Ford Motor Company

Andrew Weber

Ford CEO Alan Mulally

Dr. Lazzara

Leadership and Organizational Behavior

February 28, 2011

Introduction

There is a huge market for automobiles all over the world. Nearly every person in the

world uses an automobile of some kind on a daily basis. There are many giants in the automotive market; they include American companies Ford and GM and foreign companies Toyota, Honda, and Nissan. This paper will discuss how leadership can affect and shape the direction of an organization. This paper will also discuss the leadership style of Ford CEO Alan Mulally. Ford Motor Company intends to improve profits and expand globally into new markets while stream lining the automotive industry to maximize efficiency and minimize spending. There are many different leadership styles and it is yet to be determined if Mulally's style can help lead Ford to the top of the automotive industry.

Discuss the role of leadership and how it can impact organizational performance

Leadership is the development of ideas and vision and embracing those ideas and vision in day-to-day life while encouraging others to follow the same values. Leadership is also about making the difficult decisions and standing by those decisions no matter the outcome (Hellriegal, 2010). The direction of an organization relies heavily on the influence of the leadership within the organization. The leaders of the organization are the fuel for the company and the subordinates are vehicle to make things happen. A successful company must have an effective leader as well a solid work force. There must also be a good relationship between leaders and followers within the company in order to maintain open lines of communication and to operate at the highest levels of efficiency possible. Without strong leadership an organization may be able to get by on a daily basis, but a company lacking good leadership will never flourish and operate at its full potential (Hellriegal, 2010). Leadership itself is not enough to make a company succeed; it takes the right kind of leadership for that specific company and market in order to achieve optimum results.

Discuss Mulally's leadership style at Ford Motor Company and provide examples of how his actions fit this style

There are several different styles of leadership and they range from total authoritative, where one person makes all the decisions based on what they think, to free reign, where each individual makes their own decisions. Mulally's leadership style sits somewhere in the middle, his style is a facilitator style of leadership in the Vroom-Jago leadership model. The decisions he has made to schedule more frequent and involved meetings are specific evidence that he puts a large emphasis on disseminating information and using everyone's knowledge to make decisions (Hellriegal, 2010). Mulally is also changing the perceived hierarchy of the Ford family and trying to deemphasize politics within the organization and focus on finding problems and fixing them. Mulally has started an initiative to award those who find problems and bring them to his attention so that the entire organization can find a solution. Mulally has also broke down barriers between design teams and regions in efforts to make a more cohesive organization where everyone communicates with each other in order to maximize efficiency and this supports his facilitator leadership style (Hellriegal, 2010). Mulally is using a "One Ford" strategy in which he is simplifying all the areas of Ford Motor Company in order to facilitate better communication and utilize all the same resources for the different lines of automobiles (Saporito, 2010).

Discuss how goal setting helped Ford improve its performance

In order for a goal to be effective, it must be challenging and obtainable and it must keep the organization moving forward. Goals must be clear and definitive and presented to the entire organization (Hellriegal, 2010). In 2010, Ford Motor Company's pretax operating profit was $2.9 billion compared to a loss of $424 million in 2009. Ford has also increased its market share to 17.5% in the same time and has taken over the title of best-regarded auto brand in the United States form Toyota (Saporito, 2010). Ford set goals to become more profitable by shedding excess products that were not producing and by concentrating on making better quality products that people want to purchase.