Going, Going, Ghosn - Foreign CEO, Japanese Company

What kind of discussions are business school students in Japan having about Carlos Ghosn?

With tens of business case studies written about him, his leadership and his turnaround at Nissan the case of Carlos Ghosn has been extraordinary learning material. Given his diverse background and ability as a foreign CEO to achieve high levels of success, various professors in Leadership, Strategic Change, Turnaround Strategy and so on have relied on Nissan with Ghosn at the helm to provide educational discussion topics for case method.

Carlos Ghosn was elected the COO of Nissan Japan in 1999 then took over the role of CEO in 2001. Under his ‘Nissan Revival Plan’, the company’s rebound was so strong that it rocked the entire global business world and lifted Ghosn to a celebrity-like status in Japan. Today, the news represents an entirely different perspective of Ghosn in the eyes of Japanese authorities. Having been arrested and re-arrested as many as four times, he currently remains in prison but a video he posted on YouTube dated April 9th is the first look – in his own words – of how the culture at Nissan under Japanese management and protectionism has led to the poor results and his current ordeal. As a live business case, how can we justify the Ghosn of five years ago to the Ghosn of today? How about the Japanese side of management at Nissan? What is the real truth and what will be the outcome? These are some of the topics that students at the NUCB Business School will be debated in class this Spring.

This school was launched in 1990 when it was referred to as the “NUCB Graduate School of Management Information“. Since that time, NUCB Graduate School has evolved into the “NUCB Business School” where today it is comprised of four postgraduate programs offering the MSc, MBA, and EMBA degrees as well as non-degree executive education. As of April 2019, the school holds the rank from Financial Times as #1 EMBA and from the QS Global ranking as the #1 EMBA and #3 MBA in Japan.