Ricardo Semler: Creating Organizational Change Through

Ricardo Semler: Creating Organizational Change Through Employee Empowered Leadership

Peter A. Maresco, Ph.D., Clinical Assistant Professor of Management, Sacred Heart University, Fairfield, CT Christopher C. York, J.D., Assistant Professor of Management, Sacred Heart University, Fairfield, CT

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Through his unique leadership style, Ricardo Semler, President & CEO of Semco S.A., a Brazilian manufacturing company, has literally redefined the concept of employee empowered leadership. At 20, the youngest graduate of the Harvard Business School, Semler is known around the world for championing his employee-friendly management style. Researched from primary sources including his best selling books, Maverick: The Success Story Behind The World’s Most Unusual Workplace (1993 ) first published in 1988 as Turning the Tables, and THE SEVEN-DAY WEEKEND: Changing the Way Work Works (2004), as well as two articles he authored in the Harvard Business Review, Managing Without Managers, (1989) and Why My Employees Still Work For Me (1994), this paper provides readers with insights on how to get beyond those who say that organizations are too large and/or too bureaucratic to change. In addition, it provides concrete examples of how his company routinely ignores the rules while at the same time creating a new paradigm for creative leadership and organizational effectiveness. Overview Semco S.A., founded by Antonio Semler in 1912, was a traditionally managed industrial equipment company, located in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Today Semco S.A. manufactures pumps used to empty oil tankers, high volume industrial dish washers, cooling units for air conditioners and various types of industrial mixers for the food industry. Upon retirement in 1980 control of the company was transferred to his son, Ricardo Semler, who subsequently instituted an employee-friendly and employee empowered management system that has come to represent a model of worker empowerment free of the left wing political...