differs according to rank or level; a degree qualification is not mandatory for low-level jobs. A diploma or degree is required in the related field for mid-level jobs. While for higher-level jobs, the qualifications may reach a master’s degree level. The skillset required also differs with the roles being applied. For instance, a data entry role may require knowledge and the ability to use a C++ programming language (Sario, 2020). For conflict resolution at Tesla, the CEO has publicly stated that the company prefers an open-door approach where the employee can reach out and address their issues to the management without going through a hierarchical procedure. The abovementioned approach is effective because the communication process has been eased; hence both internal and external conflict resolution is also made simpler (Cardenas, 2021).
Social responsibility and sustainability.
Most corporates have a social responsibility and commitment that help guide some of the activities they conduct within the various communities around them. Tesla, just like many other corporates, also has social responsibilities and commitments to serve the community that they exist around. In this case, Tesla is a global company. Its social responsibility or targets should be oriented towards impacting the United States of America and the world. Tesla’s main social responsibility activity contributes to the effort towards fighting global warming. Tesla was initially founded on that basis and still stands by those social goals.
Tesla’s Vision and mission clearly define and illustrate the organization’s targets, which are to provide transportation at an affordable cost and still manage to curb the level of carbon emission to zero. Besides being on the frontline for fighting global warming, Tesla has also popularized various partnerships and collaborations with other institutions for research. The vice president leads Tesla’s CSR activities, which have been incorporated into most of the company’s programs lately. Tesla is involved in research activities which they lend to institutions like Mercedes and Toyota that use them for research in specific details (Valdes-Dapena, 2013).
Tesla is also involved in employee wellness and health programs by providing free healthcare for full-time employees. Tesla also factors in the gender disparity and tries to address the issue of empowering equality and diversity. The organization has been identified s a top institution for employee diversity (Mainwaring, 2019). Tesla also addresses water consumption by its factories and puts in place appropriate measures to address water consumption and even recycling of water in Tesla factories.
Recycling is not limited to one specific resource; Tesla also ensures recycling of other materials used by the company’s factories in production (Dudovskiy, 2021). Tesla is involved in numerous other programs and initiatives in society and the community. Despite how effective the CSR for Tesla is, there is always room for improvement, and it can also be improved if appropriate measures are implemented. The institution can better address issues like diversity; another issue that can also be improved on is workplace culture and experience. The current CSR measure, if maintained and improved, is very efficient in improving the communities and societies that Tesla exists around; they also play an important role in ensuring that Tesla stays in line with its Vision, mission, and values.
Given that Tesla has a clearly defined vision and mission that they target to achieve, the company or organization should ensure that the activities they partake in uphold the values that define the organization. Ensuring sustainability for all parties involved with the company is also very important because exploitation would be an unethical move by a company of the size of Tesla.
Tesla’s responsibility is to ensure that they do justice to the employees, competitors, and community around them through its activities. Accountability is very important for Tesla because most corporations identify loopholes and use them to exploit the people around them, either employees, communities, or competitors. A good example is a major corporate illegally dumping its waste in a non-designated area because there are no people or institutions to hold them accountable.
Transparency and Ethics
Transparency and accountability are important factors in any institution, and epically institutions that handle the details and data of its users like Tesla does; trust and transparency are paramount for situations like these because, without trust and transparency from the organization, there is a risk of losing the data of many people. Like many other organizations that handle user data and details, Tesla has come under questioning about the security of the user data they are left to manage.
To ensure transparency and gain the trust of the users and customers, the company has a set of conducts and policies that they enforce within their organizations to assure the clients that their details are secure and the possibility of being accessed illegally is minimal. User data security is one of many issues the company must address because other matters are also related to how the company operates.
Given the fact that Tesla has recently come under scrutiny for how employees conduct themselves at the workplace and also the recent claims of sexual harassment and mistreatment of women at the workplace, there needs to be a clear and precise harassment protocol that can be used by either an employee or an oversight authority, in case of reporting or investigating harassments. The claims about the conditions of sexual harassment women are subjected to in Tesla factories are very concerning and put a dent in the credentials and track record of the company in their effort to achieve equity and diversity (Stempel, 2021). There is a need for a code of conduct and code of ethics at the Tesla factories because, without proper guidance and appropriate measures, many individuals are put at risk with the conditions that they are left to work in the organization.
By communicating the performances and the details of some or all of their activities, Tesla encourages transparency, which is a good step towards achieving transparency in all of its institutions.
References:
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