AMBIGUITY EMBRACED:
Hewlett Packard

The one-car garage in Palo Alto where Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard began the company that bears their names is now a California historic landmark: the birthplace of Silicon valley.

Hewlett-Packard has produced thousands of innovative products for millions of people around the world.  The secret of the success of the company is what the founders call the HP Way: a focus on innovation and individual creativity.  Management is constantly adapting the organization to the changing environment and new products the company specializes in.

Hewlett-Packard is an example of a company in which ambiguity is embraced. Management has made a commitment to make an adaptable organization the ultimate creation.
 

AMBIGUITY A PROBLEM:
Xerox

Xerox was founded in 1906 as the Haloid Company. The firm specialized in the manufacturing of photocopying and photographic papers.

In 1937, Chester F Carlson invented a new process of making copies without the need for developing.  In the years after World War II, the Haloid Company worked with Carlson to create a workable process,  The process, called xerography, was ready for market in 1959, and two years later the firm changed its name to Xerox Corporation.

In 1970, Xerox Corporation founded the Palo Alto Research Center in the Stanford University Industrial Park. PARC was charged upon its founding to be the "architect of the information age."  Since then PARC researchers have developed significant innovations such as laser printers, graphical user interfaces, object-oriented programming languages, and Ethernet local area networks.  However, since Xerox does not have a corporate culture which embraces change, most of these advances have been marketed by other firms.

Xerox is an example of a company in which ambiguity is a problem. some planning and adaptation preparedness is conducted, but adaptation is not embraced by the corporation.
 

AMBIGUITY NOT ALLOWED:
IBM

In 1914, a young salesman named Tom Watson was named president of Computing-Tabulating-Recording Corporation. Ten years later, he re-named the company International Business Machines Corp.

Tom Watson, and his son Tom Jr. ran IBM for almost 60 years.  During that time, IBM became known for it's rigidly defined culture and cold efficiency.  At the center of this culture was the "contention system".  Any manager had the right to "non-concur" with a decision at his level.  This "non-concurrence" would cause the decision to be bumped up the corporate hierarchy for further debate and resolution.

IBM was able to operate profitably with this culture as long as the firm enjoyed a near-monopoly in the computer market.   However, the development of mini computers and personal computers in the 1980's forced the company to near bankruptcy in 1993.

IBM is an example of a company in which ambiguity was not allowed.  Rigid dress code, standardization of regulations, specialization of tasks and the creation of an internally-used "command language" are all symptoms of a company which is very machine-like in its organization.