Taking a Brief Look at the Work of Carlos Ghosn

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.

Among other reasons, the GM culture has been described as a culture full of crisis in the study. The ignition switch issue in the study is articulated to the company’s culture; numerous parties touched the issue concerning the engineers, investigators, and lawyers. No one among these groups raised the problem to the highest level of the company to the point when it caused harm to the company’s name as well as employees lives, this justifies that the company had great culture crisis since good culture practices usually portray a good image to the company.

Toyota faced a challenge related to the poor visibility and low quality of a supplier for the Suprima model. The Japanese brand, being related to a top quality product and a Just in Time manufacturing scheme could not afford to have stock out problems nor not meeting consumers’ demand for quality.

Although, the Japanese business culture involves a more democratic and participative approach to the decision making process by seeking consensus based on who’s allowed at the table. There is a strong seniority system, stresses in rank, and the upper level management is tasked with looking after employees, which influence relationships dynamics. Moreover, the person with the highest status usually speaks first and has more influence. (Deresky, 2014) While in Mexico, the authoritative hierarchical decision making process where lower level employees are not involved and it would be seen as inappropriate. Moreover, the employees have confidence in the credibility of the manager and therefore their decisions. (Commisceo Global, 2017)

The Ivanovics, although not formally educated in managerial leadership, realized that with their multi-cultural team members an indirect management style would grow the production output and would raise the morale and motivation of the workers. When McRae’s team tried to change this dynamic, especially as soon as they entered the corporation, their method backfired and was resisted by all of the employees and confidence in the leadership continued to decrease in the firm.

Nissan Motor Company was the world’s 4th largest automobile manufacturer in 1990. They had 10% of the market for cars and trucks, with roughly 2 million passenger cars being produced each year. To increase its market share, Nissan implemented a plan to achieve domestic sales of 1.5 million cars by 1992. It also sought to obtain the number one rating in customer satisfaction. The company tried to develop a plan to produce a line of automobiles that matched consumer lifestyles. Nissan had a three stage process of introducing new models, the conceptual design stage, the product development stage, and the production stage, which typically took 10 years to complete.

· New car models and designs are being introduced each year. If Holden can focus on fulfilling; customer preferences, wants and needs with a variety of variable options.

Competition is good for producers but better for consumers, more competition in the market means more: ideas, channels of distribution, market stability and competitive (lower) prices for consumers. Ultimately, healthy competition forces producers to offer better products and services at lower prices. Automobiles provide people with “…aspirational value in addition to a basic mode of transportation…” (Reinhardt, Yao & Egawa, 2006) consumers make purchasing “decision based on the styling, color, and concept of the cars in addition to functions and pricing” (Reinhardt, Yao & Egawa, 2006). So far, TMC has been trying to catch up with Honda and Nissan in the ‘innovative’ department. Let’s not forget the criticism the company previously faced for offering its customers “…proliferation of look-alike cars…and following rather than setting a trend” (Reinhardt, Yao & Egawa, 2006).Since, Mr.

Nissan has more strengths than weaknesses which is great for any company . Some strengths include ; successful renault-Nissan alliance ,effective R&D spending resulting into the best-selling electric vehicle in the world, strong presence in the leading and emerging automotive markets , well-managed company’s operations. Some weaknesses are poor marketing and advertising capabilities resulting in poor brand awareness and , massive product recalls in the U.S. In 1999 Renault and Nissan have formed an alliance , this alliance allows both parties to engage in costly R&D activities, invest in the new global projects,negotiate better contracts, enter new markets ,share the design and manufacturing and procurement costs. R&D spending will allow Nissan to produce the best-selling cars. Growing presence in the emerging markets, will allow the company to strengthen its brand and competitive positions in these markets. The CEO of Nissan has been over the company since 1999. Nissan 's revenue has grown 8% annually .The company operating profit has grown by 26.4% and net income by 16% annually. This shows that the company is well organized and is managed very well. Nissan could improve it marketing and advertising capabilities . Nissan spends billions of dollars on advertising but does not gain any presence for the money spent. The U.S. is the largest Nissan’s

He is at great risk for violating Japan’s cultural norm, but things like this need to be done at one point or another within a company in order to succeed and be profitable. If he abandoned his plan to cut jobs, he would sacrifice his goal of reducing Nissan’s total costs by approximately $10 billion. If people like Carlos Ghosn do not stand up to the “cultural norms” of other countries, companies like Nissan would never improve. We are moving into a world where global business is big and there are plenty of countries now working together for one, single business, and all participating countries must learn to cooperate for the best of the business.

An example of diversity within the company, Nissan’s corporate officers are from a range of nationalities and have extensive experience in overseas operations. Nissan viewed the officer’s abilities to speak first-hand to the unique constraints and opportunities in varies markets a strength that is necessary in the management of a large global operation. Complementing this focus on flexibility, Nissan adopted a build-to-stock strategy for just a few products and a build-to-order strategy for the rest. Not only did this production strategy help it to simplify Nissan’s operations and product offerings, but it contributed to an increase in sales (Simchi-Levi, D., & Schmidt, W. (2013, August

The managers were also not trained properly and maintained a centralized management approach. An HMSI manager was quoted in the statement saying, “The Japanese do not understand the workers’ language.” Management failed to understand the ideas brought to them by workers, “could not understand the organizational working from the employees’ point of view.” It was said that the Japanese failed to give Indian managers enough power to solve problems. The Indian managers were production specialists, who had very little understanding of industrial relations issues.

Carlos Ghosn was credited for successful management of Japanese firm Nissan to a profitability which earned him a well known name called "TurnaroundArtist." Even though he was an outsider and lack a clear understanding of the traditional working methods of the Japanese firms, Carlos did a recommendable work which brought the company into sense of urgency in management. According to IBSCDC (2005) when Carlos was the CEO for the Nissan Company, he managed to reduce the firm's debts of about $19 billion to almost zero.

Along with other Japanese manufacturers, Nissan was successfully competing on quality, reliability and fuel efficiency. By 1991, Nissan was operating very profitably, producing four of the top ten cars in the world.Nissan management throughout the 1990s, however, had displayed a tendency to emphasize short term market share growth, rather than profitability or long-term strategic success. Nissan was very well known for its advanced engineering and technology, plant productivity, and quality management. During the previous decade, Nissan’s designs had not reflected customer opinion because they assumed that most customers preferred to buy good quality cars rather than stylish, innovative cars. Instead of reinvesting in new product designs as other competitors did, Nissan managers seemed content to continue to harvest the success of proven designs. They tended to put retained earnings into equity of other companies, often suppliers, and into real-estate investments, as part of the Japanese business custom of keiretsu investing. Through these equity stakes in other companies, Ghosn’s predecessors (and Japanese business leaders in general) believed that loyalty and cooperation were fostered between members of the value chain within their keiretsu.

When Ghosn entered into Japan many people did not have hope that a non- Japanese leader could really make a difference. Many people did not believe that he could efficiently overcome the Japanese culture and norms. It made Ghosn dig deep into the culture norms and he was able to understand the emotions more effectively. Ghosn knowing the culture and the emotions of the employee lead him to be a successful leader within the company.