Case: Patagonia\'s Culture Patagonia sells outdoors sports clothes and sporting
ID: 423158 • Letter: C
Question
Case: Patagonia's Culture Patagonia sells outdoors sports clothes and sporting emphasizes quality products and environmental equipment through specialty retailers, a catalog, awareness, and it gives employees the opportunity and stores in North America, Europe, Australia, and to grow and develop. This culture has attracted Japan. Patagonia is lnown for having a culture that employees who have causal tastes, a motivation and passion to learn, and an active lifestyle. All of are designed to keep employees learning but are not Patagonia's human resource management practices, necessarily related to employees' current jobs. These including training and development, support the courses include an introduction to French culture companys hires "dirtbags passionate outdoor people who beginning sewing. Patagonia also has an internship are customers. Patagonia believes that it is easier to program that allows employees to take time off from teach these people business than it is to turn a busi- work ness salesperson into someone with a passion for How do Patagonia s pracdices contribute to creat- the outdoors. s mission For example, tbe company business and communications, Japanese style, and ing a positive dimate for learning and transfer of Patagonia hires primanly from within its creat work force. Employee education is emphasized as much as product research and promotion Patagonia provides employees with a minimum of 45 hours of training per year. The wide range of classes offered training? Source: Based on J. Laabs, "Miing Business with Passion, Warkforce (March 2000): 80-87. Also, soe Patagonia's WebExplanation / Answer
Patagonia's practices enable learning and transfer of training to become effective efficient because of two reasons primarily - first, the company knows very well, which type of people it needs for its strategy execution. In other words, there is a favorable match between what the training recipients want from the company and what the company delivers in terms of training and growth prospects. This is primarily done by the hiring policy of the company which is mostly inward focused and search around the definite category of people with 'active lifestyle'. Second, the company's practices value the employees with care. For the company, the growth and training of the employees are key strategic aspects of its competitive strategy. And it seems from the case facts that the employees are also well aware of this fact. These two reasons are responsible for the said positive climate about training transfer and learning.