Leading Organization Case Study:

Robin Chase, Zipcar and an Inconvenient Discovery

Carolina Magri Passarin

Quantic MBA
September 2020
 In her current website, Robin Chase simply states her mission as “Every day, create the
world you want to live in” (Chase, n.d.). Although 20 years split from the foundation of Zipcar, it is
easy to understand that this value was already pulsating within her. When Danielson first presented
the idea of a car-sharing solution in 1999, it immediately resonated with Chase’s desire to open her
own business and through this first enterprise, she was able to develop authentic and
transformational leadership styles.
Chase’s leadership strengths
According to (Shamir and Eilam 2005), authentic leaders have a desire to promote a value-
based vision and do not engage leadership merely for status or power, so they act based on their
purpose and convictions.
Throughout the case (Ancona and Reavis 2014), it is clear that Chase’s leadership is aligned
with values developed during her life. From her upbringing, she developed a sense of respect for all,
regardless of background or social status, that allowed her to avoid bias when hiring the company’s
first employees. It was also during her childhood that she began to foster a flexible mindset and a
desire to work passionately on initiatives able to impact the community. From her MBA experience,
she was able to build her confidence, both in her ability to learn and master new and challenging
things and on her instinct and intuition.
She believed in building a company that would allow her to keep her autonomy and
flexibility, as a mother of three, while also giving back to society. It was easy for her to see value on
the idea as they were building a solution that would fit perfectly into her own lifestyle. With a clear
vision for the business – “to provide urban dwellers with convenient, reliable, fast access to cars” –
and a thorough alignment with her personal values and beliefs, Chase was able to inspire staff and
gain trust of Hammond and Enriquez, Zipcar’s first investors.
Even from earlier stages of the business, she kept a stakeholder perspective (Quantic
2020). Before coming up with the solution they would offer, Chase went on to talk to and interview a
long list of people and entities that would be directly influenced by Zipcar’s offering, from car
manufacturers to policy makers. Later on, after launch, Chase insisted on keeping a direct line of
communication with costumers, being able to gather feedback and better adapt the product to
customers’ needs.
This networking was vital for product development as it allowed the consideration of the
impact on the varied stakeholders. When negotiating with car manufacturers and parking
departments, she had enough information to use integrative negotiations and portray a win-win
situation.
Although questionable on an ethical perspective, Slotnik’s overdue on the marketing
guerilla is an example of a process of leadership where the leader’s influence motivated the follower
to far exceed expectations. Following the model of the four I’s (Quantic 2020), it is possible to label
Chase’s leadership style as transformational extracting examples from the case:
 Idealized influence: as stated earlier, Chase’s vision and passion for the company were
key to securing first investments and to engaging Zipcar’s first employees.
 Inspirational motivation: Oakley’s acknowledgment that Chase’s expectation,
motivation, and trust was crucial in him believing he was able to contribute to the
team.
 Intellectual stimulation: autonomy for collaborators, with respect for their skill sets
and ideas was Chase’s hiring philosophy, leaving room for employees to be critical
about how they could add value to the company, as in Slotnick’s case, whom was
hired with no specific role or title.
  Individualized consideration: when hiring, Chase did not value only previous job
experiences, but also made a deeper assessment of the applicant’s profile and even
hobbies in order to guarantee a good fit with the company’s necessities and culture.

Chase’s leadership weaknesses

Even with her demonstrated strengths as a leader, Chase was not able to prevent the
drawbacks Zipcar encountered by the end of October 2000, when the team found out that revenue
was way bellow project weeks before closing their first round of funding.
Being a first-time founder, with no experience in the car rental industry, she lacked
experience and confidence and instead of finding skilled people to fill in these gaps, she made the
conscious decision of leaving out anyone with experience on the field and was not discerning and
careful enough when hiring a president. She chose to do most by herself, relying just on a few
advisors, but was frozen on some important decisions, like the pricing.
Despite her stakeholder approach, her failing to reach out to costumers before launching
the company was not only based on a cost saving approach but was also partially due to anxiety.
Marketing research and better understanding of costumer’s necessities could have helped in refining
her premises for the busines model calculation. Her identification as a customer of the product they
were creating might have biased some of the assumptions – she believed costumer’s behavior would
mirror her own, when she was not even sure she was a good personification of their average user.
Her hiring philosophy of “try before you buy” may not have proven to be a problem when
approaching her first employees, but might have hindered further relationships, with new
employees under the hourly “trial” contract possibly falling under the out-group (Quantic 2020),
which may have contributed to the delay on the release of the technology as they were hoping for.
As for business ethics, it is possible to say that under Chase’s direction, Zipcar operated
under a consequentialist theory, mostly guided by common good approach, which possibly
contributed to the setting of the situation they found themselves by the end of October. Conceivably
an utilitarian approach would save the business later, as her decision to raise daily rates by
December 2000 in order to keep business operating (HBS 2005).
My approach
Although I identify with most of her leadership style, being fond of transformational and
authentic leaders, I’d have taken different approaches in some matters.
For me, value-based leadership is vital, and the environmental stake of the company
resonates more with my worldview – it would have consisted on its base value, instead of a
secondary one. This could lead not only to differences in marketing (although I understand that by
the beginning of the millennium green options didn’t have the same appeal as they do today), but
also on the setting of the product itself, as the main goal shift to a lower carbon footprint.
I would try to better pace launch and administer anxieties – mine and from other
stakeholders, including investors. This would include a more extensive market research to better
sharpen premises, more time to develop a technology we were comfortable with and eventually a
push back on accepting investors’ first indication for a crucial executive position at the company –
though I see how being a woman running a tech business by 2000 put her in a position without much
leverage to convince investors of her own skills.
 As for the team, I’d try harder to avoid pushing employees to the out-group, specially the
co-founder who might have been able to contribute more have she felt more included (Duhaime-
Ross 2014).
Nevertheless, it is convenient to judge a leader’s approach on a situation 20 years later, but
we must consider how technology and our society has developed since then. Not only was Robin
Chase a pioneer on the industry she brought and developed on the USA, but she was also one of the
few women on the tech start-up game by that time, when only 9% of equity investment and 2.3% of
equity investment dollars went to women-owned businesses (Amatucci and Sohl 2004). I admire her
passion, initiative and courage and see her as a role model for transformational leadership.
 Bibliography

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