Essay on General Motors Management Failure

GM is described as an organization with a dysfunctional company culture that somehow still manages to have amazing results in its work, on a global scale. The key attributes of GM, were primarily in the changes initiated by Mary Barra after the GM ignition switch recall crisis. Some of those attributes include her willingness to openly acknowledge the undesirable aspects of the GM culture and her efforts to take action towards a resolution. There are also several noticeable strengths and weaknesses within the organization. One of the biggest weaknesses is the company’s repeated inability to acknowledge that, lack of functional culture and leadership are truly the root cause of the company’s issues. Based on my reading I would describe the current behavioral organizational model as a Custodial Model. I chose this model because the managerial orientation is money, employee orientation is security and benefits and performance results are passive cooperation. All of these attributes were described in the reading.

Despite of these good things, Ford Motor faced a loss due to some wrong decisions taken by the management regarding their business strategy. The decision of centralizing the management made them think narrowly which results in too much Americanization and ignorance of local market in the rest of the world.

Management is the process of getting tasks done through the use of people. Through management decisions, our team will have one of the leading coffee shops within the BizCafe simulation. Within the management aspect of the company, we must first look at human capital, which are the skills, values, and overall output of an employee and the price at which these facets are worth. The managers of The Grind must delegate tasks through the serving staff of our company. The servers are the face of The Grind, meaning that it will be the servers who will interact to build strong customer relations with the guests of The Grind. However, there should be an efficient number of servers working on the clock at any given time throughout the day; The Grind should strive to always be properly staffed. If the shop is understaffed, customers will experience longer wait times, rushed customer interactions, and an overall subordinate experience; however, if the shop is overstaffed, each individual employee is most likely to give less production, and more importantly, our shop’s payroll will be out of proportion, meaning we will be spending too much money on labor. Wages also effect overall production from the employees. If we pay our servers too little, compared to the competition, we are likely to see less production, unhappy employees, and a large turnover rate. On the other hand, if we pay our servers too much, we risk blowing our weekly labor cap if our sales do not exceed the

General Motors (GM) was one of the premier automakers of the world. Firmly planted as the leader of the big three automakers, GM, Ford, and Chrysler, years of success grounded GM as an economic and cultural icon of American business. As the Japanese auto market grew and became more efficient, turning out improved vehicles that the public wanted, GM was becoming a lumbering behemoth of inefficiency and corporate gluttony. Many circumstances contribute to GM’s road to bankruptcy including high legacy costs in union owned contracts, largely poor design, inferior quality, and low productivity.

Throughout time, many books and papers have been written to study the birthplace of leadership failure, its causes, results, and ultimately, the best way to oversea these situations to avoid future failures. Some leadership experts, may argue that the best way to learn how to lead, is to study successful leadership outcomes and more importantly, how former miscalculations were committed and as a result, what gran plan was used that resulted in the leaders turnaround success. To be a great leader, the individual has to be cognate of what elements, including external and internal impact, resulted in their failure, as well as, how to avoid leadership oversight in the future. In this paper, I will attempt to do just that, as I will incorporate the transactional and transformational leadership theory from this course and apply them to the leadership failures of one of the most entertaining leadership failures of all time: the DeLorean Motor Company.

General Motors is faced with a dilemma. In the face of economic depression, competition from foreign players was driving down profits and the market’s preference was changing to efficient cars due to

General Motors was founded in September of 1908 by William Durant during a time that there were less than 8,000 in the United States. Durant was already known in Flint, Michigan for his horse drawn vehicles. “At its inception GM held only the Buick Motor Company, but in a matter of years would acquire more than 20 companies including Oldsmobile, Cadillac, and Oakland, today known as Pontiac.”(History & Heritage-Creation,” 2014) General Motors set the tone in the automobile industry with design, production and marketing. “With the philosophy and strategy of “a car for every purse and purpose,” and a series of landmark innovations that changed the automobile itself, GM’s vehicles went beyond transportation, becoming statements and

Sull, Donald N. "Why good companies go bad": This essay investigates on the reasons which could bring and do bring a company to failure, such as 1. Strategic frames become blinders. Managers need to recognise new options and opportunities ; 2. Processes harden routines. Always search for new, better and cheaper ways of providing goods and services ; 3.

Furthermore, HMC employed a compensation system that not only helped to attract and retain some of the most adept portfolio managers in the market, but also permitted to align the economic objectives of portfolio managers with those of the university. In other words, the structure and compensation system of HMC was designed specifically to achieve its objectives and to maintain the real long-term value of Harvard’s endowment

But I'm coming to believe that all of us are ghosts .... It's not just what we inherit from our mothers or fathers. It's also the shadows of dead ideas and opinions and convictions. They're no longer alive, but they grip us all the same, and hold on to us against our will.

General Motors is one of the world's most dominant automakers from 1931. After 1980s economic recession the main goal for automobile companies was cost reduction. Customers became more price-sensitive. Also Japanese competitors came into market with the new effective system of production. So market was highly competitive and directed toward price reduction. The case states that in 1991 GM suffered $ 4.5 billion losses and most part of the costs of manufacturing was due to purchased components. GM NA hired Lopez in order to find the way from "extraordinary" situation and reduce costs.

Profitability (performance) ratios are used to assess a company’s ability to create equity as compared to its debt and other appropriate expenses created during a particular time frame. A favorable analysis of profitability ratios will reveal that a company’s value is higher than a competitor’s value.

Throughout history there have been many successful companies as well as companies that have been a debacle. The success of the company has to do with the management and how it executes its strategy. If the management is ineffective, the company will most likely fail; however, if the company has good management it is more likely to prosper. There are many responsibilities that a manager must complete, chief among them are the four functions of management are planning, organizing, leading, and controlling (PowerPoint). In order for the company to be successful the management must fulfill all four functions. In some case not all four functions are met to expectation, with the results that the company to be not as successful as it could be if they

    Parma's environment was one of great uncertainty due to GM?s announcement and consequent actions involving plant closings as well as a decrease in employment levels at Parma. Although the location made over $700 million in sales, there were quality and customer satisfaction challenges to overcome. The success of the site was further complicated by pressures to improve costs, quality and productivity and additional pressure on management from the union to bring stamping work in-house that had previously been outsourced. Although an agreement with Parma's top management and UAW's Local 1005 had been made in the past that encouraged empowerment, problem solving, group dynamics and effective

This paper details each change undertaken by the organization by highlighting the different pressures identifying the problems the organization met and ultimately detailing the solutions that General Motors implemented.