Speaking at a news briefing in Beijing, Toyota Motor Corp. president Akio Toyoda “said a key reason for [Toyota’s] quality problems was an excessive focus on market share and profits among ‘some people’ in the company,”
the
Wall Street Journal
reported.
According to the report, Toyoda, grandson of the company’s founder, said the company’s rapid expansion
“attracted much praise from outside the company, and some people just got too big-headed and focused too excessively on profit.”
The
Journal
article said:
Mr. Toyoda said he isn’t out to find sacrificial lambs, and repeated earlier statements that “ultimate responsibility for mistakes we made now and in the past lies with me.” Still, two executives close to Mr. Toyoda said the executive had several particular former top executives in mind in his comments. They declined to make the names public. The statement … suggests the effort to assign blame within Toyota may be picking up.”
The
Journal
report noted that some Toyota managers
have questioned whether Mr. Toyoda, who became president last June, is best equipped to lead [the company] though the current crisis. The Toyoda family scion’s allies have responded forcefully. Jim Press, Toyota’s former top U.S. executive … said the company’s problems were caused by “financially oriented pirates” opposed to the founding family who “didn’t have the character to maintain a customer-first focus.”
(Source:
Wall Street Journal,
March 2, 2010.)
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