ODC Assignment

Group-7
Morning Star Company: Self-Management at work

Q.1) What is the design philosophy of Morning Star?

Morning Star is based on the design philosophy of self-management. It is supported by various practices that the
company follows, the company sought to create an environment where employees will be self-managing professionals
initiating communications and coordination of their activities with fellow colleagues, customers, suppliers, and fellow
industry participants, absent directives from others. The practices that the company follow further ensure better
implementation of this philosophy:
A. All interactions in the company are completely voluntary, with no hierarchy in the organizations. All employees
enter as colleagues with equal rights and no work can be forced upon by anyone. However, once a colleague
makes a commitment, it essentially must be honored and thus each colleague is accountable for the work they
take.
B. Self-management requires each individual to have a clear goal to work towards and is self-defined by the
individual as his mission in the organization, this greatly motivates the employee and makes him feel like they are
a part of a bigger activity.
C. Morning Star has an infrastructure in place to ensure everyone can easily find out who is responsible for what. On
their intranet they include an essential document for their self-managing organization called Colleague Letter of
Understanding (CLOU). It’s a short document that details an employees' personal mission and all the
commitments they have made with employees who are affected by their work. As a colleague, it makes it easy to
understand what tasks are expected of which person.
D. Whenever a conflict, disagreement or problem arises, employees have to solve it themselves, Morning Star also
has a predefined way of resolving conflicts.
E. This whole system of self-management works on the principle of ownership of one's work with various analogies
in the case where in this design is compared to that of a family’s operations wherein incase a problem arises it is
resolved immediately without expectations from others to do so.

Q.2) How are the system, process and culture aligned with each other to achieve the goal?
The systems, processes and culture of an organization that believes in self-management are quite different when
compared to that of a traditional organization. Since self-management relates to the ability to take an initiative of
doing work without always being told what to do, how to do and when to do the various tasks.
These organizations are designed in a manner that gives flexibility and freedom to the employees working there. The
people choose the tasks that they want to do and they are responsible for the end-to-end execution while coordinating
with the various stakeholders.
Considering the case of “The Morning Star Company”, an organization that believed in self-management, the systems
and processes were such that every employee was a manager. They defined their own mission and identified their
responsibilities and held themselves accountable.
In addition to this, any conflict was always tried to resolve via mutual understanding. The compensation system was
based on the value created by the employees and also leveraged peer connections amongst colleagues.
The systems and processes were such that the employees had the liberty to acquire resources or hire new people as per
their discretion, if additional resources were required to complete the tasks.
Many employees had also completed courses related to “negotiation with suppliers” and “financial analysis” etc.
which enhanced the decision-making capabilities of the employees.
About the culture at Morning Star, it was associated with positive relationships, mutual understanding, freedom,
effective coordination and more focus on motivation. Also, there are no specific roles defined for the employees
working in the organization which again gives them freedom to choose what they want to do.

Hence, systems, processes and culture for a self-management organization is such that everyone is equal and it gives
everyone a sense of responsibility.