20/3/2012[pic]

|Deren Kizilgoz 0904201 - Nicholas van Damme 20061452 |

Inhoudsopgave
Introduction 3
Diversity at Philips 5
Inclusion 5
Vision 6
Global I’s 6
WINergy 6
Stakeholders 7
In-depth research before interview 7
Interview 8
Conslusion 9
Sources 10

Introduction

For the company research assignment of the minor Cross Cultural Communication, the company we chose is Philips. Philips is a company that produces electronic goods for consumers and companies and organizations. It was founded by the Philips brothers in Eindhoven, The Netherlands in 1891. Philips started out as a company that was manufacturing carbon filament lamps and over the years it grew out to become one of the largest multinational that provides consumer and professional electronics of all sorts.
Philips is divided in three main parts, healthcare, consumer lifestyle and lightening. The healthcare part produces medical electronic devices for hospitals and practices all over the world. The consumer lifestyle department is producing all sorts of consumer electronics that improve the well-being and health of its customers. The lightening division of Philips is aiming to produce all sorts of end-user-driven, energy efficient solutions for lightning (Philips, 2012).
The reason we chose Philips is the fact that Philips is one of the multinationals around the world that pays a lot of attention to diversity. In the next session we will pay attention to this.

Below, you will find Philips’ mission, vision and strategy for the company, taken directly from their 2010 annual report.

‘’Royal Philips Electronics of the Netherlands is a diversified Health and Well-being company, focused on improving people’s lives through timely innovations. As a world leader in healthcare, lifestyle and lighting, Philips integrates technologies and design into people-centric solutions, based on fundamental customer insights and the brand promise of “sense and simplicity”
Headquartered in the Netherlands, Philips employs approximately 116,000 employees in more than 60 countries worldwide. With sales of EUR 23 billion in 2009, the company is a market leader in cardiac care, acute care and home healthcare, energy efficient lighting solutions and new lighting applications, as well as lifestyle products for personal well-being and pleasure with strong leadership positions in flat TV, male shaving and grooming, portable entertainment and oral healthcare’’ (Philips, 2012).

Philips is a company that makes all sorts of electronics. It started once in a small factory in Eindhoven in The Netherlands and is now one f the world’s leading companies when it comes to electronics. They make consumer electronics but also professional equipment. The company is divided in three parts, healthcare, lightning and consumer lifestyle.

Mission) ’’ We improve the quality of people’s lives through the timely introduction of meaningful innovations. Innovation does not only mean “new technology”. It can also mean an exciting application, a new business model or a unique customer proposition brought about by an innovative partnership. In other words, an innovation is not the same as an invention. Technology remains very important, but insight into the needs and aspirations of consumers and customers is equally, if not more important and must always be our starting point’’ (Philips, 2010).

Vision) ‘’ In a world where complexity increasingly touches every aspect of our daily lives, we will lead in bringing “sense and simplicity” to people.
Our corporate vision describes what we see as one of the biggest challenges facing people today – and how we can help them meet that challenge. We have identified the difficulty of coping with complexity as a major challenge for people in our time. One of the things that makes life today so complex is the fact that technological progress comes to us very often in a way that is too difficult to experience. We believe that this situation can be changed, and that we can help to make the benefits of our products and solutions easier to access and more relevant to people’s needs and aspirations’’ (Philips, 2010).

Strategy) ‘’Philips is a leading company in health and well-being. Our business portfolio is well positioned in highly attractive markets and geographies to capitalize on global trends. The large majority of Philips businesses have the right fundamentals for profitable organic growth. Currently a growing share of one-third of group revenue is generated in growth geographies.
The Accelerate! program is a comprehensive performance improvement and change program, and is being implemented across the organization to realize the value potential and speed up growth. Key initiatives have been launched to implement the Philips Business System and step up resourcing for growth, granular strategy execution, value delivery to customers, and to adapt the culture and reward system. Initiatives include a EUR 800 million cost reduction program which is expected to be completed by the year 2014.

We believe that the following growth drivers:

Accessible Healthcare: driven by population growth, aging, and higher healthcare aspirations
Consumer focus on health and well-being: led by increased prosperity and changing lifestyles Energy-efficient lighting solutions: enabled by a massive shift from conventional to digital, dynamic lighting
Expanding growth geographies: growing in relative importance in the world economy
Sustainability: the fundamental need to reduce our environmental footprint, which will enhance the drive for energy efficiency will enable Philips to achieve its growth and profitability ambitions.

Our leading and focused portfolio is aligned to these global trends, as evidenced by:

Our Healthcare business, which is a world leader in many areas including cardiovascular X-ray, patient monitoring and home healthcare, which we see playing an increasingly important role in the years ahead. Equally, our Consumer Lifestyle business is built on a portfolio of leading businesses - including male shaving, oral healthcare, and mother and childcare. We are the world's largest Lighting company with a leading position in LED lighting solutions - the future of this industry. We will continue to leverage our brand, our rich technological heritage and our advanced insight into the needs of end-users to bring meaningful innovation to our customers.e’’ (Philips, 2010).

Diversity at Philips

What Philips says about diversity within the company on its website: ‘’At Philips, the term "diversity" symbolizes our recognition that our workplaces, marketplaces and communities are made up of individuals: men and women from different nations, cultures, ethnic groups, generations, backgrounds, skills, abilities and all the other unique characteristics that make each of us who we are. We can better understand our customers and better identify their needs when we have a diverse workforce that mirrors our worldwide customer base’’ (Philips, 2012).

Diversity at Philips doesn’t only mean diversity in cultures, it also means diversity in sexual orientation, religion, and gender for example. On the image below Philips has made it very clear what diversity actually holds into account and what is seen from the outside.

[pic] (Philips, 2012)

Inclusion

To point out the diversity that is promoted within the company, Philips is using the pillar ‘’Inclusion’’.
At Philips, Inclusion stands for, and symbolizes: ‘’ an environment where everyone can fully participate in creating business success, and where each person is valued for his or her distinctive talents (skills, experiences, perspectives, etc). An inclusive working environment engages people, enhances decision-making, and increases creativity and innovation in support of our vision and brand positioning’’ (Philips, 2012).

Vision

This diversity management comes with a vision and a mission of its own at Philips. The vision is; One Philips, Many different faces.

The mission is: ‘’ To embrace and contribute to an innovative culture by creating an inclusive working environment with a diverse workforce, and to help us build Diversity and Inclusion into a competitive advantage’’ (Philips, 2012). The mission stands for their aim to achieve this vision and mission by building awareness of the many cultures within the company and implementing ‘’inclusion’’ throughout Philips. They hope to achieve, by linking and integrating diversity and inclusion to all their existing key processes. A term that is used a lot within the diversity culture of Philips is ‘’inclusive leadership’’ (Philips, 2012).

Global I’s

(has to be put in own words)

Global I's is a major global network that links enthusiastic people who are willing to share the “One Philips” philosophy with different people from different nationalities and from different organizations either local or global.

Global I's organizes Social Activities, Lectures, Workshops, Excursions and Projects, the main aim of these event setup is to bring like-minded people who are positive about Philips and willing to share their ideas in an informal atmosphere where opportunities are given to learn about the business and values of the Philips community. This also offers the employees of Philip the opportunity to meet each other and learn from one another by exchanging experiences.

The main aim of this is to broaden everyone’s prospects, enjoy each other company through the experience of cultural and social activities and to enable free flow integration within the Philips community. It is also used as a means to facilitate the enhancement of networking.

WINergy

(has to be put in own words)

WINergy was founded in December 2004. Its mission is to create a balanced environment to enable the well-being and personal success of all women at Philips. The main reason it was set up is to raise awareness of women’s needs within Philips top management, available are support and mentor women in different member teams, and a network available to share information. One of the strong points of WINergy is all its members are linked trough an online community, so interaction can be done very easy, because of this WINergy today has more than 400 members worldwide.

Stakeholders

As it is impossible to point out all Philips’ stakeholders, please find a list of the top stakeholders below.

Employees
Worldwide Costumers consumer goods
Worldwide Costumers professional equipment
Shareholders
Shareholders on the stock markets worldwide
Factories worldwide producing products for Philips
Retail stores selling Philips products
Web stores selling Philips products

In-depth research before interview

The key characteristics of an in-depth interviewaccording to scientists at the University of Florida:

- Open-ended Questions. Questions need to be worded so that respondents expound on the topic, not just answer “yes” or “no.” Many open-ended questions begin with “why” or “how,” which gives respondents freedom to answer the questions using their own words.

- Semi-structured Format. Although it is important to pre-plan the key questions, the interview should also be conversational, with questions flowing from previous responses when possible. For example, if an interviewee remarks that “The elections are approaching,” an appropriate response would be, “How do you feel about the candidates involved?”

- Seek Understanding and Interpretation. It is important to use active listening skills to reflect upon what the speaker is saying. The interviewer should try to interpret what is being said and should seek clarity and understanding throughout the interview.

- Recording Responses. The responses are typically audio-recorded and complemented with written notes (i.e., field notes) by the interviewer. Written notes include observations of both verbal and non-verbal behaviors as they occur, and immediate personal reflections about the interview (University of Florida, 2009).

Interview

Please nick, I trust you here in answering these as ms van den berg would do lol

The diversity manager within Philips we found was Mrs. Yvonne van den Berg. There are several communication managers within Philips. I decided to look for a diversity manager as this is more in line with our minor. The diversity manager is mrs. Yvonne van den Berg. I found her on LinkedIn. Her position within the company is in the HR department.

1) Questions prepared to ask: Interview (key) questions

- How do you feel about working as a diversity manager in a multinational dealing with so many different cultures?

I find this very interesting, intriguing and also challenging, challenging in the sense that I have to be aware of the different cultures of my colleagues, but it’s a wonderful experience and am a person who is open minded and i can easily adapt into any situation.

- What would you say are the most positive aspects of dealing with these cultures?

There are quite a lot but the most important one is: learning, which can lead you to becoming a more refined and international person, because you can understand the different aspects from different cultures, you listen, observe and implement this as you work along.

- What are the most negative aspects of it?

I would say dealing with people who are not open to changes, or hard to understand because they are not willing to open up, they feel threatened because of your curiosity.

- Which cultures are you working with the most?

Asian cultures there is a massive difference working with them because, every Asian country is different from the other, also majority of European countries and a few African countries like Nigeria and South Africa.

- Are there, and if so which ones, are specific cultures that you have difficulties understanding as a diversity manager because of your own cultures’ dimensions for example?

The Asian culture has proven to be a very tricky one to understand a times, because they all have different aspects and at the beginning I made mistakes but with time you no longer see that as a difficulty just a learning process.

- Do you, and if so, how do you make use of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions when trying to build bridges between cultures within the company’s cultural backgrounds?

2) The goals that I’m trying to reach:

- Get to know what a diversity manager actually does

- To get a touch of how professional researchers’ work is being used on the job

- To find out whether this professional information is true in real life, and proven within this company

- To get a touch of how cultures of which dimension scores work better or worse together than with other cultures and why

Conclusion

Philips future holds promise for culture understanding and nurture. The Philips process of handling Cultures are not only able to create an environment, but they also adapt to diverse and changing circumstances. As organizations begin to experience a revolution in structures, the study of culture and the implications for change has become more important and from this research we can see that Philips has built a strong foundation in place to be able to handle these cultural barriers.

Philips Understanding of work group subcultures within their organization culture has influenced strategies for changing organizational culture and overcoming resistance to change programs.
Changing an organization’s culture may be extremely difficult, as the processes that support a particular organization or a departmental method of working are both interrelated and varied, but the programs set up by Philips helps the whole management system to integrate with ease.

Organizational culture is self-perpetuating and highly resistant to change. Changes may cause confusion, conflict and resistance, but we believe Philips have a good set up that would integrate with the work flow and integration into different culture a success for worker, they are open to culture adaptation and that is why they are a very successful international organization.

Sources

Philips. (2010). www.annualreport2010.philips.com. Retrieved 03 06, 2012, from Annuel report Philips 2010: http://www.annualreport2010.philips.com/content_ar-2010/our_company.asp?link_origin=global_en_ar2010_top

Philips. (2010). www.annualreport2010.philips.com. Retrieved 03 06, 2012, from Annual report Philips2010: http://www.annualreport2010.philips.com/content_ar-2010/vision_2015.asp?link_origin=global_en_ar2010_top

Philips. (2010). www.annualreport2010.philips.com. Retrieved 03 06, 2012, from Annual report Philips 2010: http://www.annualreport2010.philips.com/content_ar-2010/our_strategy_in_action.asp?link_origin=global_en_ar2010_left

Philips. (2012, 03 06). www.philips.co.uk. Retrieved 03 06, 2012, from Royal Philips Electronics: http://www.philips.co.uk/about/company/companyprofile.page

Philips. (2012, 03 21). www.philips.com. Retrieved 03 21, 2012, from Philips: http://www.philips.com/about/company/history/

Philips. (2012, 03 21). www.philips.com. Retrieved 03 21, 2012, from Philips: http://www.usa.philips.com/about/careers/working_at_philips/philips_today/diversity_inclusion.page

University of Florida. (2009). www.edis.ifas.ufl.edu. Retrieved 03 08, 2012, from University of Florida: http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/fy393

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|CCM ICM |Company Research - Philips |