Individual Analysis Paper
Chairman and CEO of Nissan and Renault – Carlos Ghosn
Chao Ru chao.ru@laverne.edu University of La Verne
Graduate School of Business
BUS 586 – CRN 1354: Leadership for the Future
Professor John C. Sivie June 28, 2012

I. Table of Contents
I. Table of Contents 2
II. Background and Award of Carlos Ghosn 3
III. Important Contributes for Nissan from Ghosn 4
IV. Doing the Right Things of Carlos Ghosn 5
V. Learn from Carlos Ghosn 7
VI. References 9

Chairman and CEO of Nissan and Renault – Carlos Ghosn

II. Background and Awards of Carlos Ghosn
Background Information of Carlos Ghosn:
Carlos Ghosn is the president and CEO of Nissan Motor Co. Ltd., a global automotive company with 180,000 employees and $83 billion in revenue. He joined to Nissan in June 1999 as its chief operating officer. And then, he became Nissan’s president in June 2000, and also became the chief executive in June 2001.
Carlos Ghson is also the president and CEO of Paris-based Renault, SA which was named in May 2005. Both companies together produce more than one in 10 cars sold worldwide. He is also Chairman and CEO of the Renault-Nissan Alliance, the strategic partnership overseeing the two companies through a unique cross-shareholding agreement (Wikipedia, 2012).
Currently, he is not only the president and CEO of Nissan and Renault. He also serves on the board of director at Alcoa Automotive, Inc and Closure Systems International, Inc. He serves these two companies as a director from 2002 to now (Bloomberg Business week, 2012).
Carlos Ghosn was born on March 9th, 1954, and he is a Brazilian-born French businessman. His family moved to Lebanon when he was a toddler and he later studied engineering at Ecole Polytechnique and Ecole des Mines de Paris in France, where he is a citizen (Carlos Ghosn, 2012). Ghosn is the quintessential international businessman whom can speak five countries language which are French, Arabic, English, Portuguese, and Japanese.
His career in the auto industry began in 1978 at Europe’s largest tire maker which is called Michelin. He worked here for eighteen years. In these 18 years, he moved up the ranks from plant manager to chief operating officer. He headed both Michelin’s South American and North American units during his tenure with the company, achieving success at both. He joined Renault in 1996 as executive vice president, and was send to Japan to revive Nissan three years later (2008).
Mr. Ghosn had worked as the chief operating officer of Michelin's South American activities based in Brazil; as head of research and development for industrial tires in Ladoux, France; and as plant manager in Le Puy, France. As chairman and chief executive officer of Michelin North America, Mr. Ghosn presided over the restructuring of the company after its acquisition of the Uniroyal Goodrich Tire Co. in 1990. Before he joined Nissan, he served as executive vice president of the Renault Group, a position he had held since December 1996. In addition to supervising Renault activities in the Mercosur, he was responsible for advanced research, car engineering and development, car manufacturing, power train operations and purchasing.

Awards & Recognition of Carlos Ghosn: * Forbes Magazine – Called Him: “The hardest-working man in the brutally competitive global car business.” * Japanese Media – Called Him: “Seven-Eleven” because he works very hard from early morning until late at night. * In October 2006, Ghosn was created an “Honorary Knight Commander” of the Order of the British Empire (Wikipedia, 2012). * In September 2012, CEO Quarterly Magazine listed Carlo’s Ghosn as one of the “Most Respected CEOs.” (Wikipedia, 2012). * In November 2010, Forbes.com listed Carlos Ghosn as one of the "Seven Most Powerful South Americans". He was voted Man of the Year 2003 by Fortune magazine's Asian edition. In 2004 he was added to the Japan Automotive Hall of Fame (Wikipedia, 2012). * In November 2011, CNBC listed Ghosn as “Asia Business Leader” of the year (Wikipedia, 2012). * In May 2012, Japan Society listed Ghosn as “Japan Society Annual Award Winner” (Wikipedia, 2012).
From all of the awards and recognitions we can see, Ghosn is a successful leader around the world now. So, in this paper, I will talk about what the most important contributions are to Nissan Company from Ghosn. And also, I will show how successful Ghosn as a president and CEO in his leadership from both ethics and values, and attributes.

III. Important Contributions for Nissan from Ghosn
The most important contribution to Nissan is Carlos Ghosn made Nissan revive. Nissan was found by Yoshisuke in Yokohama in 1933. A company called Jodosha-Seizo Kabushiki-Kaisha was established in Japan. It was a combination of several earlier automotive ventures and the Datsun brand which it acquired from Tobata Casting Co., Ltd. The first cars were produced in 1932. Shortly thereafter in 1943, the company name was changed to Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. During World War II, Nissan stopped making cars and poured its resources into the war effort. After the World War II, Nissan grew steadily, expanding its operations globally. It became especially successful in North America with a lineup of smaller gasoline efficient cars and small pickup trucks as well as a sports coupe, the Datsun 280Z. However, in 1990s, Nissan might a big problem of losing profit for seven years since 1993 (Nissan, 2012). Nissan had displayed a tendency to emphasize short-term market share growth, rather than profitability or long-term strategic success.
Back in 1999, Nissan was in a death spiral. The company was carrying massive debts, heavy losses, and a badly damaged brand. Renault was a middling European auto maker with a far-from-inspiring future. So when Renault CEO Louis Schweitzer ponied up $5 billion to buy effective control of Nissan that year, there was skepticism, to say the least. Into the breach came Carlos Ghosn, a savage cost-cutter and first-class intellect. But even he gave this salvage job; there is only a 50/50 chance (CNN.com, 2005).
When Ghosn were in Japan, His first step to the turnaround at Nissan was to cut 21,000 jobs worldwide. So people call him “Le Cost killer”. He then pledged that as CEO he would return Nissan to financial stability by cutting its debt by 50% and increasing its operating margin to 4.5% within three years or he would resign. He met his goals and greatly surpassed them. Carlos Ghosn has a clear gift for management and excellence, but the support and resources dedicated to him from Renault throughout the process helped him succeed. The other way he made the turnaround so quickly was in admitting the short comings of Nissan’s management and waning corporate culture. They changed the way the company did business by pulling away from the Japanese culturally approved concept in which stability trumped sound financial management and more towards the American way of cutting cost and increasing productivity. By addressing the problems, Ghosn could efficiently fix it.
Until today, Nissan has a clear vision for the future, and - with their Alliance partner, Renault - they are working with passion to achieve it. Also, the Nissan Company mission is to enrich people's lives, building trust with our employees, customers, dealers, partners, shareholders and the world at large (Corporate Information, 2012).

IV. “Doing the Right Things” of Carlos Ghosn
According to Hughes, Ginnett, and Curphy (2012) true leadership is all about “doing the right things” and it has significant connection with ethics, which is a set of principles of “right conduct or a system of moral values” normally upheld by people.
Ghosn became a leader in Nissan Company. First, he embraced the cultural differences. He accepted and built on the organizational culture. Second, he used three universal principles. As a leader, the things he says and do should be the same. The execution is 90% of job and 10% is strategy. Also, communication is a great key point to connect with his employees.
There are two outstanding approaches to leadership that emphasize the aspects and performance of people going beyond the scale of morality (Hughes. Ginnett. & Curphy, 2012). * Authentic leadership, the first significant approach to leadership, emphasizes on the “consistency between their values, their beliefs, and their actions (Hughes. Ginnett. & Curphy, 2012).” For example, the daily behavior and talk of a manager who has high authenticity don’t differ from those expressions he makes at the times with his boss. The reason why it is meaningful for the followers to have an authentic leader is because that it helps to improve the “transparency and openness in the relationship (Hughes. Ginnett. & Curphy, 2012).” Followers can perceive and identify useful information from the leader so that they don’t hold a lot of uncertain feelings while working. * Servant leadership, the second significant approach to leadership, emerged since 1970 and has been representing an opposite sense of “bureaucratic and mechanistic” perspectives (Hughes. Ginnett. & Curphy, 2012). Based on such view, followers are not merely “cogs in a machine”; instead, they have been placed higher importance and respect in organization (Hughes. Ginnett. & Curphy, 2012). For future leaders, they should get prepared to serve and understand their followers that would make the organization runs efficiently and harmoniously. From these two approaches, I believe Ghosn has high authentic leadership. There are two things can show he has high authentic leadership. First of all, Carlos Ghosn is the epitome of cultural diversity. He can speak four countries language before he went to Japan. Ghosn’s global background, being raised in Brazil and educated in France, is clear components of his accomplishments and his innate ability to fit into a foreign setting. This ability helped him integrate his team smoothly into Japan where people like to see effort and respect from foreign workers. Ghosn exemplified this when he said that he would embrace Japan fully and give all his effort to make the experience work. He soon developed his own culture at Nissan whereby changes evolved for the sake of performance only rather than to change the company.
Secondly, he always tells his employees he was not “a missionary.” This was very important because he did not want to see his employees got away from him. He wanted to have a good relationship with them. This kept solidarity among the team. This is important in terms of corporate anthropology because he told his team that they were not going to change Japan but to help Nissan. They would be the ones adapting to Japan and not vice versa. He wanted to let his employees know the goal they work together is getting Nissan back and make the production on track.
Thirdly, Ghosn not only bring Nissan back, but also he makes Nissan broader. For example, Ghosn wants Nissan gets more profit every year, so he and his team build another line to produce high-quality, and high-price car which called Lexus, but it made by Nissan. From all of three reasons, we can see Ghosn has high authentic leadership because he is not only bringing Nissan back, but also bringing Nissan to a new journey.
Here is another way to prove Ghosn has high authentic leadership. According to Hyatt (2010), he mentioned that authentic leadership must have five marks which must have insight, demonstrate initiative, exert influence, have impact, and exercise integrity. 1. Authentic leaders have insight: Ghosn not only has vision, but also he has wisdom and discernment. He can clearly look at the situations of what Nissan should do, gain clarity, and he determined a course of action which is he cut off employees and cut off prices. 2. Authentic leaders demonstrate initiative: Ghosn goes first, and he did not sit on the sidelines. He never asks others to do what they are unwilling to do themselves. 3. Authentic leaders exert influence: as I mentioned earlier, Ghosn can easily enter to Japanese culture and study Japanese, he wants to have a good relationship with his followers. And now, his followers can easily catch the vision and values. 4. Authentic leaders have impact: Ghosn has impact because he is not only the president and CEO of Nissan, he is also the other company’s CEO, and two companies director. 5. Authentic leaders exercise integrity: Yet Ghosn lives were not integrated with the highest values. Integrity—or the lack thereof—ultimately determines the quality of a person’s impact. In a sense, this is the foundation of authentic leadership.
According to Brown and Trevino (2006), it shows an ethical leader should have two aspects of characteristics: being a “moral person” and able to promote followers’ ethical performance. Traditionally, people tended to consider that ethical leaders ought to be “honest” and “trustworthy” and represent the characteristic of fairness (Brown & Trevino, 2006). However, as leaders they should not just are ethical individuals, also they need to enrich the organization with ethical thoughts and actively get the behaviors of all the followers to be well complied with ethical standards. Because the term “ethical leadership” is not just talking about a personal ethics issue; instead, it emphasizes on the great influence over many people in an organization. Ethics can not only embody on leaders, leaders also can influence other employees to embody ethics. Then it can make the whole company has a good ethic to consumers. For instance, according to Meier’s article (2010) of Nissan recalls 2.14 million cars, trucks, SUVs worldwide, Carlos Ghosn decides that Nissan should 2.14 million vehicles sold in North America, Europe and Japan for an ignition problem that can cause the engine to take longer to start and possibly stall and not restart. It's the third-largest recall ever for Nissan. There are no reported crashes or deaths from the problem, which is a result of oxidation on the contacts of ignition relay in vehicles built from August 2003 through July 2006, according to a statement from Nissan. So, from this report, we can see, Ghosn has a good ethic even though he knows the company could lose money if they recall these cars. He enrich the organization with ethical thoughts and actively get the behaviors of all the followers to be well complied with ethical standards. He thought there are no things important than people’s life. If he does not recall the cars, many people will have car accident and may die. He recalled these cars can attract more and more loyal customers to buy Nissan products because loyal customers think Nissan’s car material and technology very safely for them to drive. In sum, Ghosn did the right thing and made the right decision to attract more loyal customers to purchase Nissan cars.

V. Learn from Carlos Ghosn Via the reading of the textbook content, as well as the external sources of the leader – Carlos Ghosn, I found the leadership study is just like learning something even beyond psychology. Also, I learned that it is not always easy to make decisions while confronting an ethical issue because there are always certain dilemmas involving more than one right option into a situation. There are some useful tips that would help create an ethical climate, such as to establish formal ethical policies and emphasize on the importance of the process. Being a leader is very hard especially like Carlos Ghosn. First from his personal physical, every month he needs to fly 150000 miles from Japan to Paris. He needs to control two companies, and make sure all two companies cannot lose profit each year. So, as a leader, Ghosn should use many leadership skills to control two companies. From the leader of Carlos Ghosn, I learned that becoming a great leader first should learn from different cultures, and have less time on strategy making. Be making sure always work on some specific areas, and know the employees are the profit-centre. The last thing is the most important thing which is as a leader; make sure doing the right things such as making right decision to the company future.

VI. References
Brown, Michael. & Trevino, Linda. (2006). Ethical Leadership: A Review and Future Directions. The Leadership Quarterly.17 (2006) 595-616.
Carlos Ghosn. (2012). Wikipedia. Retrieved on June 22nd, 2012 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Ghosn
Carlos Ghosn – Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. (2012). Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. Nissan Biographies. Retrieved on June 22nd, 2012 from http://www.nissanusa.com/about/corporate-info/biographies.html
Carlos Ghosn: Nissan’s turnaround artist. (2005). CNN.com. World Business. Retrieved on June 21st, 2012 from http://edition.cnn.com/2005/BUSINESS/04/20/boardroom.ghosn/
Corporate Information. (2012). Nissan. Retrieved on June 20th, 2012 from http://www.nissan-global.com/EN/COMPANY/MESSAGE/MESSAGE/
Hughes, R., Ginnet, R. & Curphy, G. (2012). Leadership: Enhancing the Lessons of Experience 7e. NY: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.
Hyatt, M. (2010). The Five Marks of Authentic Leadership. Retrieved on June 24th, 2012 from http://michaelhyatt.com/the-five-marks-of-authentic-leadership.html
Meier, F. (2010). Nissan recalls 2.14 million cars, trucks, SUVs worldwide. USA Today. Retrieved on Jun 23rd, 2012 from http://content.usatoday.com/communities/driveon/post/2010/10/nissan-recalls-214-cars-and-trucks-worldwide/1
Nissan: History, Carlos Ghosn, Renault, Decline and Rebrith and Electric Cars. (2012). Facts and Details. Retrieved on June 20th, 2012 from http://factsanddetails.com/japan.php?itemid=923&catid=24&subcatid=157
Nissan Motor Co Ltd-Spon Adr. (2012). Bloomberg Business Week. Retrieved on June 23rd, 2012 from http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/people/person.asp?personId=752502&ticker=NSANY:US
The True Story of Carlos Ghosn. (2008). CNN World Business. Retrieved on June 22nd, 2012 from http://edition.cnn.com/2008/BUSINESS/06/11/ghosn.profile/#cnnSTCText