Organization Behavior and Culture



Organization Behavior and Culture

Leadership Ford Motor

Leadership is an organizational role, in which a person takes the responsibility of a group of people to follow him to achieve an objective, usually the mission and vision of the organization. (Boland & Tenkasi, 1995) A leader has a charismatic personality and has this ability to make people follow him. It is not necessary that a leader will be a manager, leader can anyone in the organization. One of the tasks of a leader is to manage the performance of his followers, which has a direct effect on the performance of the organization. Organizations are largely dependent on the leaders to handle the employees and train them to give their optimal output. The leader also motivates their follower's and guides them to fulfill their assignments on time. They also come forward to solve any organizational related conflicts of their followers. (Beech, 2002)

The relationship between a leader and his follower is usually very strong because a leader touches the heart of their followers; the leaders do not tools like scolding or suppression like a manager but use the tool of logic and communication to convince their followers on a topic. This makes the relationship between the leader and the follower very strong. (Anantatmula, 2008) The leaders can have a great affect on the efficiency of their followers, level, and quality of output from their followers, determine how well the objectives are met, and control the amount of money spent in the organizational operations. (Anantatmula, 2007) The leaders can make changes in the way the employees are working whenever they feel that there is deviation from the path of organizational goals. Therefore, organizations are usually dependent on its leaders and their level of expertise to achieve the goals.

When Alan Mulally joined ford motor company, the company was going nowhere and the company was facing many problems. When Alan Mulally joined ford motor, he adopted a combination of democratic and autocratic sort of leadership style to take Ford motors out of troubled waters. (Alavi &Leidner, 2001) After joining ford, he at first collected all the information about Ford motors and how has it been running over the years. He interviewed dozens of analysts, consultants and other people to gather information about Ford; this enabled him to develop understanding about the working of Ford and the problems Ford was facing. He focused on the core values of the company and the brand name “Ford”. This allowed him to develop strategies to counter the problems and take the company out of trouble.

Then he made it a common practice to have meeting with the representatives of all the functional teams of the company and questioned them for performance. The managers had to report to mulally for their weekly performance. He also took suggestion from the experts of the department.

When Alan Mulally joined Ford, he revised goals for Ford and gave a new definition to the company. He had set new goals for the company ...