Organizational Management and Leadership at Hitachi Ltd Canada

Management

At Hitachi Ltd Canada, management plays a crucial role in planning and controlling of all operations. The case of Hitachi Ltd Canada shows that the general manager of a subsidiary company whose products and market area are defined by the parent company has little flexibility of unit domain compared with the general manager of a subsidiary where the parent company expects a prescribed minimum financial return but imposes no geographical constraints and only broad product definitions. The latter has far more opportunities than the former for choice in the directions in which he or she seeks to lead the subsidiary (Armandi et al 2003). A manager’s opportunities to change or enlarge the unit’s domain are constrained by prevailing attitudes toward possible new outputs and by the attitudes of subordinates to any changes in the kind of work that is done. Then there may also be resource constraints including the number and qualifications of subordinates. Many managerial jobs offer at least some opportunities for managers to extend their domain outside their own unit. Many of these opportunities are determined by the kinds of contacts that the job demands or which the manager can choose to have (Boehnke and Bontis 2003).

The contact types provide a simple, and easily measured, guide to a manager’s contacts. For many jobs the contact types are a reflection of choice rather than a demand of the job. Some plant managers delegate much more and concentrate their activities on relations with other departments. Managers are concerned with the general problem of the effective integration of human effort at all levels in the organization. In his concern with this problem, however, he is not bent solely upon directing the efforts of people to fit the requirements of the organization. He is concerned with how human energy can be directed toward organization goals in such a way that the basic needs of the people involved are also satisfied. Such a manager, requires a general scheme or platform for thinking far more than he needs some simple how-to-do-it prescriptions for action (Boehnke and Bontis 2003). There are a lot of ways for the administrator to think about the motivation, productivity, and satisfaction of his subordinate supervisors and workers and of himself which would provide him with a wider range of alternatives for action.

Leadership

Following Price (2004) “leadership is the ability of management to induce subordinates to work towards group goals with confidence and keen­ness. Leadership also implies that the leader accepts responsibility for the achievement of the group objective and it is therefore essential for trust and co-operation from both sides to be in evidence all the time” (p. 65). At Hitachi Canada, the role of the leaders is to set tasks and objectives, strategic goals and aims. In contrast to managers who control and plan activities of the organizations, leaders determine short-term and long-term strategic objectives. They are not directly involved in planning and coordination of all activities. Decision-making, along with leadership and communication is one of the top three attributes a successful manager needs. It is a direct result of ‘thinking’ and you need to be able to ‘think until it hurts’. Decision-making is directed to reaching a goal/objective. Decision-making is what turns thought into action: it implies change and requires a decision to be made against a background of uncertainty and risk. (Barker 2001). At Hitachi Ltd Canada one factor determining leadership effectiveness is the relevance to the needs of the situation of the areas of the job in which managers choose, consciously or not, to exercise leadership. (Included in “needs of the situation” are the nature and severity of the problems facing the manager’s unit, the relative importance of different outcomes, and the particular abilities and interests of subordinates. In contrast to managers, leaders motivate and inspire employees through personal example and charisma, unique style of management and personal qualities. Risk-seeking is the main distinctive features of the leaders. In contrast to managers they have authority to accept risky decisions and introduce innovative ideas into practice (Boehnke and Bontis 2003).

Organizational Culture

At Hitachi Ltd. Canada, organizational culture is based on unique cultural values and traditions. Following Segriovanni and Glickman (2006) culture is not simply another variable or isolatable component of organizations. It is what organizations are. Organizational culture is the product of social invention and interaction that are influenced by the following factors. At Hitachi, they include organizational history, artifacts, physical space, and architectural design; degrees of