Lee Iacocca's Legacy

Chrysler: Iacocca's Legacy

Gary Fleenor

Catherine Rouyes

Brenda Simpson

Shira Temple

Indiana Wesleyan University

MGT 532

Fall 2009

Introduction

Lee Iacocca is considered one of the greatest business minds of his time. Iacocca was employed as the CEO of Ford Motor Company which Ford Motor Company terminated him from his position as CEO of Ford. A month later he was offered a position with the Chrysler Corporation as the new CEO and President. He accepted the offer, and this is where he built his legacy. He took a business that was on the verge of bankruptcy and turned it around, while making it into one of the largest and most profitable companies in the auto industry. This paper is about a unique leader and what he did with Chrysler, from changing its behavior, dealing with the problems that he faced when he took over, how he was able to turn Chrysler around, and what issues Robert Eaton faced as he took over the company after Iacocca’s retirement.

What was the organizations behavior?

Back in the late 1970’s, before Lee Iacocca arrived, Chrysler built a sales bank of vehicles so large, that cars sat for months out in fields. Sometimes the cars sat so long that rats and other critters took up residence in the engine compartments and weeds grew up through the cracks of the pavement. (Automotive News, 2006) Chrysler did not appear to be just one company when Iacocca took over as CEO, it was a bunch of small companies that did not know or care what the other companies where doing. Lee Iacocca described the company as, “a bunch of mini-empires, with nobody giving a damn about what anyone else was doing?” (Green, 2007)

According to Lauer (2007), “there was no communication, no teamwork, and whole departments seemed to be going their own way without any consideration for the company as a whole.” This behavior was common knowledge to all, even the people that worked for the company. Everyone more or less did what they wanted in their department. Then...