Internal feud at Toyota pits family against managers




A “long-simmering internal feud” at Toyota Corp. has been exacerbated by the company’s current quality crisis, with the founding Toyoda family and the company’s professional managers casting blame on each other,

the

Wall Street Journal

reported.

President Akio Toyoda, the 53-year-old grandson of the founder, has tried to push out one of the nonfamily executives: his predecessor as president, Katsuaki Watanabe, now vice chairman.

Through an intermediary, Toyoda suggested that Watanabe leave Toyota and run an affiliate of the company; Watanabe refused, the

Journal

report said.

Mr. Toyoda and his allies have been saying openly that when he took the top job last year after a 15-year hiatus for the Toyoda clan, he inherited a company weakened by nonfamily predecessors who sacrificed quality for faster growth and fatter margins.

The nonfamily managers, according to the report:

say Toyota’s current troubles are less a quality crisis and more a management and public-relations crisis of Mr. Toyoda’s making, reflecting their longstanding warnings that he wasn’t ready to run a global corporation.

(Source:

Wall Street Journal,

April 14, 2010.)

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