Culture
Introduction
New Balance Athletic Shoe Inc. was founded in 1906 by thirty-three year-old William J. Riley. The name of the company at time was New Balance Arch Company. His first products were arch supports and orthopedic shoes to relieve pain for workers who spent all day on their feet. His design was superior to anything else on the market. His first running shoe was designed nineteen years later for the Boston running club, known as the Boston Brown Bag Harriers. The shoe was a success and by 1941 New Balance was in the business of creating custom-made shoes for running, baseball, basketball, tennis and boxing.
In 1956 Paul Kidd bought the business and in 1960 New Balance started in a new direction by introduction the Trackster. The Trackster was the first running shoe they offered in multiple widths; this became a standard in future shoe offerings. In 1972 the current owner James S Davis purchased the company which at that time had six people making thirty pairs of Trackster running shoes each day. Another early development that continues today is the use of a numbering system for different shoe models. Model numbers are advanced to incorporate new technologies and designs. Retrieved on December 02, 2008 from www.newbalance.com.
Company Culture
Every organization develops a core set of assumptions, understandings and, implicit rules that govern day-to-day behavior in the workplace. These concepts placed together are generally known as organizational culture, or more popularly "corporate culture," because they often refer to the internal environment of major corporations. Corporate culture by definition is a "system of shared values, assumptions, beliefs, and norms that unite the members of an organization" (Bartol 91). Corporate culture aligns employee behavior, develops organizational commitment, and provides social workplace guidelines. Culture should be a "system of shared meaning," and composed of the "key characteristics that the organization...
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