Kayla Ramon

Final Artifact: General Motors

South Texas College

Behavior/ Ethics/ Leadership II

 General motors has been part of the global auto industry for more than 100 years; it has

produced new innovations, for various brands, serving six continents, with 181 thousand

employees. General Motors purpose is to “Earn customers for life” by committing to treating

every customer with respect and care for them for as long they own the vehicle not only when

they are purchasing. Their establishing culture was one of loyalty to their customers, which

inspired them to create better, safer and higher value vehicles. In fact, their commitment was to

provide and maintain the highest quality standards in safety. General Motors, (2018) Retrieved

from https://www.gm.com/company/about-gm.html. However, in 2009 the company went into

bankruptcy and the quality of goods produced by General Motors, began to fall behind

innovation.

Before General Motors went in to bankruptcy, their focus was on mass production and

the retention of their employees. Causes of General Motors bankruptcy dealt with external

forces but as well as internal issues they were provoking themselves. General Motors was paying

its employees 74 dollars and hour while its competitors were paying nearly half of that per hour

causing the company too loose profit. However, due to competitors, such as the Japan based

company, Toyota, joining the market, General Motors cash flows of the company was negatively

affected. General Motors was forced into bankruptcy and had to take steps into making changes

to save the company. The types of changes that occurred were structural, cost, process and

cultural change. Aside from doing internal changes to the company releasing 2,400 dealers and

21,000 hourly paid jobs, General Motors had to ask financial help, making the government its

biggest shareholder. (“Using APA,” 2009).

 I believe that the leadership may have not handled the transition of change as they should

have. If management cannot accommodate to the changes, they would not be able to help the

employees. Leadership starts with self-awareness which is important to emotional intelligence

followed into its importance to great leadership. When understanding one’s self-competencies,

we can use them to relate and communicate with employees. The leaders of the organizations,

may it be managers, administration or human resources could have used certain tactics to make

the transition smooth. Management would need to present the situation for its advantages and

implement the change strategies, Khan, Hashim, Muhammad (2014). If the situation isn’t

properly handled, the employee’s resistance can create problems that weren’t accounted for.

Those who have worked for the organization for years and are experiencing change without

proper transition will most likely be those who are resistant. Rumors will begin to swamp the

organization and to prevent this, management could of implement the change fairly by holding a

meeting with everyone and make the announcement as a group. This not only helps build

communication with the employees but as well as keeping the companies publicity on a positive

note. In the instance of cutting page wage, having a selection of those who were willing to work

at the lower rate instead of being jobless will be those who are more accepting and wouldn’t

create a challenge, such as an individual resistance. It is important to recognize and motivate

employees at all times and especially in a situation where their whole life might take a negative

turn. During a drastic company change, employees need to know that management is

understanding and committed into helping in the ways they can. If a manager only focuses on the

task, planning and controlling people during an organizational change, the employees won’t feel

included. Being a good leader means being able to influence and inspire those who follow,

Mkee, Annie, (2014). A manager in an organization as big as General Motors needs to be both.
 The changes that occurred in General Motors needed to be observed by management, or

leaders of a department. As stated in Muhammad, (2014), The Kotters Eight Step Plan, is a

method used to implement change. First step of this method consists of establishing a sense of

urgency as in why the change is needed, in this instance it would be due to bankruptcy. Having a

strong team to lead is essential for them to create a vision with the change and direct the

strategies that will be needed to achieve the vison. When an organization has a common vision, it

is easier for the employees to empower one another and management should help by removing

any barriers that could potentially be stopping the employees from accomplishing the goal.

Giving the employees a short-term reward toward the organizations new vision is crucial to

progress with the change. As mentioned in Khan, Muhammad, Organizational Change: Case

Study of General Motors, (2014) organizational change means to change activities of

organizational concern, in this situation it would be business process, change of employees and

rules and procedures. The organization chose to cut cost by cutting the pay wage of the

employees which saved them billions of dollars. Due to cutting of the wages, employees began

to leave the company and that drove the organization to change the culture. Employees choose to

continue working depending on their environment. Although the company was cutting the

wages, if employees had more than money as a reason to stay they would. The culture of General

Motors wasn’t consistent and that might had affected the company’s productivity and mistakes

occurred. The more employees an organization has doesn’t necessarily mean that the

manufacture would be producing a certain amount of product. Having a less number of

employees that are efficient, will cause the productivity to be met just as having many employees

who are not doing their job correctly. If the correct leadership were around, they would have

been able to point this out. Once changes occurred in the organization, employees then began to
improve in their efficiency and were now held accountable and needed to be more responsible.

The general motor board was also affected due to the cut of members into just eight board

members which helped drive decision making much quicker and reporting directly to the CEO.

Following up with the employees is an important step because it gives management an

opportunity to adjust if needed as well to reinforce the change by demonstrating new behaviors.

Execution is process and it isn’t a result of a single decision or action, Hrebiniak, Lawrence,

Making Strategy Work, (2013). The lack of observations and accountability caused the

organization to have errors in their products causing lives. In this type of organization

management should have a plan in what is needed to create and hold successful manufacture.

The plan needed for the employees to know how production works would be a standing plan

which is meant for repeated, ongoing activities and operational plan which will give the

employees a detailed outline of how goals should be achieved, Mckee, Annie (2014). Execution

takes time and places pressure on management for results, the time needed for execution also

increases the likelihood of additional unforeseen problems. Hrebiniak, Lawrence, Making

Strategy Work, (2013). Having a plan and executing it with the team will drive results, minimize

errors and should be a shared vision among the organization.

If there is a lack of communication within the organization about the problems that have

been observed during execution, it might create future problem such as the lawsuit General

Motors had due to faulty ignition switch in several car designs, Neitz, Michele, (2015). The

organization was based on a culture of secrecy and lack of communication which resulted in

harming the public with sixty deaths and hundreds of injuries. General Motors lawyers knew of

the defects and neglected to tell the board members or CEO, Mary Barra. The actions the lawyers

took were company culture based. General Motors lawyers were prohibited in using notes, which
caused the company to lack meeting minutes, attendance records or topic discussed. According

to Neitz, Michele, (2015) employees were directed to avoid words such as problem or defect in

written reports. The employees made a choice to perform unethical actions and violated the

organizational ethics due to the influence their leader were giving. Ethics are a set of values and

principles that guide the behavior of an individual or a group, Mckee, Annie (2014). Some ethics

and values are learned on the job based on our leaders and with the constant change of

environment in a workplace, it is important to identify self-values and never compromise them.

The employees knowing their individual ethics and lawyers respecting their professional ethics

should have spoken on the defects of the car designs. Individual and professional ethics were

malpractice in this situation due to the leadership not respecting the organizational ethics.

Organizational ethics are the values and principles that an organization has chosen that guide the

behavior of people within the organization, Mckee, Annie (2014).

The results of the type of leadership was best identified as transactional leaders

based on management following a traditional approach to management in which leader and

follower behaviors is instrumental change, Mckee, Annie (2013) as well as a path goal leader

after the bankruptcy. The strengths of the organization would be the openness to innovations and

making safety a priority. The weaknesses would be the lack of communication and structure. The

fact that a lawsuit was happening, and the CEO didn’t instantly find out and the consequences of

unethical behavior wasn’t taken serious by the employees and lawyers comes to show the lack of

influence the leadership had on them. The organization seemed to be lacking structure from the

top of the chain and seemed that employees were coasting. The company has opportunities in

executing and following up with the employees. There plans to keep up with innovations might

be set but there is no purpose of putting it into practice if it will cause the company a bad
reputation due to bad work. The employees cannot be fully responsible for the mistakes that

occurred but of those who oversaw inspection. The lack of leadership is a threat to the

organization because of leaders not taking their responsibilities seriously they’ve caused harm to

society, employees and the organization. I’d implement transformational leaders into the

organization whom are driven for the right purpose. If there were more transformational leaders

in the organization whom were sensitive to peoples needs, were clear with their communication

and expectations, and would actively move towards the future by making the organizations

vision their own, there might have been a lot less mistakes and a more structure organization.
 Reference:

Benedetto Neitz, M. (2015). Where were the lawyers? The ethical implications of the

General Motors recall scandal in the United States. Legal Ethics, 18(1), 93-96.

doi:10.1080/1460728x.2015.1084800

The bankruptcy of General Motors, A giant falls, (2009)

Mckee, Annie. (2014) Management: A focus on leaders, Pearson

Khan, Muhammad, Hashim, Muhammad (2014) Organizational change: Case Study of

general motors, (1-5), retrieved from

https://www.asee.org/documents/zones/zone1/2014/Student/PDFs/159.pdf

Hrebiniak, Lawrence G. (2013) Making strategy work: leading effective execution and

change work. Pearson.