Case Study Analysis on GM culture Crisis - Organizational Behavior

A) In this case study, GM Company has been illustrated as a company, which is having serious issues in its organizational culture. The culture crisis has been attributed as a major reason behind their ignition switch crisis. It was revealed in the case that many stakeholders in the company had known about the ignition switch problem, but no one took the responsibility to raise the issue to senior management so that crisis could have been resolved lot earlier. The strength of the company is their attributes, making them a successful company, but there were serious weaknesses in the company with regards to their organizational culture as well as communication process. The company has to look on its weaknesses so that they don’t have to deal with such big crisis in the future (Kuppler, 2014)

II. Organizational Modeling

A) After analyzing the details described in the case study, it very much looks that autocratic model is the organizational behavior model, which is dominating GM. According to this model, the power of decision making is in the hands of owners and well as top management, and employees have to follow the orders given by the top leadership. The feedback or suggestions from employees are not welcomed in such organizational model.

B) The current behavioral model used by GM is autocratic model, whereas other companies also use to adopt other models of behavior to remain more effective and efficient. For instance, companies use custodial model to empower their employees and give them enough importance in the organization. Some other companies use supportive model, which comes with leaders, who are motivating as well as inspiring and do not believe in authoritative powers.

C) The model used by GM company and models used by other companies in the industry are different in their approach and that’s why they are actually adopted. The most important reason behind using any behavioral model is the need, which is felt by an organization. When an organization feels that they need changes in their approach by adopting a suitable organizational model so that they can deal with issues and keep things on the right track.

D) The current culture had negative impacts on the current organizational model in a sense that it was not allowing a better means of communication. The communication is quite important between the leadership and subordinates, when any orders are given, but current culture had serious gaps in communication. If GM Company wants to have a shift in current model, then they have to bring big changes in their current culture as well so that previous organizational model can be transformed and new ones are easily adopted.

E) The organizational model used by the company is not unique to its industry as it is one of the major models being used in various companies across various industries. But fact of the matter is that company has not been able to pursue its true model with an organizational culture, which could help them to identify issues in time, and find appropriate solutions.

F) It is important to mention that motivational models have not shown any major shifts in their approach as they are simple and based on the idea of motivation, so a major shift was never possible. But organizational models have been experiencing major shifts with the passage of time so that they can work well with the requirements of different organizations from various industries.

III. Evaluate Leadership Theory

A) Overall, it is hard to conclude that which leadership style was used in the case study, but apparently the autocratic attributes were shown by the leadership. It was hard to bring any change with such leadership style as employees’ feedback and concerns are not taken seriously. But this leadership began to change, when GM Company had to deal with ignition switch crisis. The company realized that its leaders have to change their leadership style so that organizational culture can be transformed into a better one.

B) The leadership style started to experience major shifts when CEO Mary Barra took the charge and came up with various decisions to change the organizational culture. The major decisions made by the company shows its shift in leadership style like Mary Barra told that safety decision making process have been restructured as well as the company has included 35 safety investigators in the organizations, whose job is to identify and resolve issues as early as possible.

C) It is evident in the case that company had to face internal and external influences to change their culture and leadership style. The internal influence was their weakness in terms of communication, identifying the issue and resolving it in time. They had face issues because of ignition switch crisis, and this internal crisis forced them to make adequate changes. The most important external influence was the clarification asked by Subcommittees of Senate & House as they asked company’s CEO to explain the ignition switch problem and its relevant facts.

D) The facts revealed in the case very much depict that decision-making process and leadership style of the company were complementing each other. The authoritative attributes of leadership were not allowing employees to raise the issue with top leadership, and flow of information was going from top to bottom. It shows that both were quite interrelated to each other.

IV. Assess Organizational Culture

A) The present internal culture of Gm had no clear idea and direction to move forward. It is shown by the fact that numerous people like lawyers, investigators as well as engineers came to know that ignition switch problem was there, but still it was ignored by all of them for 11 years, which is too long for any problem to persist, when people in the company know about it. If GM’s leadership have empowered their employees and motivated them through their supportive leadership, then some of the employees may have raised the issue loud and clear.

B) As mentioned above that present organizational culture had no real direction. There was no one responsible to take up the issue to upper management when serious safety concerns are there. No urgency was shown by any stakeholder to take up the issue on immediate basis and save the company from a disaster, which was ultimately revealed after 11 years and earned a really bad name for the company. If someone would have taken the responsibility, the issue could have been solved lot earlier than the time it took.

V. Insights and Conclusions

A) The internal culture of organization and leadership style complemented very well each other as it was quite evident that autocratic leadership style was not allowing employees to engage in a relationship of trust and responsibility, so no one was bothered about the ignition switch problem. If company would have supportive or collegial behavioral model, then employees must have responded differently to this situation.

B) The culture was the biggest problem for GM and when their leadership changed its method of handling things, it had positive influence on the culture as well. Most importantly, the organizational culture and leadership style both influenced each other to put GM into the right direction by handling the issue of ignition switch, and making sure that such issues may never arise in the future.

C) If leadership style and organizational culture would have been more supportive, allowing employees to raise concerns without any issues and provide their feedback, then things would have quite different. This supportive culture, which motivates and inspires employees, can have positive impact on overall processes of the organization.

Reference

Kuppler, T. (2014). The GM Culture Crisis: what leaders must learn from this culture case study. Retrieved February 27, 2019, from https://web.archive.org/web/20161013135112/http:/switchandshift.com/the-gm-culture-crisis