TOYOTA

Toyota



Toyota Motors

Part A: Leadership at Toyota

Introduction

The purpose of this research is to apply theoretical approaches of leadership styles and skills to the recent event of the Toyota automobile recall. Following a thorough examination of the issues involved in both events, the application of Blake and Mouton (1964) theory to the leadership styles will be applied to Toyota case in order to examine the ineffectiveness of leadership in the organization. Toyota's delayed and misleading consumer responses regarding the vehicle safety issues that lead up to the recent sticky accelerator recall has left consumers angry and concerned for the company's ability to uphold its mission of producing “high-quality” vehicles (cbsnews.com, 2010; Toyota.com, 2010). In case of Toyota, the leaders' failure to integrate task and relations orientations could be harmful to the outcome of both events. Furthermore, Katz (1955) suggests effective leadership skills (technical, human, and conceptual) were underutilized by the leaders of both organizations making it more difficult to maintain creditability and their ability to uphold their mission without immediate corrective action to the damage caused by leadership in both events.

Issues Involved in the Toyota Case

According to Safety Research (2010), from the year 2002 through current, continuous complaints documenting “sudden unintentional acceleration” (SUA), throttle problems, and engine surging were reported to both Toyota (safetyresearch.net, 2010, p.1). Toyota and Lexus customers who had experienced the vehicle problems (some resulting in fatal vehicle accidents) petitioned the multiple occasions to conduct analyses of automobiles. Others opened small investigations that alleged “safety-related defect does not exist” by Toyota. In 2006 the agency claimed that they “examined over 1172 owner complaints in a population of 7 million vehicles and could find no trend” that lead to defects in selected automobiles (safteyreaserch.net, 2010, p. 3). (safteyresearch.net, 2010).

Toyota is working hard to regain consumer trust in their mission "To attract and retain customers with high-valued products and services and the most satisfying ownership experience in America" (Toyota, n.d., 1). Toyota is trying to “do the right thing on behalf of Toyota customers” by paying dealers up to $75,000 to extend hours to repair the vehicle accelerator problems (Durbin & Strumpf, 2010, 12). This could be difficult after safety research had identified over “2274 cases of unintentional acceleration in Toyotas leading to at least 275 crashes and 18 deaths since 1999” (cbsnews.com, 2010, p. 5). Ohnsman and Kitamura (2010) speculates that “Toyota's image as the highest-quality automaker may have been permanently tarnished after recall and sales stoppage” (p.1). Since Toyota's announcement of the accelerator pedal recall for approximately 2.3 million vehicles, the company's stock has dropped over 15 percent (Ohnsman & Kitamuro, 2010). Many analysts believe that it will take more than apologies or extended dealership hours to salvage consumer trust and loyalty in Toyota's image. Maryann Keller, a strategic adviser to the auto industry was quoted in an interview as stating, "People aren't going to buy Toyotas, period…What's happened is sufficient to keep people out of the stores" (Ohnsman & Kitamuro, ...