Volkswagen Leadership Structure

VOLKSWAGEN:
In line with our discussion and its structure vis-à-vis Ford and Toyota, it is interesting to discuss Volkswagen’s (VW) approach as it pursued an aggressive strategy – largely based on its leadership style and pushed by an acquisitions spree – in a zest to become the largest automotive seller in the world.

Leadership:
VW was run by Martin Winterkorn, who was very well respected in the industry for his professionalism as well as his unflinching focus on achieving targets as prescribed. At numerous times, he publicly showcased his uncompromising focus on quality, frugality, and reliability.
Winterkorn was a tough boss who did not like any failure. He had a lot of charisma. Under his lheadership, within eight years, VW was transformed

Winterkorn led from his formal position and his reputation, of being a no-nonsense executive who believed in hard facts and tangible results, is based on reality rather than rumour. He had an authoritative leadership style. This style works well when the company is in bad shape and one has to take some bold decisions, but not so much when the company is stable and is progressing rather well. He was also known to walk into regular meetings, where he proceeded to micro-manage his senior executives and aggressively interrogated people who made the smallest of errors. One of the main reasons of the VW emission debacle in 2015 was that people were afraid of discussing issues with him and shirked from confronting him on any controversial

Since the decisions were taken by a handful members belonging very high up in the hierarchy, it always ran a risk of hitting a blind spot as decisions lacked practicality and were unmindful of ground realities. This exclusion from decision making left a lot of employees disengaged and even resentful. It has been quoted by multiple analysts that if the structure at VW had been more open and had allowed people to express their opinion without fear of being reprimanded, the company could have potentially avoided the ethical crisis that it’s going through right now with the whole world acting as