Question

1. To what extent do other leadership theories help to explain Ghosn's success (e.g., transformational, charismatic, servant leadership, etc.)?

Answer 1

Carlos Ghosn is now in the news for financial wrongdoing. However, in the late 90s and early 2000s he was considered a star who turned around a dying Nissan.

One of the key factor for his success was to be ruthless and venture into a culture and make decision which was considered against the general practices in Japan. The company, Nissan, had a bloated workforce and over $30 billion in debt. The company provided lifetime employment to the workers and this made their labor cost extremely high. However Ghosn was not going to take any of this.

He came into a Japanese culture and at the heart of it, implemented the American ruthless business policies. He changed the design practices and made the products more modern, he laid off the redundant workforce, closed factories that were not profitable and cut ties with suppliers who were not being competitive in the market. By doing this, Nissan soon became the second most popular and (annually) successful company in Japan.

From this work we can see that Ghosn has been ruthless and made necessary changes to the overall company, their culture and their way of working. Thus the leadership style of Ghosn can be considered to be transformational.