Abstract
Automobile manufacturing is a highly complex activity, particularly subject to external, macroeconomic, and geopolitical factors. Its narratives, however, center on transformative CEOs. It is a structure that dates back to the earliest years of the industry with the representation of Henry Ford and Alfred P. Sloan as exemplary business leaders. This chapter analyzes turnaround and debacle texts to explore the function of leader-centered narratives. Using the construct of the attribution to leadership it charts the ways in which heroicized CEOs like Lee Iacocca, Allan Mulally, Elon Musk and, paradoxically, conspicuous failures like GM’s Roger Smith and Rick Wagoner, serve to reaffirm the agency of the individual in an increasingly impersonal, globalized, and corporatized world.
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Notes
- 1.
The historian J.O. Robertson, in his 1980 study American Myth, American Reality , had advanced a similar thesis, though using very different language. Robertson noted the importance of “the controlling individual, the individual possessed of vast power, able to make far-reaching decisions, the individual of unimaginable wealth or success,” to what he called “the mythology of corporations” (178). For Robertson, this figure performed an essential function as the American economy transformed from rural and agrarian to urban and industrialized, reconciling earlier myths of frontier adventure, self-reliance, and individualism with the increasingly centralized organization of labor and production in structures controlled by a handful of immensely powerful men. Robertson identifies Andrew Carnegie as an important transitional figure in this process, noting the extensive newspaper and magazine coverage he received, his lecture tours, and the books he authored with titles like Road to Business Success published in 1885.
- 2.
Errol Morris’s award-winning documentary about the life and times of Robert McNamara has been included in the Corporate Nirvana cell. This dark and searching morality tale may seem a very unlikely text to feature here. Admittedly the film’s focus is primarily—and understandably—on McNamara’s experiences in the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, first during the Cuban Missile Crisis, then as Secretary of State during the escalation of the Vietnam War. Early portions of the film, however, detail McNamara’s highly influential time at Ford (1946–1960) where he pioneered safety improvements including seatbelts, as well as leading development of the small and economical Ford Falcon as a response to the immensely successful VW Beetle.
- 3.
The authors note Ford’s increasingly virulent anti-Semitism throughout the 1920s and 30s, but do not address the issue of its role in his populist cult. Recent scholarship has greatly expanded our understanding of the extent of Ford’s active support for the Nazi regime in Germany, see for example M. Wallace, The American Axis : Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh and the Rise of the Third Reich (2003). Philip Roth’s 2004 novel The Plot Against America imagines an alternative history in which Ford serves as Secretary of the Interior in President Charles Lindbergh’s isolationist administration.
- 4.
“Sloan’s” book has a complicated genealogy. Although completed sometime before 1964, it was not published until its coauthor, the business journalist John McDonald, took legal action against Sloan and GM. The company had pressured Sloan to withhold publication, fearing the book’s revelations might trigger anti-trust investigations. McDonald is credited as editor, but subsequent research has revealed the far greater extent of his role as well as that of the lead researcher for the book, Alfred Chandler. Chandler would use his commissioned research in the GM archives as the basis for his landmark study Strategy and Structure. McKenna (2006) in “Writing the Ghost-Writer Back in: Alfred Sloan, Alfred Chandler, John McDonald and the Intellectual Origins of Corporate Strategy,” provides a detailed analysis of McDonald’s and Chandler’s intellectual and practical contributions to “Sloan’s” book.
- 5.
A recent scholarly article on the restructuring of the American auto industry after the 2008 recession calculates that “the roughly 15,000 auto parts that go into vehicles are produced at several thousand parts plants” (Klier and Rubenstein 2013, 152).
- 6.
In interviews broadcast on the Canadian public television network’s cable news channel (CBC NewsNetwork), city councilors from Windsor, Ontario and Detroit, Michigan, as well as the governor of Michigan, noted in response to US President Trump’s declared intention to “reopen” the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that a single auto part may cross the border between the two countries fifteen times in the course of production and assembly. The interviews can be found in audio form at http://www.cbc.ca/player/play/899000387582. They were aired as part of a special “Power and Politics” episode filmed at the University of Windsor on Wednesday March 15, 2017.
- 7.
Mulally negotiated $23.6 billion in financing just prior to the subprime mortgage crash.
- 8.
Until the appointment of Mary Barra as the Chair and CEO of General Motors in 2015, no woman had held the position of chief executive of a major global automaker.
- 9.
Guthey et al. offer an illuminating discussion of this issue in their chapter “The Visual Politics of Corporate Representation” (see pp. 78 and ff.).
- 10.
Skapinker, in his article “The
AmericanGlobal Dream,” analyzes the difficulties faced by celebrity CEOs and entrepreneurs in “the emerging market set” in adapting Lee Iacocca’s Horatio Alger fable to their very different national mythologies and economic conditions. It is something, Skapinker notes, which they uniformly seek to do (157). - 11.
Seven years later, they were still wanting one. A columnist for Forbes writing in March 2009 to explain “Why Rick Wagoner Had to Go” informed his readers “What GM needs in this crisis, of course, is a spirited leader. . . . We’re talking about the likes of Lee Iacocca” (Flint 2009).
- 12.
Harvard Business School professor Rakesh Khurana published his academic study of the issue Searching for a Corporate Savior: The Irrational Quest for Charismatic CEOs in 2002, shortly after Surowiecki’s essay appeared. Surowiecki refers to it within his own discussion.
- 13.
The full text of Carter’s speech is available at the website of The American Presidency Project, (http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=32596), accessed September 27, 2017.
The relevant passage comes early in the speech in Carter’s description of the true threat facing the nation, which is not energy crises, inflation, or foreign enemies: “The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our Nation. The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America.”
- 14.
He may have meant a Frank Capra movie. Two of Capra’s favorite male stars were the lanky, laconic, all-American icons Gary Cooper and James Stewart, while the small-town naïf who beats the sophisticates at their own game is a familiar Capra motif.
- 15.
A Reuters article reporting Mulally’s compensation, noted that the bulk of it came in the form of stock options, and was therefore dependent on the performance of the company’s shares: Surowiecki’s point again. (http://www.reuters.com/article/us-ford/ford-ceo-pay-rose-11-percent-to-29-5-million-in-2011-idUSBRE82T1AJ20120330), accessed September 29, 2017.
- 16.
Moore continues to make highly personal documentaries in the calculatedly outrageous style he first defined in Roger and Me. His film Bowling for Columbine won the 2002 Academy Award for Best Documentary. Moore addressed Wall Street and the financial crisis with Capitalism: A Love Story in 2009.
- 17.
The quotation comes from one of several long blogs written by Tim Urban on the website Wait But Why? Musk is a fan of the site and contacted the blogger, inviting him to write about Tesla, SpaceX, and SolarCity, visiting the enterprises and interviewing Musk himself. As Urban explains in the introduction to his first post, Musk told him that he felt the electric car, aerospace, and solar power industries “confused people” and that Urban might be interested in helping make them more understandable. Urban was interested, though he concedes that interviewing Zeus about the process of throwing lightning bolts “would have been less stressful.” The result is four very long and very thoroughly researched essays on the science and technology underlying Musk’s ventures interwoven with Musk’s own commentary and Urban’s irreverent and informed observations. The first was posted on May 7, 2015. All four are available on the Wait But Why? site and for purchase as a pdf download or an ebook.
- 18.
Anderson’s comments can be found in a YouTube video published by BigThink (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUMZTtQU10o), accessed August 20, 2017.
- 19.
According to Urban, “When the first Tesla Roadster shipped in 2008, there were no big company EVs [electric vehicles] on the market. Today, Ford, Chevy, Nissan, BMW, Mercedes, Volkswagen, Fiat, Kia, Mitsubishi, and Smart all have an EV on the road” (Urban, “How Tesla Will Change the World,” June 2, 2015). Other innovations Tesla has introduced include abandoning the concept of model years, selling its cars directly to consumers, and providing continuous, automatic upgrades through its vehicles’ software systems.
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Borins, S., Herst, B. (2018). Cults of Personality: Fables of the Automobile Manufacturing Industry. In: Negotiating Business Narratives. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77923-2_3
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