Building Cross-

Cultural Leadership
Competence

An Interview With Carlos Ghosn

Group 06
20PGHR16 | Megha Sharma
20PGHR25 | Priyanka Batra
20PGHR33 | Sachin Bhakt
20PGHR39 | Sulagna Moitra
20PGHR36 | Rishita sharma
20PGHR42 | Upamanyu shaha
About Carlos Ghosn

Background
• Born in Brazil to Lebanese parents in 1954
• Completed engineering degree from institutions with highly
selective entrance exams
• Earned rapid promotions to leadership position early on
• Inspired a manga comic book in Japan

Progress
• Plant Manager – Le Puy, France at 27
• COO - Scion François Michelin
• Head of Michelin’s North American unit

Awards
• Nick named “Mr. Fix It”
• Asia’s CEO of the Year - Fortune Magazine
• Industry Leader of the Year - Automotive News’ 2000
• Strategic Management Society Lifetime Achievement Award
• Transcultural Leadership Award
In your experience, how
important is cross-cultural
management education for
global corporations today?
Critical.
Global companies -> teams are
spread across the globe
If you’re head of engineering, you
have to deal with divisions in
Vietnam, India, China, or Russia,
and you have to work across
cultures.
Different cultures -> different
motivation factors, sensitivities,
habits & thought process
You believe cultural differences can lead
to synergies. How? What skillsets help
foster them?
The concept that energizes individuals to
“Monozukuri” produce excellent products and
continually improve them
Embedded in the culture of Japan about how to work together
coming from different functions for a specific objective
Purchasing people work with engineering, logistics,
manufacturing in order to get a car out of the door
Renault employees are learning something that they could not
have done by themselves, by just going and sitting down with
monozukuri teams
The Renault culture generally is very strong in some of the
places where the Nissan culture is weak—for example, in
finance, in telling the company narrative, and in artistic and
emotionally evocative advertising and marketing