IBM examined its Core Values last year for the first time since the company was founded in 1911. It brought together '319,000 IBMers from around the world to engage in an open "values jam"'discussion to let costumers decide IBM's value and promises to the client. In the end the IBMers decided that IBMs actions would be defined by three values :
- Dedication to every client's success
- Innovation that matters, for our company and for the world
- Trust and personal responsibility in all relationships
A merger of three 19th-century companies; the Tabulating Machine Company, the International Time Recording Company and the Computing Scale Company of America all became the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR) on June 16, 1911. CTR was just the beginning of what later would become IBM. In 1914 Thomas J. Watson Sr. joined CTR and over the next twenty years transformed CTR into a growing leader of innovation and technology and a prototype for the newly emergent multinational corporation. This shift is signaled in 1924, when the company’s name changes to International Business Machines Corporation (IBM).
From the beginning, IBM defines itself not by the market which range from commercial scales to punch card tabulators—but by forward-thinking culture and management practices grounded in core values. By believing in its vision and values throughout the Depression IBM was able to provide employment, even add engineers and other staff in order to sustain its production output.
