Back on track! Successful management techniques to get a company out of debt pile

The present work is analysing the successful turnaround of the Japanese car manufacturer Nissan in 1999 to 2001. Very often transformational change fails due to different factors, in most cases though due to the insufficient employee’s motivation or due to cultural problems when two international partners try to gain the competitive advantage through merger or alliance. To analyse the successful turnaround of Nissan after its alliance with Renault, a ‘new’ model for conducting organizational change was introduced. The provided framework unites both actions and attitudes, necessary for motivating employees and establishing new structural and cultural patterns. The example of Nissan proved that clear analysis of the present situation, cross -border communication during the whole transformational process, the sense of urgency established from the very beginning and total commitment of top management and employees are the vital factors that define the success of transformational intention.



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Chapter 1, Objectives:

In times of globalisation, more and more enterprises try to strengthen their market position through acquisition or alliance with new partners, so that the problem of uniting two companies and establishing a globally effective organisation gets on weight. Statistics on transformational change is not very positive though, only around 30 percent is reported to be successful. Nevertheless, some positive examples of the past and present show that transformational change indeed can succeed - if done correctly. What are the factors that define whether a change will succeed or fail? The main objective of this study will be to analyse the success criteria of transformational change and the leader’s role in it on example of a Japanese car maker. Nissan’s turnaround in 1999 was initially criticised by industry insiders, but two years after the beginning of the transformation it was widely discussed in the international media and claimed as ‘sensational” because of its prompt and astonishing results. One man behind this change was Carlos Ghosn, who had a double function at that time as COO, both of Nissan and Renault, and could bring the heavy in-debt Japanese car maker into the black again.

1.1, Structure and methodology

The focus of the work is predominantly on leadership and on change management. At first, leadership styles and roles will be presented, followed by the reasons for strategic change as well as different types of change such as individual, team, organisational change and transformation of organisational culture. After the introduction of known models on organisational and cultural transformation, a ‘new’ model of organisational transformation will be worked out to provide the framework for analyzing Nissan’s successful turnaround. The model can be adopted for analysis of transformational changes in general or for planning one.

In the practical part, the turnaround of Nissan will be analysed according to the ‘new” model and Carlos Ghosn leadership as well as reasons for his success will be examined.

1.2, Research

There is plenty of literature on research of leadership and change management. One type of literature provides the overview of theories and research results, the next one deals with case studies and is aimed at developing leadership skills, the third type of literature on leadership unites both features. The following overview illustrates the most important works on leadership and change management.

The ‘gurus’ of leadership such as Bernard Bass provided theoretical models on leadership as well as new insights from cognitive social psychology, communication, political and social studies. John Kotter, known for his eight steps change management process, gave valuable information on leading change from the experience he gathered in long years of consulting. Andrew DuBrin, along with descriptions of leadership styles and behaviours, offered leadership skills development techniques as he believes that leadership can be trained. John Maxwell gathered practical experience of leading different churches as a pastor and wrote more than 60 books on leadership, mainly dealing with improving leadership qualities. Esther Green and Mike Cameron provided a detailed and deep overview of change management models as well as leadership approaches and came up with their own comparative analysis of examined models. After years of research on organisational behaviour Stephen Robbins showed how to approach organisational transformation from the individual, group and organisational point of view and gave a solid theoretical basis on understanding organisational behaviour. Posner and Kouzes conducted hundreds of interviews with business and non profit organisations leaders and provided a view on leadership as a critical aspect of human organisation, answering the question what leaders shall do in order that they are followed.



Olga Bieck, MBA, was born in 1977 in Minsk, Belarus. After studying foreign languages and economy at the State Linguistic University in her home country, she moved to Germany in 2001. She graduated the Marburg University in 2007 with a Master's degree in Media and English Literature. After that she worked for a local newspaper Mannheimer Morgen as well as in international market research where she could learn the industrial global players. While working in international marketing the started her third degree: Master of Business Administration at the ESB Business School. Due to her multi lingual background and working experience in international marketing she put her focus on international management techniques and leadership. She was fascinated by the fact that some managers get hopeless companies out of debt pile in a very short period of time whereas the others manage to ruin one hundred years proved business even sooner. What is important for creating successful frame for running international business and which qualities and competences are necessary for a leader to guarantee long lasting company’s growth was demonstrated by her on example of the famous Japanese car maker Nissan.