Leadership Theory, Organizational Culture, Insights and Conclusions
To establish and maintain a successful organization, a culture must established that supports a partnership within the workforce to achieve the overall strategy of the business. The quality of leadership of the organization is vital when creating and upholding this type of culture. (Arvinen-Muondo, 2013). The General Motors Group lacked the leadership to achieve the culture needed for overall success. The leadership did not create a culture of accountability, collaboration and open communication, which ultimately contributed to the GM crisis (Kuppler, 2014).
The leadership at GM was based on hierarchy, where the leadership has full command and delegation of the staffing. …show more content…
When the leadership style demonstrations a strong and unified behavior, the subordinates will follow and the culture will become apparent. This is necessary to establish and sustain a positive work environment. In the case study at GM, the leadership’s style lacked the values and behaviors that helped drive the GM culture into crisis. GM leadership should have made decision based on what is best for their culture, this clearly did not happen. When the engineers suggested the alterations needed for the ignition switch problems, the leaders denied it due to the expenditure. In addition, the leadership tried to cover the situation up minor adjustment to the torque (Jones, 2014). The behaviors within the organization effected all aspects, especially collaboration and accountability (Arvinen-Muondo, 2013). The internal leadership style effected the culture within GM by changing it into a culture that ignored problems and responsibility. In addition, the leadership style influenced the employees to accept the issues and “turn a blind eye” to the safety issues. For example, the employees were instructed to use certain terms when writing about the safety defects. As explained in the article, “In a 2008 Powerpoint presentation to employees, GM warned against the use of certain words when writing about issues relating to safety. For example, in place of the word, “defect” the phrase “does not perform to design” was suggested. Instead of “problem”, employees were to use “issue”, “condition” or “matter.” Employees were also given examples of phrases not to use, including “dangerous … almost caused an accident” and “this is a safety and security issue” (Jones, 2014). Sadly, this influenced the internal behaviors of GM to cover up the problems rather than collaborated to fix them (Kuppler,
To establish and maintain a successful organization, a culture must established that supports a partnership within the workforce to achieve the overall strategy of the business. The quality of leadership of the organization is vital when creating and upholding this type of culture. (Arvinen-Muondo, 2013). The General Motors Group lacked the leadership to achieve the culture needed for overall success. The leadership did not create a culture of accountability, collaboration and open communication, which ultimately contributed to the GM crisis (Kuppler, 2014).
The leadership at GM was based on hierarchy, where the leadership has full command and delegation of the staffing. …show more content…
When the leadership style demonstrations a strong and unified behavior, the subordinates will follow and the culture will become apparent. This is necessary to establish and sustain a positive work environment. In the case study at GM, the leadership’s style lacked the values and behaviors that helped drive the GM culture into crisis. GM leadership should have made decision based on what is best for their culture, this clearly did not happen. When the engineers suggested the alterations needed for the ignition switch problems, the leaders denied it due to the expenditure. In addition, the leadership tried to cover the situation up minor adjustment to the torque (Jones, 2014). The behaviors within the organization effected all aspects, especially collaboration and accountability (Arvinen-Muondo, 2013). The internal leadership style effected the culture within GM by changing it into a culture that ignored problems and responsibility. In addition, the leadership style influenced the employees to accept the issues and “turn a blind eye” to the safety issues. For example, the employees were instructed to use certain terms when writing about the safety defects. As explained in the article, “In a 2008 Powerpoint presentation to employees, GM warned against the use of certain words when writing about issues relating to safety. For example, in place of the word, “defect” the phrase “does not perform to design” was suggested. Instead of “problem”, employees were to use “issue”, “condition” or “matter.” Employees were also given examples of phrases not to use, including “dangerous … almost caused an accident” and “this is a safety and security issue” (Jones, 2014). Sadly, this influenced the internal behaviors of GM to cover up the problems rather than collaborated to fix them (Kuppler,