Cultural change : a comparative study of the change efforts of Douglas MacArthur and Carlos Ghosn in Japan

When an organization adapts to a changing environment and struggles through an organizational crisis, its organizational culture is sometimes challenged. At such a time, a leader who can change current culture and embed a new culture is needed for the organization to survive. Dealing with cultural changes is one of the most important roles of a leader. In this thesis, I examine the leadership of two leaders-General Douglas MacArthur and Nissan's CEO Carlos Ghosn-who came to Japan from the outside during organizational crises and conducted organizational reforms and cultural changes at two different levels-the country Japan and the company Nissan. Using Edgar H. Schein's (1992) frameworks, culture-embedding mechanisms and basic assumptions, I examine what has, and has not, been changed by the two leaders in terms of organizational culture. I will show how most of Nissan's problems came from basic assumptions of postwar Japan, and how the country has not been changed while the company has been successfully changed. My research was conducted mainly through historical studies and articles written by both American and Japanese writers in order to analyze various events from differing objective perspectives.

Department dc:contributor.department

Sloan School of Management.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2005

Author dc:creator

• Nakae, Koji. Sloan School of Management

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• John Van Maanen.

• Sloan School of Management.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/32114

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/32114