Arcelor Mittal for Ethical Values

Question:

Write an essay on ArcelorMittal.

Answer:

ArcelorMittal is a constantly evolving business, which always seeks to expand and acquire new operations. So in the wake of a new overseas transaction, the company seeks to achieve maximum efficiency in running of the recently acquired company. The company which is newly acquired has a different context of motivation and concern, so it is natural for the new managers of the ArcelorMittal to face challenges. The challenges amount to constraints of various sorts including the primary concern of language barrier. It is our primary focus to illustrate the culture of ArcelorMittal in regard to an issue faced by the organization. The value of the company is based on beliefs that are gained from the inspiration of their leaders (Jones, 2005). The company teaches its employees to be humble and be empathetic to all people they meet. The societal values the company helps to create are of utmost value to any nation where ArcelorMittal set foot in. The traditional values are highly embarked upon and strived to be achieved at all means possible. The company strives to create a balance between corporate values and ethical values. The company has certain objects or artifacts of self value which are awarded to the most humblest and successful employee. ArcelorMittal is highly committed to the cause of sorting out friction between differently aided cultures in a new business set up(Brisset, 2010). The company has dealt with the issue of changing cultural perspectives in a new business environment not withstanding ongoing issues like lock outs, strikes and severe work suspensions. We will use the available theories in analyzing the culture of the ArcelorMittal; in context to issues faced by the managers overseeing the acquisition and functioning of newly acquired companies.

We have used the theories developed by the Edgar Schein in his 1990 paper “Model of Organizational culture”. Edgar Schein is a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and has been working in the context of organizational culture(Ybema, Yanow, & Sabelis, 2011). Now the works of Schein is aptly called the Schein Model of Organizational culture. 

Value and belief of ArcelorMittal

The value of the company is based on a few key factors: they aim to achieve their vision of being the leader in steel production by the production of sustainable and safe steel from ores. The other missions are that they want to achieve operational excellence in all business processes that they encounter and to produce solutions which are both innovative and cost effective for the customers. The other values they tend to stick to: improve the quality of the environment and the living standards of the communities and their environments in which they operate their regular businesses. They also tend to live the values of brand like sustainability, corporate culture and leadership including the key factor of deliverance of quality. The Brand values of the company can be stated as follows: they state that the goal is to facilitate the quality leadership that will transform the next generation of steel industry. The company has a clear cut vision of the future trends, which is formed by the basis of a consistent set of underlying values. 

Practical issues

There are other theories in place which might be useful in this current subject of theoretical framework. The Hofstede’s cultural dimension model is not relevant here since its involvement of employee’s power index. The power index concept is not applicable here since the current discussion doesn’t involvement of the employees urge for more power(Thurlow, Moss, & Forster, 2004). They were merely facing challenges in exuberating confidence in their already trial and tested method of overseas operations. Trompenars framework focuses on underlying values in analyzing the culture of an organization. Trompenaars theory is more focused on the effects of underlying employee value, which is unsuitable for the project theory. It is unsuitable because it lacks the tool to quantify organizational culture. The current and ongoing discussion requires understanding the organization as a whole and how it concerns the issues of operation of the business in a rapidly changing cultural perspective(Yu & Wu, 2011). The issue that would be discussed henceforth concerns how the particular company of ArcelorMittal might make changes and draw plans to simplify the process for employees who have to change the entire way they work and communicate in the workplace.

Events and characteristics

The Edgar Schein Model has the following few characteristics and would be discussed here henceforth. According to Schein there are three levels of organizational culture hierarchy. Firstly, Artifacts from the first level of cultural organizational hierarchy ("Organizational Demography or Organizational Culture? The Determinants of Knowledge Transfer Performance", 2014). The first level is directly observable parameters and can be viewed, observed, heard and felt by the employees. They are collectively termed as artifacts. The manner in which the company regulates the dress code, the furniture set up, the work place behavior and the facilities directly constitute the artifacts. The next level that forms the basis of organizational culture is ‘values of the employees’.

Schein’s theory

 The basic assumptions of Schein’s theory are the artifact. Artifacts are easy to observe but hard to decipher in reality. The dress code for example can be sated as an artifact. Another artifact is the language, it’s easy to observe but hard to decipher and understand. The company has set up universities for employees and their wards. The values of the company have already been stated and will be stated here in brief. The value of ArcelorMittal is producing sustainable quality steel and be the leaders in steel production. The language can be very necessary in influencing a new overseas client or when expanding business. The company Arcelor had accused Mittal of not having European values and cultures, but the company has made sure that the tag doesn’t stay and persist even after the merger of operations. The artifact of ArcelorMittal setting up an university has had ultimate benfits. The employees learn to overcome stress and work related behavioral stress. The university teaches its employees on Work safety and its implications. The company undertakes practical risk analysis situations and transfers them to the employees in the safety university to judge and assess the level of risk associated. The employees must come up with viable plans and ratings to sort out the affairs. The company teaches its employees to value safety and concern for co workers. The workers and engineers are briefed each day about the risks associated with each process they undertake. The university is multilingual in nature and gives out facilities that are available in both English and vernacular contents. The facilitators are also hired with vernacular backgrounds as well. What if the university lacks training facilities in safety analysis. The engineers will not be trained on work safety and will perform major breaches in safety while regulating their workforce and operations. In the event of any mishap the engineers would simply cite the lack of training as the cause of failure. The company will then be accused of misconduct and breach of safety protocols.  The values carried by the employees determine the organizational culture. The process of thought and attitude highly influences the culture of the organization. What people actually think matters the most to an organization and influences the workplace culture. The third level that influences workplace culture of an organization with regard to specific issues faced by ArcelorMittal is Assumed Values. Assumed values play a significant role but are not visible directly in context of organizational culture. The assumed values can’t be quantified or measured but can significantly make a difference to the organizational culture. There are certain hidden facts and beliefs which aren’t exposed or directly visible but certainly affect the way the organization shapes its culture("Physical activity framework", 2014). Thus the framework that we use in our analysis of organizational culture in ArcelorMittal is Edgar Schein’s Theory of Organizational culture. The company faced major issues while the merger was taking place. The Arcelor was apprehensive at the start about the Indian Mittal Industries running of the operations. The company highly mistrusted the operating procedure and corporate culture of the Mittal’s and undermined their supremacy. Arcelor’s CEO Guy Dolle attempted to paint the Mittal Steel as firm which did not share European Cultural values. The company went on further to describe Mittal’s organizational culture as to be suffering from uni-cultural management and will not be able to sustain shareholder’s expectations from Europe. The shareholder’s were now getting uneasy and apprehensive at the affairs that Arcelor was displaying. The shareholder’s criticized Arcelor’s CEO Dolle for trying to retain his CEO position rarther than striking the best possible deal. The environment during the merger was really challenging for the Mittal industries to deal with. The public criticism and negative effects of the tricks that Arcelor was playing with Mittal ultimately forced the leadership of the Arcelor to hit the negotiation table. The Mittal industries raided the final bid amount to 40 per cent more than the initial bid amount. The value of the Mittal was unique. They were the leaders in steel production and wanted to unify all companies producing steel under its ambit rather than counter the problem of booming producers by disintegrating other operations. Finally, ArcelorMittal was merged with few doubts still remaining. 

Analysis of issue which uses the framework

In the explanation of framework, the discussion initiates with the model of Robert A. Cook and with the model of Edger Schein. Now the analysis of those models and the cause of choosing one of them have also been discussed previously. There are several issues which in which the framework mentioned above would be used (Reed, 2014). As per the model of Schein, there are three levels of cultural, organizational hierarchy, which are Artifacts, ‘values of employees' and Assumed Values. In the case of the first level of the hierarchy, mentioned issues are depending on employee satisfaction, where the organization has to think about how the employees view, feel, observe and hear (Gu & Itoh, 2015). The organization has to put an eye on these artifacts for fulfilling the employee demands. In different places of the world, there would be different workplace behavior, different dress codes and different furniture set-ups which may affect the worker psychology towards their job (Crossick & Kaszynska, 2014). The organization named ArcelorMittal always seeks the method of expanding the business and new overseas plants, so the business can be globalized and acquire new operations. In the case of the model, the second stage speaks about the values of the employees, where it is briefly described that the organization will stand for the employee as the value of an employee is an issue which determines the culture in an organization. New plants in countries can put the authority in trouble for the communication among the authority, management, and the employees (Schermerhorn, 2005). This gap of communication would not be beneficial for the organization, this kind of issues are very vulnerable for the mentioned organization. There are certain issues which are individually surrounded by the communication like, language barrier, cultural difference, thought of the people of the particular region, these affect much for running a reputed and well-known organization. In the case of motivating the employees, is a further issue which is supposed to be faced by ArcelorMittal. The challenges that face an organization are one of the big reason that how the employees are motivated (Rosner, Halcrow, & Levins, 2001). As soon as the business of the organization is matured, there will be inceptions of new challenges. Cultural motivation in an organization leads the establishment to a new future. Cultural imbibitions do not occur in a single day that has been said by Edgar Schein, so in overseas branches, the organization has to build up a new culture that motivates the employees and makes a better place of work too (Kubátová & Kukelková, 2014). This revolution in a new country would bring many challenges, but it would also be overcome by the help of the theories mentioned above. In the case of the theory of Robert A. Cook, there are the perspectives of employees, where it is mentioned about the employees' moral and ethical values, workplace behavior and the code of contact of the mentioned organization. These things can also motivate the workers of the organization, but as this theory is only based on the entity of the employee in the organizational culture, this theory is not the form of actual discussion. So the theory of Robert A. Cook is not contemporary for the organizational culture. The organization must have to remember about their others branches that, as it is a steel factoring organization, the steel used in different countries in the different environments are very affecting in the material value (Quinn, 2003). Rust is a tough issue in steel developing organization so that the organization has to keep an eye on the changes of climate in different places of the world. So the production of material in different countries also gives challenges to the organization for surviving at that particular place (Business strategy series, 2008). In business strategy, the company has to change its cultural perspectives frequently as it can motivate the workers to do their job In a most efficient way. The higher authority of the company has to be polite and well behavioral so that the subordinates do not think themselves less valuable in the business of the organization. These are the moral values which ought to be maintained by the company to put a smooth condition in the culture of the organization. The cultural, organizational theory reveals the changes of working method and communication at the place of work. The frequent changes of culture in an organization affect in a whole to the production and business of the company. The organization, ArcelorMittal must have to allocate a team which will take care on this kind of business where the working people of the company get the solution of their problem at the workplace. This particular unit of the ArcelorMittal is the voice of the workers of the organization, through which it could be a bridge to the management and the authority. Finally, there is the last point in Edgar Schein model which should be mentioned about; that is Assumed Values (Yamabe, Maruo, Shirahata, & Goto, 2012). Tat is the X-factor of the organization which would not be discussed among everyone but always kept in mind. Assumed values can significantly change the work policy of the organization, and it fixes how the organization will be granted to the public. Above every strategy of the company, there is an X-factor which should be recognized and that brings the-the ultimate benefit to the organization. ArcelorMittal also has that kind of secret methodology which is entirely hidden from the eyesight of the general workers of the mentioned organization. The strategy of the organization also plays a vital role in the culture of the organization; the pressure over the workers is one of the main factors that can be said as an example (Baum, 2007).

Conclusion

In the above piece of work, the organization, Arcelor is a merged company of Aceralia in Spain, Minor from France and Arbed which is from Luxembourg. After that, Mittal Steel Corporation is merged with the company Arcelor, and it is made ArcelorMittal which is based in France. The organization has been faced off several issues and problems. As it is a steel producing organization, it has a large unit around the world. The organization has got a good reputation over the world too. ArcelorMittal always seeks the way of expansion and tries to acquire new operations every time. So in the new countries, there are new workers, communication among the authority, management and workers is a vital issue for an organization, reputed this much.

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