OL 342 Final Project

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Jun 11, 2024

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Introductions: Organization According to the case study, there is a culture issue with GM that shows a love of ownership spirit that has caused a history of failures. GM’s personal inability and a lack of urgency to address ignition switch problems that have been occurring for more than 11 years has led to the removal of 15 employees. The key attributes of GM’s culture are the reluctance to raise concerns or issues, avoiding responsibility which was stated when “crossing of arms and pointing towards others, indicating that the responsibility belongs to someone else, not me” (Kuppler, 2014) was said. Also, the empty gestures of agreeing to proposed plans of action without following through, lack of ownership and urgency and being more cost conscious than focused on making these issues right for the safety of customers. The strengths and weaknesses of GM are the ability to make decisions, lack of urgency when it comes to addressing issues, lack of follow-up, a bad company culture and a lack of ownership spirit. Organizational Modeling: Current Organizational Model A current behavioral organizational model used in this case study is the autocratic model. This model has this company believing that “employees need to be instructed and motivated to perform while managers do all the thinking” (Shethna, 2021). Basically, owners and managers have all the power to change and make choices while employees are supposed to fulfill these choices without an opinion on them. This behavioral model can be seen by the way employees at GM failed to take any responsibility for the ignition switch issues and make any attempt to fix the issue. This is because the model causes a psychological feeling of being dependent on the management team by the employees. Thankfully, Mary Barra finally stepped in because it was time for a change in the GM world.

Organizational Modeling: Other Models GM may use the autocratic behavioral model but there are other organizations within the same industry that use custodial, collegial, supportive, and system models. For example, Ford utilizes the positive reinforcement technique that allows for encouragement for their employees (Grant, 2014). Nissan is another company that utilizes the custodial model because their employees are allowed and pushed to contribute ideas and opportunities for the company. Organizational Modeling: Differences Different organizations within this field of business utilize different behavioral models because of the differences in their goals, missions, values, culture, and even managerial style. Companies where leaders are power hungry and obsess over obedience will usually utilize the autocratic model while other companies that push for team spirit and working together will utilize the supportive and collegial models. These two models are based on motivation, positive work environments, and ensuring a team/partnership amongst the employees and managerial staff. Organizational Modeling: Culture Years ago, organizations like GM came to use autocratic models because it worked in the past. But as times have continued to change within the business world with trends, technological advancements, and the need for diversity and inclusion, newer models have needed to be adopted. These other models are geared more towards achieving organizational goals as a team and ensuring that employees are happy and satisfied with their work environment. Organizational Modeling: Unique

GM is different from Nissan and Ford as they do not create a positive work environment for its employees. They do not focus on team spirit and diversity by not paying attention to contributions made by the employees. This leads to a lack of ownership spirit and employees staying quiet because they need a paycheck to survive. Organizational Modeling: Motivational Models Behavioral models will continue to shift as motivational models also continue to shift. These models shift in response to employees voicing their needs and wants. There has been a shift in the organizational models from the autocratic model that was highlighted in this cases study. Therefore, a shift in the motivational models also occurred due to emerging trends and technological advancements occurring in this line of work. A shift between these models happens because the motivational model requires motivation to determine the behavior of the employees and managerial team. These behaviors are tied to what motivates them to work harder and behave in a way that will help the company and themselves. Evaluate Leadership Theory: Leadership Style The first leadership style that was used was autocratic leadership. This type of leadership style is where employees basically do as they are told with no questions asked. The decisions are strictly made by management and are carried out by the employees who do not speak up or do anything to go against the orders. This can cause employees to lose motivation and faith in their leadership. Throughout the culture recommendations portion, the leadership style changed to a more custodial type of leadership. This is where employees are recognized for stepping up and speaking their mind without any fear of retaliation. These employees kept saying they wanted change but would continue to pass along blame, keep their thoughts to themselves and let the

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problems continue. I also noticed some collegial leadership where the employees would work together as a team and hold each other accountable in order to continue to grow in the right direction. Evaluate Leadership Theory: Characteristics and Decisions The characteristics and decisions made by management in this case were basically just passing along everything until it gets done. Work would get passed onto somebody else who wouldn’t question it and would get the job done. It’s hard to believe and understand that management either knew about this and did nothing or didn’t know about it at all when it comes to the faulty switch. This type of leadership isn’t leadership at all. Nobody is held accountable for their actions and managers abuse employees. From the start of this study, I noticed a “not my monkey, not my circus” type of attitude when it is actually your monkey that you’re making do your work. This was the main reason that the faulty switch issue became an issue and continued to be an issue in the first place. Evaluate Leadership Theory: Internal and External Influences Over the course of 11 years that the faulty switch issue was occurring, not a single person thought it was right to come forward or speak up when they did notice that something was not quite right. The influences that did finally cause the leadership to move was change. I do believe that if employees had felt important or valued and did not have to live in fear of losing their jobs, this issue would not have lasted as long as it did. So many lives could have been saved if this were the case. Unfortunately, employees just kept trucking along and working as if another day a life was lost because their company was just another normal day. These employees became too comfortable in this way of employment and that, sadly, cost people their lives.

While I was doing some research on this, I could not find any proof that GM would put their employees through any sort of annual training or testing of their skills. In the military and as a healthcare employee on the civilian side, I go through training quarterly for one job and monthly for the other. This not only keeps my skills and mind fresh but helps me keep my license and certificate to work. It shows competence in my skills and lets me know if there is any additional training I could use a refresher on. It is scary to know that in some fields, people just stick to what they originally learned and don’t keep up with changes or training to better themselves for their job and whoever they serve. Which can unfortunately lead to lives being lost, as it did with GM. Evaluate Leadership Theory: Relationship The relationship between the autocratic leadership style and the decision-making process is basically that there’s no accountability ever. Employees would do as they were told without asking questions and even if an issue arose, they would keep on like nothing was wrong. Not a single employee stepped forward to say that something was wrong with their switches and had no concern for the safety of whoever was driving that vehicle. It is unsettling to see that only 15 employees were let go and not a word was said about the punishment or actions for the employees they decided to keep. Is there new training to keep up with? Nobody knows. Of course, it was necessary to let go of the employees they needed to fire but more than that needed to be done to ensure that this does not happen again. Safety meetings, skills training, and more supervision and involvement should be required moving forward. Assess Organizational Culture: Internal Culture

The culture presented by GM was a toxic environment that was dominated by policies that enabled unhealthy relationships, habits, and conflicts between team members and managers. This can be really harmful to employees because it can prevent productivity due to an unsafe feeling. It is especially harmful to the professional growth of any employee and the company (BuiltIn, 2022). The amount of money needed to rebuild the company’s image after this incident is insignificant in comparison to what a recall on the switch would cost. The life of a human is priceless. Assess Organizational Culture: Internal Culture Examples  Lack of teamwork  Core values are no longer present  Lack of acknowledgment with employees  No drive or reward for employees to do their best  Unnecessary and unfriendly competition arises  With no core values, manager have no sense of drive Insights and Conclusions: Complement The internal culture level of complement and leadership styles at GM were not taking any responsibility for any issues that occurred but instead passing it along to somebody else. Nobody wanted to take responsibility for anything. As stated earlier, not my monkey, not my circus. Insights and Conclusions: Influenced Each Other

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I do think that the autocratic leadership style is 100% to blame when it comes to the negative influences that have impacted the GM organization. Since the blame was passed around for so long, I think people lost sight of the right way to do things and the full issue was no longer understood. It was like a game of telephone and eventually, everything was misconstrued and changed 11 years later. Nobody knew what was right and the extent of what was wrong. Insights and Conclusions: Employees I am a firm believer in that both the leadership style and the internal culture affected most, if not all, of the employees of GM in a negative way. By management always passing the blame around and leadership deciding to turn the other cheek, there was nobody to step up and take responsibility for what was going on. The recall of the switch showed that employees were in fact told to stay quiet and get their taskings done. This is what caused a recall on 800,000 GM vehicles, resulting in 31 reported accidents and 13 lives taken. GM did admit that if the switch was bumped or if the driver had too heavy of a key chain, then the engine would stall (Society, 2015). This is another example of passing along the blame but to the product instead of a person. Of course, this was not the root of the problem but still nobody was stepping up to say what was truly wrong and what really needed to change (George, 2014).

References Doan, N. (“Careers After Graduation in Japanese Studies.” Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies, School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies 2018. http://www.nissan.ox.ac.uk/careers-after- graduation-japanese-studies George, P. (2014, June 18). Stop Blaming GM's 'Culture' And Start Blaming People. Jalopnik. Retrieved from http://jalopnik.com/stop-blaming-gms-culture-and-start blamingpeople1592657410 Grant, T. (2014, April 04) “Workzone: Positive reinforcement a powerful management tool.” Post-Gazette. http://www.postgazette.com/business/employment/2014/04/06/Workzone-Positive- reinforcement-apowerful-management-tool/stories/201404060015 Heinz, K., Valazquez, R. (2022, October 25). Toxic Work Culture: 16 Examples and How to Improve It. https://builtin.com/company-culture/bad-company-culture Himsel, D. (2014, May 16). General Motors, Avon, and the Devastating Power of Entrenched Corporate Culture. Forbes. Retrieved from: http://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesleadershipforum/2014/05/16/general-motors-avon-andthe- devastating-power-of-entrenched-corporate-culture/ Kuppler, T. (2017, August 4). The GM Culture Crisis: what leaders must learn from this culture case study. Switch & Shift. https://web.archive.org/web/20180510083046/http://switchandshift.com:80/the-gm culture-crisis

Shethna, J. (2021, May 25). Organizational behavior model: Best 5 organizational behavior model. EDUCBA. Retrieved July 16, 2022, from https://www.educba.com/organizational- behavior-model Society, A. General Motors’ Corporate Culture Crisis: An Assessment of the Ignition Switch Recall. January 2015. Retrieved from: file:///C:/Users/letit/OneDrive/Documents/SNHU/Organizational%20Behavior%20(OL-342- J6171)%2020EW6/General-Motors-Case-Study-2015.pdf

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OL 342 Final Project

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