Purity of Spirit: Tom's of Maine

Purity of Spirit: Tom's of Maine

Describe the organizational culture at Tom's of Maine. What are its key characteristics and underlying values or assumptions? You might want to think of the “iceberg metaphor” from the textbook in responding to this.

Chappell considered diversity as a significant component for organizational structure. He concluded that diversity in recruitment and selection is not only an ethical responsibility but also a bridge to advantage in marketplace for the organization. He realized that the more diversity will lead to more perspectives in our product design, services, and strategy and hence more will be the profits. Previously Tom's was dominated by men, Chappell started hiring females in the organization so that they can have diversified workforce. After that there were two women managers in two key departments. For Chappell only hiring women was not diversity but his focus was on different cultures, colors, background, experiences, and education of workforce and then a policy was made to make all opening of organization open for all type of work force and given equal consideration. Hiring from within the company was conflicting with the goal of maximum achievement and was leading to greater homogeneity.

Chappell called his business structure a triangle inside a circle. In which circle is a team. He encouraged employees of all levels to contribute in decision making by giving ideas that can make the business better and can improve quality of products. He emphasize that the strength of the circle is in openness; here you listen others and open up your ideas. The triangle in the circle represents the structure of organization's authority. In his organization there were multiple teams and each team had a leader who was responsible to report higher authority. And job description was clearly defined with clear structure of chain of command. Both of structure, the triangle and the circle work together with strong connection, where triangle provides tools for accountability and decision making while circle motivates creativity and participation.

What has been Tom Chappell's impact on the organization's culture? [Think about his personal history, values, philosophy to life, etc.]

Chappell sees his company as socially and morally responsible organization and design policies according to this perception in order to realize the goal of being socially and morally responsible. Tom's of Main is the only example of the corporate trend in spirituality informed leadership. It set an example of true ...