Dynamic capabilities at IBM

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Chapter 3.3: Cultural change:
In order to be successful a company doesn't only need to have the right strategy but also the corporate culture that matches with the company's strategy. Otherwise the culture would hinder the company's strategy. Former CEO of IBM Louis V. Gerstner, Jr. stated that IBM al-ready had the right strategies; the question though was if the existing culture supports these strategies. As the example of one division that had been competing on technical excellence in stable markets and announced a new growth initiative that placed a premium on initiative and risk taking only to find out that the dominant culture was highly risk averse and thus required a significant shift in the culture of that unit shows, this was not the case within IBM. What IBM needed concerning Gerstner was a cultural change that allowed them to reconfigure themselves and to reallocate resources that they could execute their strategies.
Changing a culture within a company however is not easy. Usually organizations and people are not open for change and willing to do so, especially when it affects them directly. Often it is hard for people to understand why the culture they feel good and comfortable in should be changed, especially when they also had success with it. And even if they know that it must change it might be difficult for them to do it. Thus transformation begins with a sense of crisis or urgency, as Gerstner says. "No institution will go through fundamental change unless it believes it is in deep trouble and needs to do something different to survive." And this is what Gerstner started to do within IBM when he arrived. What helped him in doing this was that he was an outsider and had no emotional attachment yet. The main change in the corporate culture was that teamwork counts more. Before Gerstner's arrival different divisions competed against each other and the entire company was more preoccupied with itself than with its customers. The change

Axel Jörn, B. Eng., was born in 1982 in Güstrow. After his apprenticeship to a "System Mechanic" in a small handcraft firm he became further qualified to a "State Certified Technical Engineer - Machine Construction". From 2006 to 2015 he made practical engineering and project management experience in the aviation industry at Airbus in Hamburg. From 2009 to 2013 he studied beside his full time job to become a "Bachelor of Engineering -Mechatronic-" and he made his "Project Management Professional (PMP)" certification at the Project Management Institute (PMI) in 2014. From 2014 to 2016 Jörn got through a "Master of Business Administration (MBA) Program" at the FOM Hochschule für Ökonomie & Management in Hamburg. In the year 2015 he changed from Airbus to Siemens and became project manager for the building automatisation in the wind energy sector.