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$$Gore & Associates: Informality and Innovation

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$$Gore & Associates is the inventor of path

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breaking new products such as breathable

GORE

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TEX fabrics, Glide dental floss, and Elixir guitar strings. Bill Gore, a former longtime

employee of chemical giant DuPont, founded the company with the vision to create an

organization

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devoted to innovation, a company where imagination and initiative would flourish,

where chronically curious engineers would be free to invent, invest, and succeed.

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$$When

founding the company in

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$$Gore articulated four core values that still guide the company

and its associates to this day:

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$$Fairness to each other and everyone with whom the firm does business.

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$$Freedom to encourage, help, and allow other associates to grow in knowledge, skill, and

scope of responsibility.

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$$The ability to make one

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s own commitments and keep them.

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$$Consultation with other associates before undertaking actions that could cause serious

damage to the reputation of the company

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blowing a hole below the waterline

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$)$

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$$Gore & Associates is organized in an informal and decentralized manner: It has no formal

job titles, job descriptions, chains of command, formal communication channels, written rules or

standard operating procedures. Face

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to

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face communication is preferred over e

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mail. There is

no organizational chart. In what is called a lattice or boundaryless organizational form, everyone

is empowered and encouraged to speak to anyone else in the organization. People who work at

Gore are called associates rather than employees, indicating professional expertise and status.

Gore associates organize themselves in project

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based teams that are led by sponsors, not

bosses. Associates invite other team members based on their expertise and interests in a more

or less ad hoc fashion. Peer control in these multidisciplinary teams further enhances associate

productivity. Group members evaluate each other

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s performance annually, and these

evaluations determine each associate

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s level of compensation. Moreover, all associates at W

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Gore are also shareholders of the company, and thus are part owners sharing in profits and

losses.

Gore

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s freewheeling and informal culture has been linked to greater employee satisfaction and

retention, higher personal initiative and creativity, and innovation at the firm level. Although W

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Gore

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s organizational structure may look like something you might find in a small, high

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tech

startup, the company has

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$$employees and over $

$3$

$$billion in revenues, making Gore one

of the largest privately held companies in the United States. W

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$$Gore is consistently ranked

in Fortune

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s

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$$Best Companies to Work For

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$$list$,$ and has been included in every edition of

that prestigious ranking

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Go to the firm

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s website

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www

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gore.com

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$$and review the company

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s product scope. What

commonalities across the products would likely be enhanced by flexible cross

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functional

teams? Next look in the

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about Gore

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$$section

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under the menu

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$$of the website. What

would be your expectations of the type of control and rewards systems found at W

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Gore?