Running head: Assignment 1: Leadership Styles of NHTSA and Toyota Recalls

Leadership Styles of National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Toyota Recalls
By Michele L. Ennis, MS February 2010

Abstract The purpose of this research is to apply theoretical approaches of leadership styles and skills to the recent events of National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and 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 separately applied to the NHTSA and Toyota cases in order to examine the ineffectiveness of leadership in both organizations. 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). Parallel to Toyota’s case, NHTSA’s failure to thoroughly investigate years worth of consumer automobile safety complaints because there was an absence of statistical trends, left consumers uncomfortable with the government agency’s ability to uphold its mission of “safety.” In both cases, 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.