Ford Dysfunctional Organization

In 2007, The Ford Motor Company (Ford) was struggling in the auto industry along with other auto companies.   The chief executive was frustrated and felt that an insider no longer could fix Ford.   He chose to hire Alan R. Mulally, a former chief of Boeing Company.   Mulally began working hard to change the organizations work habits to help Ford to regain profits in the auto industry despite the economic problems they were facing.
Ford had become a dysfunctional organization because of relationship conflicts.   According to McShane relationship conflict is a type of conflict which people focus on characteristics of other individuals rather than on the issues, as the source of conflict.  
The divisions and departments at Ford had different objectives.   They could not find common values and goals, and were not able to cooperate.   The engineers became defensive, interrupting the testers at the Consumer Reports automobile testing facility.   The members at Ford had the “tendency to rationalize their mistakes” (Bloomberg).   Mulally’s intervention during the incident at Consumer Reports automobile testing facility was good.     He was able to stop the defensiveness of the engineers by asking them to stop and listen to what others had to say.     Mulally encouraged teams to admit mistakes, share more information and cooperate across divisions.
There were a number of sources of conflict within Ford, their inability to resolve conflicting interests, intellectual biases, the royal hierarchy at Ford, and labor/management - supervisor/employee power differences.   Some divisions and regions had goals that are incompatible with those of other divisions and regions.   The members lacked communication. Good communication requires trust, a suspension of assumptions and hard work from executive level downward to front line employees.   Executives were not able to interact with the lower subordinates.   Executives need significant information from front-line employees to make good...