The problem is that the companies keep booting out American talent. And many of the American executives who do stay find parent Hyundai Motor's corporate culture to be suffocating. According to several current and former managers, Hyundai Chairman Chung Mong Koo, Kia's Ahn, and other top executives run the companies in a far more authoritarian style than do most American CEOs. The critics say his team micromanages details, rarely listen to advice from local managers, and displays little tolerance for disagreement. "It's a very feudal approach to management," says Bob Martin, a former sales executive who left Hyundai in 2005 to become a consultant at CarLab, a Santa Ana (Calif.) consulting firm. "There's a king, he rules, and everyone curries his favor. It's very militaristic."
An excerpt from the article
Korean Management Practices at Hyundai USA
BusinessWeek
by David Welch, David Kiley and Moon Ihlwan
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_11/b4075048450463.htm
Trying to make sense of the senseless, I’ve been reading up on several articles that might make me understand how to comprehend the events over the last few months… comprehend, yes. That’s just the way it is, some things will never change – I think that was Bruce Hornsby who said that.
But as fate would have it, I have had the funniest yet debilitating experience yesterday when the man who started all the issues leading to the demotion of all managers, cutting of salaries of people who were wrongfully accused and ultimately sanctioned showed up as arranged to face the music. You see, after he confided to a junior executive that there were anomalies in the company, he went AWOL on us. He is one talented individual, somebody whom I identify with in terms of skill, perseverance and drive specially in my younger years. I hired him together with the same people who are now suffering because of him. At the time when he worked for us, he was diligent, persevering and focused… or so we thought.
In yesterday’s face-off meeting, we all suddenly realized that;
He has been harboring ill feelings towards a lot of people because he personally thinks that their accomplishments and outputs are but a “joke” as he said in verbatim.He wanted to make a good show so much so that he thinks that everyone should follow him and his vision as well as have the same perception of what he thinks as “beautiful”.
His ambition to “rule” will make him do anything plausible to expedite the realization of his ambitions.
His people skill is entirely off track, his framework all messed up and that he is beyond the word “different”.
To think that the Chairman has based his constructive actions against all the officers of this company that led to the pending resignation of more than five managers as to date is simply ludicrous. Nevertheless, the damage has been done…
I am exalted that the truth is finally out and redemption is in the offing. I am however frustrated that despite this, so what? Who will fix what was broken? Who will right what was wrong? – when Gods are never wrong…
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