Whirlpool has always had a solid talented workforce with a diverse field of skill sets, they preach individual ownership in all processes, but at the same time, They are over managed by people who know more about policy rather than process, most managers have not physically done the jobs they supervise, a solid company manages from the ground up utilizing the skills of its workforce, the top down management mentality leads to division and conflict and poor performance at the bottom of the chain, costing wasted money, overall, its not really a management problem, its more a vision problem, its a failure to recognize what has made you successful in the past and utilizing that knowledge moving forward into the future to build on it, and it has always started from the ground up, not from top down so in a sense, Whirlpool's management practices has painted its workforce into a corner, we could be knocking the socks off our competition easily if employees had true ownership of the processes rather than an overall company vision that looks good on paper but doesn't bring a sense of accomplishment to the individual employee doing the job day in day out.
Whirlpool has one of the greatest workforce's I've ever seen, it's management style and vision changes too often to adjust for every threat, Keep it simple, Make your employees your vision and empower the little guy to strengthen his role, reduce the amount of task masters, keep it simple.