The Global Leadership of Carlos Ghosn at Nissan

Carlos Ghosn, the first non-Japanese COO of Nissan, faced cultural obstacles when he took over the company during a bad period. He utilized his management philosophies to introduce transparency, cross-functional teams, and a focus on new automobiles and markets, brand image improvement, R&D investment, and cost reduction. He launched the Nissan Revival Plan, which closed five factories and reduced 21,000 jobs, leading to a 20% reduction in purchasing costs. The article also discusses dimensions of national culture and leadership theories.

3 short brief

THE GLOBAL LEADERSHIP OF CARLOS GHOSN AT NISSAN
Nissan as an organization was suffering from a bad period during the late 1990s, during
which Carlos Ghosn was given the responsibility of the company as the first non-Japanese Chief
Operating Officer of Nissan. Carlos Ghosn is a Brazilian-born Lebanese businessman who held
French nationality. He after undertaking the responsibility at Nissan made it very profitable and
one of the top 10 automobile company in the world. Nissan as a company was established in
Japan as the name of Jidosha-Seizo Kabushiki-Kaisha during 1933 (Bird, 2019). Then shortly
after that the name Nissan was adopted by the company in 1934.
After Ghosn took over Nissan he had to face national culture issue as there were doubts
regarding how a non-Japanese COO would be able to manage the Japanese cultural obstacles.
These issues included general barriers of difference in culture and consensus decision making
and its relationship to career advancement. In Japan the conscientiousness and cooperation were
said to be the key elements towards maintaining operational efficiency and group harmony. It
often resulted in delay in decision making process and other efforts towards achieving consensus.
According to the Japanese professionals they should avoid making any mistake at all costs for
protecting their career growth. Apart from this he faces certain corporate culture issues which
were lack of clear profit orientation, insufficient focus on customers, lack of vision and poor
cross functional management at Nissan.
In order to overcome these challenges Ghosn utilized some of his philosophies towards
management such as having transparency. According to which followers are said to believe in
leader when they have transparency. Ghosn believed in 95% execution and 5% strategy which
was considered to be directly measurable for improving quality, costs and customer satisfaction.
Communication of the company was towards setting up of direction and priorities that get in the
way of effort. Ghosn introduced Cross functionality at Nissan which changed a lot at a Japanese
cultured organization. Cross functional teams (CFT) were his powerful tool towards turning
Nissan around. With the help of CFT it took just six months within which a sense of urgency was
increased in the different departments. The main focused areas of development for Ghosn were,
development of new automobiles and markets, improvement of the brand image of Nissan,
investing into the research and development and reduction of costs.
It was called the NRP (Nissan Revival Plan) for which Ghosn closed five factors and
brought a reduction of 21000 jobs. As the Japanese culture tended to have lifelong employment
in their culture, so Ghosn received a lot of criticism (Alam, 2021). NRP also broke other
Japanese cultural norm of keiretsu investment however, it maintained a customer supplier
relation with keiretsu partners. It helped the business reduce its costs after selling keiretsu
investments. NRP was able to achieve a success of 20% reduction in the purchasing costs. After
the Launch of Nissan 180 the number of car models which made the company profit increased
from 4 to 18 out of 36.

DIMENSIONS OF NATIONAL CULTURE
The dimensions of national culture have been defined by many authors with the focus of
understanding the nature of the group. Hall explained the culture in 1976 that explained he
degree of focus on the individuals and groups. Trompennars was the one that classified the
organizational culture with egalitarian-hierarchical degree and the person task orientation.
Hofstede was the one that benchmarked the culture through the help of five major dimensions.
The dimensions of the culture also included the Globe research program that helped in finding
the relationship between the culture and leadership through nine different dimensions.
The nine cultural dimensions were explained as the assertiveness that helped in the
determination of the assertive and confrontational and aggressive in their social relations. Its
future orientations were said to have engagement with people that influenced the future
orientation of the behaviour that helped in the planning investing and in the future of delaying
gratification. Gender Egaltarianism was the degree of the organization and society that was able
to minimize the gender and their role differences that promoted the gender equality (Gardašević,
Ćirić and Stanisavljević, 2021). The human Orientation was said to be the degree of the culture
that encouraged the rewards and people towards bring of fair practices towards others. In-Group
collectivism is the degree that helped in expressing the people, pride, loyalty and cohesiveness
towards the organization. Institutional collectivism was the factor that encouraged the
institutional and societal collective action. Performance orientation explained the extent to which
the organization or society encouraged and rewarded the group members for the improvement of
society and encouraging the rewards for group members. Power distance showed the degree to
which the members of the group expect and agree that the power should be shared. Uncertainty
avoidance was the cultural dimension that explained the extent to which the society relies on the
established social norms.
Clusters of the world cluster is the unique regional that is a group of countries or location
that share a same culture. There has been 10 identified cultural cluster in the world. The
characteristics of these culture differ from each other. From this different cultures there has been
identification of six different leadership behaviour such as, Value based leadership, team
oriented leadership. Participative leadership, humane-oriented leadership, Autonomous
leadership and Self-protective leadership. From the global research on leadership some desirable
and some obvious leadership attributes have been identified. There are different views on
leadership in different culture. Global research provides a more expansive system of culture
classification than Hofstede. It helps in finding the things which are universally accepted in
different culture and complexity of the leadership and other processes. Some critics were also
given to the global research that it is vague and difficult for the interpretation of the fully
comprehended research. These dimensions are said to have often contradictory and
unmeasurable qualities. It also has ignored the influences of the situational effects from external
factors. The application of this model has been said to understand the cultural biases and help the
leaders finding new style to adapt to situations.

LEADERSHIP THEORIES
The great man theory is the great man theory this used to study about the history that is
largely explained by the impact of great man and heroes. As there are some people who born
with some different attributes and thus this set them as the part of others. So it is very necessary
to have better power and assumptions to have better authority.
Trait theory of leadership is the theory used to suggest that there are different inborn
qualities and characteristics which makes the person to become a leader. This basically includes
the personality factors, intelligence factors and so on.
Skills theory of leadership is the theory used to define that the effectiveness of becoming
the leadership used to depend on the set of skills rather than having the personality traits. The
performance of the leaders is measured by knowing about their skills except their traits. This
used to evaluate about the success of leader that is on the different basis as how they accomplish
the things.
Style Theory of leadership is the theory defines that the leaders are not born successful
they develop and create themselves by having the learning behaviour (Gumus and et.al., 2018). It
used to depend on the style and actions of the leaders as how they are performing in the market.
Situational leadership theory is a theory with most effective leaders as they used to adapt
themselves in that situation and perform the different tasks that helps them to grow in the market.
Contingency theory is the contingency theory makes to know about the effectiveness of
the leaders is contingent and how does it matches with the lifestyle in the specific situation. If the
leaders in the market have achievements than it makes the team to do perfect work.
Transactional leadership is also known as managerial leadership as this used to focus on
the results and have the existing structure of the organization which helps them to get better
rewards. These types of leaders used to have the formal authority and sets the different positions
in the company. They usually focus on the short term goals and do the things correctly by
making better teams.
Transformational leadership is the leadership approach which used to know about the
cause of change in the people and in the society. The main focus of this style is to support each
other in the company and consider company as a whole.
Leader member exchange theory is theory used to suggest that the leaders and followers
used to have and develop the unique level of relationship that is basically based on the social
exchange in the market. This used to create the better trust and make their team never let down.
Servant leadership theory is a theory the leaders used to put the better emphasis on the
team members so by this they can have better thinking and become autonomous. This used to
provide equality in the company and have better production as well.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Alam, C. M., 2021. Financial Irregularities at Nissan: An Empirical Analysis of Corporate
Governance in Japan. Journal of Law and Political Science. Vol. XLVIII No. 3. p.4.
Bird, A., 2019. The limits of global leadership: commentary on revisiting Carlos Ghosn’s global
leadership style. In Advances in global leadership. Emerald Publishing Limited.
Gardašević, J., Ćirić, M. and Stanisavljević, I., 2021. The relations between contemporary
leadership styles and the dimensions of national culture in modern business
environment. Ekonomika. 67(1). pp.77-89.
Gumus, S. and et.al., 2018. A systematic review of studies on leadership models in educational
research from 1980 to 2014. Educational Management Administration &
Leadership. 46(1). pp.25-48.
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