Shanghai Motor is a Chinese automotive design and manufacturing company founded in the 1970s, its headquarters in Shanghai, and operations is many countries with over 145,000 employees. It is one of the Big Four state-owned Chinese car manufacturers. The parent company business covers the production and sales of both passenger and commercial vehicles. It is also involved in Research and Development (R&D), production and sales of auto parts, big data, artificial intelligence and auto-related services such as logistics, e-commerce, energy-saving, charging technology, and mobility services. In 2020, the parent company acquired a British automotive Technical and research centre, which was renamed later to Shanghai Motor Technical Centre (their UK subsidiary).

After the completion of the acquisition, the British CEO and all the senior managers of the subsidiary were replaced with Chinese expatriates. Overall British employees represent the majority 70%, followed by Chinese employees at 20% and other nationalities (Italian, Lebanon, Indian, etc) represent 10%. With the change in the senior management team, a new different leadership style was introduced. The Chinese expatriate senior management team adopted a traditional and transactional leadership style that emphasises a command-and-control way of management. Despite having a diverse workforce, the Chinese expatriates’ team didn’t pay attention to diversity and inclusion issues, and they focused only on meeting the minimum legal requirement. A surface level of diversity management is the approach being followed under the new management (they focus on the observable physiological differences, e.g., race, ethnicity, and gender). Their leadership style and the lack of diversity and inclusion strategy appear to have caused issues for employees and complicated the work at the UK subsidiary.

Questions

Q1: “Leaders are individuals who establish direction for a working group of individuals, who gain commitment from these group members to this direction, and who then motivate these members to achieve the direction's outcome” (Conger, 1992, p. 18).

A: Discuss with examples the importance of effective leadership for Shanghai Motor Technical Centre (The UK subsidiary). (LO1,3)

B: Suggest and critically analyse two different approaches to leadership that can help Shanghai Motor to operate successfully in the UK and link your analysis to their applicability to different IHRM orientations and cultural dimensions. (LO1,3)