Volha Bieck

Leadership through change, change through leadership: Analysis of Nissan's successful turnaround 1999-2001 Volha Bieck

Master's Thesis from the year 2013 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 2,0, Reutlingen University (International Management MBA), language: English, abstract: In times of globalisation, more and more enterprises try to strengthen their market position through acquisition or alliance with new partners, so that the problem of uniting two companies and establishing a globally effective organisation gets on weight. Statistics on transformational change is not very positive though, only around 30 percent is reported to be successful. Nevertheless, some positive examples of the past and present show that transformational change indeed can succeed - if done correctly. What are the factors that define whether a change will succeed or fail? The main objective of the thesis will be to analyse the success criteria of transformational change and the leader's role in it on example of a Japanese car maker. Nissan's turnaround in 1999 was initially criticised by industry insiders, but two years after the beginning of the transformation it was widely discussed in the international media and claimed as "sensational" because of its prompt and astonishing results. One man behind this change was Carlos Ghosn, who had a double function at that time as COO, both of Nissan and Renault, and could bring the heavy in-debt Japanese car maker into the black again.