Mary Barra and GM: Organisational Behavior and Leadership Analysis

This essay examines Mary Barra's leadership and its impact on General Motors' organisational behaviour and culture. It highlights her transformational leadership qualities, such as inspirational motivation and intellectual stimulation, as she guides GM towards innovation and competition with technology-based firms. The analysis emphasizes Barra's focus on fostering an innovative environment, challenging conventional thinking, and modifying executive behaviour to drive cultural change within the organisation. The essay references specific examples from the provided text to support its claims, showcasing Barra's approach to leadership and her efforts to rid General Motors of its toxic culture.

Running Head: MANAGEMENT 0
Organisational behaviour

MANAGEMENT 1
1) The chapter covering Mary Barra and GM offer little in the way of assessable
progress in parallel with their technology-based rivals, it does give some insights into
the growing organisation culture and leadership at General Motors. Business firms
like Google and Tesla have already initiated working upon driverless cars but it seems
like General Motors is trying to do partnership with Lyft, a technology-based firm so
as to introduce their product. Especially, Barra is trying to foster an innovative
environment that supports creative ideas and out-of-the-box thinking so that to
outduel tech firms to compete in this explicit market.
2) Transformation leader is someone who inspires individuals to be a part of shared goal
that provides some significance to the work and where issues can be looked upon
from various perspectives (Gumusluoglu & Ilsev, 2009). Barra possesses many
attributes of a transformational leader as she employs inspirational motivation by
emphasizing a common vision for the future of General Motors with the help of
“GM2020”. She approaches individualized consideration and also tackle intellectual
stimulation by having her staff challenge one another when things do not come upon a
final conclusion stating, “If somebody (at General Motors) says you can't have
something, you can't do something, or it's going to take this much time, and it doesn't
make sense to you, challenge them. I want you to take the energy and speed and how
you look at doing things and drive it into the core of GM” (Colquitt, LePine &
Wesson, 2018).
3) Barra knows positively how to control her ego and this is also considered as her
success strength. It was necessary for her to rid General Motors of the toxic
organisation wide culture that inundated it for long time leading up to its government
bailout. Barra surely follows a top-down approach and emphasizes more on
interpersonal skills as she believes that it is necessary to foster change. As per view by
HR Chief, “Mary focuses on to modify the behaviour of top executives, individual
will automatically examine and imitate them” (Colquitt, LePine & Wesson, 2018).

MANAGEMENT 2
References
Colquitt, J. A., LePine, J. A., & Wesson, M. J. (2018). Organizational Behavior: Improving
Performance and Commitment in the Workplace (6th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill
Education.
Gumusluoglu, L., & Ilsev, A. (2009). Transformational leadership, creativity, and
organizational innovation. Journal of business research, 62(4), 461-473.