PUTRAJAYA CAMPUS

SEMESTER 1 2019/2020

MASTER IN BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

MASTER IN ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT

PAIR ASSIGNMENT REPORT

CASE STUDY OF NISSAN MOTOR COMPANY LTD: BUILDING

OPERATIONAL RESILIENCY

ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOUR

MGTM613

PREPARED BY:

Name I.D No.

Marwah Sattar Hanoon SP22979
Nur Syakirin Sulamin SB22937

PREPARED FOR: DR. JURAIFA JAIS

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 TABLE OF CONTENT

No. Content Page

1 Introduction 3
Response Of Nissan To The Disaster And Its Relative Costs And
2 4-8
Benefits
3 SWOT Analysis 9

Measures Nissan Could Prepare And Response To Disaster, Using

4 10-15
Organizational Behaviour Perspectives
Ways Of Nissan Assessing The Risk Of Disruption In The Supply
5 16-17
Chain
6 Product Line Strategy 18-19

7 Conclusion 20

8 References 21-22

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 INTRODUCTION

The case is giving insights regarding natural calamities such as earthquake, tsunami
and nuclear meltdown, posing a great threat to the functioning of a business and affecting its
operations on a large scale. On March 11, 2011 an earthquake struck off the coast of Japan.
The impact of the catastrophe was devastating. The automotive industry comprising big
companies such as Toyota, Honda and Nissan were hugely impacted by the disaster. The case
particularly talks about the damages caused to Nissan by the earthquake and consequently its
response to the disaster. Several counter measures were taken up by the Company during post
disaster to gain back the momentum of business operations and generate considerable flow of
income to stabilize the situations. These include sharing information with global regions,
allocating supply given capacity constraints and excess dependents across national
boundaries, managing production processes and making decisions without lengthy analysis
that reduce time consumptions. Also, several operational changes were announced by the
Company after the disaster in 2012 to make the business more sustainable and less prone to
severe disruptions. All organizations are susceptible to a non-zero risk of experiencing out-
of-course events, whether natural or manmade, that can lead to internal ‘‘disasters’’ with
respect to business operations. Different types of events (e.g. flood, earthquake, fire, theft,
technical failure) have implications for the operations of modern organizations. Hence, there
is a critical need for planning and recovery strategies for the effects of disasters. Businesses
are increasingly subject to disruptions. It is almost impossible to predict their nature, time and
extent. Therefore, organizations need a proactive approach equipped with a decision support
framework to protect themselves against the outcomes of disruptive events. In this paper, a
novel framework is proposed for integrated business continuity and disaster recovery
planning for efficient and effective resuming and recovering of critical operations after being
disrupted.

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Response of Nissan to the Disaster and its Relative Costs and Benefits:

A Recovery Committee was established to the global recovery actions, in particular the work
of optimizing the entire supply chain. As Nissan’s Chief Recovery Officer, Colin Dodge
wrote in the company’s 2011 Annual Report, working as a team with diversity help to
improve organization profit. With that, we can relate this to Team Effectiveness. A team is
effective when it benefits the organization, its members, and its own survival. Most teams
exist to serve some organizational purpose which in this case trying to help recovery
immediately, so effectiveness is partly measured by the achievement of that objective
(McShane & Glinow, 2006). To work effectively, employees must have more than technical
skills and self-leadership to perform their own work; they must also be able and willing to
perform that work in a team environment. Hence, the Recovery Committee practices these
response:

1. Sharing information done by the following ways to improve organization:

Organizational Learning is one of the most popular contemporary perspectives of

organizational effectiveness. Management recognized that the non-Japanese
operations would want information, as any structured activity that improves an
organization’s capacity to acquire, share, use and store knowledge in ways that to
recovery from the disaster and improve organization. but the effort to provide it would
be a distraction to those on the ground handling the crisis, to address these two
concerns, each region was asked to send two staff members to Japan to gather and
share information. This can be illustrated in the “capacity” to acquire, share, and use
knowledge, which means that companies establish systems, structures, and
organizational values that support the knowledge management process to help solve
problems holistically.

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● Knowledge acquisition: This includes extracting information and ideas from the
ground to handling the crisis as well as through insight. Each region was asked to
send two staff members to Japan to acquisition their own information and to help
solve problems. Knowledge also enters the organization when employees learn from
external sources, such as by discovering new resources from suppliers or becoming
aware of new trends from what happening and all things important to contribute to
solutions. knowledge acquisition strategy is experimentation. Companies receive
knowledge through insight as a result of research and other creative processes to find
solutions.

● Knowledge sharing: This aspect of organizational learning involves distributing

knowledge to the other regions and plants contributed to solutions. Although typically
associated with computer intranets and digital repositories of knowledge, knowledge
sharing also occurs through informal online or face-to-face communication. In
addition, the regions had complete visibility into what was happening in Japan and
could help the organization improve the response because most social learning (such
as behavioural modelling) and experiential learning are forms of knowledge sharing
because the learning is transferred from one employee to another.

● Knowledge use: The competitive advantage of knowledge comes from applying it

in ways that add value to the organization and its stakeholders. (McShane & Glinow,
2006). To do this, employees must realize that the knowledge is available and that
they have enough freedom to apply it, this way in motivating the employees and
encouraging them to follow path leadership which has an enormous impact for them
and for the company. This requires a culture that supports the learning process.

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2. Allocating supplies and reducing waste efficiently:

In order to operate efficiently, Nissan should focus heavily on three important issues
that are fundamental to the management which includes eliminating waste, removing
variability as well as improving output. All these issues are covered under the concept
and theories of Just in Time, Toyota Production System and Lean manufacturing
system (lean management) (McShane & Glinow, 2006). Just in Time is the concept
which helps the company in removing the waste by producing the product as and
when needed; this requires efficient managers who could forecast the trends of
demand in the market. With the help of this report, the company could efficiently
reduce its overall inventory cost. This strategy has some advantages as well as
disadvantages, for Nissan, this strategy helps greatly in the recovery after the disaster
by operating in a very low inventory levels and focuses entirely on their supply
chains. The disaster caused a lot of damages for the companies operating in Japan;
especially to Nissan. By implementing this strategy, it will reduce the parts lying in
their warehouses. On the other hand, the significant disadvantage with this strategy is
when the company is unable to fulfil the demands of their customers on time which
could be the result of such natural disaster that occurred which could affect the overall
production at once. (Akbar Javadian Kootanaee1, 2013) Toyota Production System
could help Nissan in coming up with some innovative ideas which could result in the
competitive edge in the industry. The system could also help in reducing the waste, in
addition to this; the company can easily monitor their overall production step by step
in order to avoid any mistakes that will produce high quality products only. However,
by analysing its disadvantages, it can be seen that this system is difficult in the sense
that it is highly costly for implementation, which requires skilled labours. It is
complex to use and in the time of crisis, Nissan cannot afford this financially to
implement them. In Lean Manufacturing System, the company could create advantage
because it helps in saving the time and cost on fuel. This system easily monitoring the
overall production through the use of ERP software which tries to remove the
loopholes present in any system. In addition to this, it effectively analyses the
demands of the customers through the customer relationship management which helps
in maintaining healthy relationship with end users. On the other hand, its disadvantage
is employees may feel frustrated because it will burden them to cut down the cost. In

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 addition to this, this system is not very efficient in the unbalanced economies which
could result in a lack of demand for the products. (Naveen Kumar, 2013). The
company would be sustainable by focusing entirely on each component of the triple
bottom line which includes the economic factors, environmental factors as well as
social factors. This can increase the performance and cater the market in a better way
as compared to its competitors.

3. Managing production:

During the crisis, Nissan main focus is to reduce bottlenecks of stocks. This is where
Nissan implemented Organization-Environment Fit strategy. We can divide the focus
of the process as follows:

 Adapt to the environment:

To face the crisis, Nissan developed the Recovery Committee to monitor the
environment for emerging threats and opportunity. So, in order for Nissan to
optimize efficiency in the entire supply chain, they slowed down the
production lines to reduce the volume of manufacturing. With the designation
of the adaptive transformation process, it helps improving the company to
reduce bottlenecks in operation.

 Influence the environment:

After designing to ramp down the production line, the management pulled
vacation time in April and May to free up capacity when expected bottlenecks
projected to be cleared. With the vacation time pulled, they be able to buy an
ample time to have in-transit inventory to identify and implement supply
alternatives. The company analyses the lead time for ocean transportation to
get the critical parts out of the country from Japan to the United States takes
20 days, which this already includes the moving of material to plants in
Tennessee and Mississippi. This sounds an advantage for Nissan to find access
of alternative supplies of critical components. The company is also able to
secure air cargo shipments to get critical component out of the country faster
and solves the in-transit stocks bottlenecks.

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8
4. Empowering action:

As Nissan upholds a focus on flexibility in their supply chain philosophy, they

provide the management level with autonomy to make decisions without taking
longer time on waiting for central authority analysis. This initiative put Nissan able to
take prompt actions regarding the damages that caused by the earthquake, tsunami
and nuclear meltdown. The company also involve executives to produce solutions for
corporate risks, designing “risk owners” to manage specific risks and regularly report
to Board of Director on the progress. This shown an implementation of High
Performance Working Practice in Nissan by employee involvement and job
autonomy. The company also promoting diversity that improves its strategic
interventions. Nissan had long announced its proactive commitment to diversity. The
company has placed great importance on understanding and respecting other cultures,
as some 90% of vehicle sales are now in markets outside Japan and that expands
opportunities to work with partners around the globe. Women are actively working in
a variety of fields at Nissan Group companies worldwide, and the share of women in
managerial positions is steadily rising. A key theme henceforth will be to enable all
employees, regardless of gender or nationality, to perform at their best in a global
business environment under flexible and efficient work arrangements. Nissan will
continue to vigorously pursue diversity as a corporate strategy by promoting the
efforts of diverse human resources, reinforcing organizational strength and
maximizing business results.

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 SWOT ANALYSIS

Strength Weakness

 Strong brand presence in producing  Low investment of market research

supercars and sport cars
 Low focus on different potential
 Steady improvements in revenue market geographical area such as
Asia or Europe.
 High adaptability to disasters
 Vulnerable to Toyota Production
 Strategic alliance partnership with System
Renault
 Limited diversification on outside
 Advanced well prepared planning to core business
earthquake disasters
 Highly innovative in product
creation
 Embeds ‘Kaizen” work culture
Threats Opportunities

 Drop in fuel price  Growing demand for eco-friendly

and battery cars
 Global competition from other
companies  Collaboration with lower tier
companies such as Mitsubishi,
 Increasing cost of raw materials
Suzuki or Mazda
 Natural calamities  Producing efficient fuel cars
 Technological limitations  Increase engine technology and
 Human safety and health innovation to compete with Honda
V-Tech engines
 Appreciation of Yen currency
 The use of online channel to attract
 Dynamic business environment more customers

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Measures Nissan could prepare and response to disaster, Using Organizational
Behaviour Perspectives

Based on Organizational Behaviour perspective, Nissan could have done some these
methods to prepare and respond to the disaster:

1. High Performance Working Practice Perspective

In this perspective, it emphasizes on workplace practices that leverage the

potential of human capital. Based on the Nissan’s case study we can see that
they implemented employee involvement and job autonomy. The company
should also focus to implement developing competencies. In developing
competencies, Nissan should be able to use the Developing Competencies
Framework that could promote the company to produce higher company
succession.

In this framework, firstly, Nissan should ensure that the employees

demonstrate sufficient expertise. This is to see that employees have useful
skills and personalities that upholds Nissan ‘crisis mentality’. Secondly, the
company should recruit and select new staff effectively. This is to ensure the
expected competencies can be implemented without turbulences and to fulfil
any vacancy of competencies. Thirdly, evaluating performance effectively.
The company could take a post-crisis analysis in employees’ level to ensure
that they produced a high level of expertise in handling crisis, producing
innovating solution, and highly communicates to provide strategies. The
company could use 360-degree feedback tool to evaluate each employee.
Next, Nissan should be aggressively identifying skill and competency gaps
more efficiently. As the company would want to prepare for any disasters in
the future, they should be assessing each employees’ capacity to learn new
skills before any disaster happens. This is where the Human Resources
department should able to analyse all employees’ data strategically and
provide a Learning Module System that could show the level of competencies
that can be achieved by employees. Then, when the company able to assessed
the learned competencies for employees to achieve, they should provide

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 customized training and professional development for employees can uplift
their skills, knowledge and personalities. The training could be done by
outsourcing Subject Matter Experts or hiring senior managerial level that
expert in their area of expertise. In addition, the company should plan
sufficiently for succession. This takes the company to monitor the employees
that already trained are able to implement the new skills, knowledge and
personalities in the organization. The company should review the before and
after effect to see any positive changes. Lastly, the company could make
changes in management processes work efficiently. This is where the
company see if any competencies are still relevant with organization work
culture. If the competencies are obsolete because of technological changes,
dynamic environment or external feedback, the company should be aware to
change the process to improve the competencies.

2. The Four Drive Theory

This is the theory based on the innate drive to acquire, bond, learn and defend
that incorporates both emotions and rationality. Based on this theory we can
suggest Nissan gain competitive advantage as follows:

■ Drive to acquire:
In motivating competition, the company should test the plan and
experimenting viable planning ideas. It is essential to test and evaluate
the plan thoroughly on a regular basis (annually) before implementing
it actually when the time comes. Therefore, procedures to test and
evaluate the plan should be formed and documented. Such an effort
provides assurance to the Company whether all the necessary steps are
included in the plan or not. Other benefits of testing the plan include:
To determine the feasibility of the plan and compatibility of backup
facilities within the Company to identify or pin-point red areas in the
plan which need proper modification to understand the ability of the
Company to recover from the disaster to motivate the personnel in
maintaining or updating the disaster recovery plan to provide proper
training to the managers or team members

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■ Drive to bond:
This is derived from the need of belongingness and affiliation in the
Maslow’s Theory of need. This where self-concept is partly defined in
association with social groups. It is recommended for Nissan to
involve top management or higher level executives. Top management
or senior level executives must actively participate in the disaster
recovery planning process. They should be responsible towards
coordinating various processes of the plan in order to ensure its
effectiveness within the Company. Adequate time and resources
should be committed towards developing such a plan. Resources
include both financial resources, monetary incentives or funding and
personnel resources that involves manager's personality is very
important to direct the employees. Activities of top managers’
involvement are necessary but in this case it. received little attention.
Hence, top level could assimilate their pre-counter measures solution
with the employees’ decision making to give more input of strategies
that can be derived when they are facing the crisis. This is to also
improves motivation to cooperates within the organization.

■ Drive to comprehend:
In this drive, the company be curious and need to locate themselves if
they are relevant in the competitive market. Hence, we suggest that
Nissan should establish a competitors’ analysis system in the
organization. In Michael Porter influential 1980 book, Competitive
Strategy, he asserted the need for ‘sophisticated competitor analysis’ in
the modern corporation, a competitor intelligence system-to ensure that
the process is efficient’. The growing complexity of the competitive
environment of many industries during the 1980s convinced many top
managers that they did indeed need more systematic analysis of their
competitors, and during the 1980s, many large corporations set up
specialized competitor analysis systems. A 1985 survey of some of the
Fortune 500 companies revealed that over a third of the companies
sampled were spending over $1 million a year on competitor analysis
and had at least one individual devoted full time to the activity

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 (Information Data Search, 1985). In the United States a new
professional forum called the Society of Competitor Intelligence
Professionals held its first annual meeting in 1986, and its 1988
meeting attracted representatives from over 200 large corporations and
over 40 specialist consulting organizations. Many managers agreed in
principle with the desirability of what one practitioner described as an
organized competitor intelligence system acts like an interlinked radar
grid that constantly monitor competitor activity, filters the raw
information picked up by external and internal sources, processes it for
strategic significance, and efficiently communicates actionable
intelligence to those who need it (Sammon. Kurland, and Spitalnic,
1984: 71). Yet however clearly the growing number of competitor
analysis (CA) specialists articulated the model of the ideal system, and
however complicates the methodologies for gathering and analysing
competitor information. In building the organizational systems for
competitor analysis is difficult than its advocates had anticipated
(Prescott and Smith, 1987: 411; Daft, Sormunen, and Parks, 1988:
136). Nevertheless, the growing literature on competitor analysis has
continued to focus on methodologies, rather than on illuminating the
development of the organizational systems of competitor analysis.
Therefore, this point so important to the Nissan company Ltd to focus
on it and take all analysis competition to enhance planning according
to the other competitor’s companies

■ Drive to defend:
In this drive it is to protect the company physically, psychologically
and socially. It is where the company responds to a threat using fight-
or-flight response. We suggest that Nissan to focus in improving the
Recovery Committee’s risks assessments with enacted sense making.
The recovery committee as established by the Company should
undertake a wide angle of risk analysis and its impact on the business.
The enacted quality of crisis is especially visible when we apply the
concepts of commitment, capacity, and expectations to analyse the
crisis condition. This involves foreseeing possible disasters, such as

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 natural disasters, technical errors or human threats. Every functional
unit of the organization must be analysed to determine the
consequences or impact of disaster scenarios on them. Even worst case
situations such as destruction of the whole building should be
effectively planned for. Proper measures should be taken up by the
committee to face these catastrophic situations by assessing the
impacts or consequences and further analysing the costs of reducing
potential exposures. All this related with recovery committee
behaviour and how realization and predicate problem.

3. Knowledge Storage in Organizational Learning Perspectives

Using the perspectives of Organizational Learning, we would like to suggest

Nissan to focus on the Knowledge Storage. As we know from the case study,
when facing the disasters, Nissan already acquire, share and use the
knowledge. In order for them to retain the knowledge in a longer term, the
company should able to store knowledge for the use of the organization.
Firstly, Nissan’s employee can store the knowledge in their memory that also
known as organizational memory. The company can embed the solution that
they had agree into the organization’s system that could be practiced by
employees. When the knowledge is practice, it could introduce a habit for each
employee to put it into their daily work routines. Also the company, could
debrief the knowledge by documentation to make sure that it could be
retrieved within the organization. For example, a written comprehensive
manual of Standard Operating Procedures book that could be shared among
levels of employees within organization. Therefore, the plan that stated in the
manual should follow a consistent format to ensure its flexibility. It should
include well-detailed procedures which are to be used before, during and after
a disaster. The manual should be updated to make sure its relevance with
external changes, to improve data confidentiality, the company could provide
databases that stores the documented knowledge. The data could be recorded
in a sorted manner and employees would not facing any hassle to retrieve the
knowledge anytime, anywhere. Therefore, Nissan should maintain their data
centre to avoid any future technical disruptions. Database involving all the

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information regarding stock details, production processes, manufacturing
operations, materials required, in-transit inventory, employee details and other
business related activities should be kept away from the disaster prone area to
ensure the safety of critical documents and vital records.

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Assessing the risk of disruption in the Supply Chain

Nissan is company that currently involved in global operations; its supply chain also becomes
vulnerable to several disruptions. The organization’s supply chain management is responsible
to keep the production plants running. The disruptions that faced by Nissan is putting setback
to the flow of operations in the business and disturb the whole system of the organization.
The increase in risk factors of supply chain and the rapid disruption is making Nissan
position themselves in challenging situations. This is because they have to operate in a riskier
business environment. Therefore, to assess the risk of disruption following measures had
been taken by Nissan:

1. Strategic Alliance with Renault

In 1999, Nissan encountered severe financial difficulties that resulted the company to
establish a strategic alliance with Renault. From this alliance, Nissan able to perform
a framework to facilitate exchange of information between the company and its
traders while simultaneously cutting costs and reducing potential errors. Under the
alliance, Renault bought 36.8% of Nissan’s outstanding stock and this resulted Nissan
to put themselves to change long established work practices and be proactive
strategically. This is to ensure the company survival and success. Eventually, Nissan
able to buy into Renault outstanding stocks when they were financially stable and
bought 15% stake. Subsequently, it increases Renault’s stake in Nissan to 44.4%.
Henceforth, with the changes of work practices, Nissan able to increased their Net
Revenue in 2011 with the total of 319, 221 million Yen profit, an increment of 85,512
million Yen from 2009 losses. Nissan should be consistently become proactive to
enhance its visibility into supply chain operations to get a clear picture of the flow of
material as it happens.

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2. Dedicated Risk Management Function

To identify and analyse risks in the earliest possible, planning countermeasures and
rapidly implementing the countermeasures, Nissan established a risk management
function. In the function, Nissan put an autonomous decision making process for an
executive level committee on corporate risks, establishes designated “risk owners”
that manages specific risks and regularly reported to Board of Directors on the
progress. Divisions are empowered and expected to take preventive measure to
minimize risks that did not require any corporate coordination. This had resulted
Nissan continuous readiness process activities which are ongoing seismic
reinforcement of facilities, improvement to its business continuity planning (BCP)
and disaster simulation planning. The function able to quantify and prioritize the risk
to ensure a mitigation strategies are developed to make it less severe. As an
exemplary, the Company must take a look on the impact of risk of supply chain
disruption towards its stakeholder, directly or indirectly. This trail should be followed
through the manufacturing cycle to the potential logistics constraints.

3. The Emergency Response Plan and Global Disaster Headquarters

In advance of 2011 earthquake, Nissan had organized an emergency response plan

and Global Disasters Headquarters. The principles of the plan are including human
life priority, prevention of follow-on disasters, rapid disaster recovery and business
continuity and support for community, companies and government. For Nissan’s
Global Disaster Headquarters, its responsibilities are including to gather and distribute
employee safety information, look over in facility damages, and planning of business
continuity for operations and suppliers. The headquarter also conducted simulation
training to test the contingency plans. With this intervention, the company able to
produce flexibility process in the time of disasters, taken account of suppliers’
involvement that affected from the damages done and took control of logistics
processes.

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Product Line Strategy

How should people make decisions in organizations? Most business leaders would likely to
answer this question by saying that effective decision making involves identifying, selecting,
and applying the best possible alternative. In other words, the best decisions used pure logic
and all available information to choose the alternative with the highest value such as highest
expected profitability, customer satisfaction, employee well-being, or some combination of
these outcomes.

So what happened in Nissan, they had adopted a simplified product line strategy in
comparison to its rivals. Given the capacity constraints after the disaster, the Company went
for a build-to-stock strategy for models with greater demand and build-to-order strategy for
models with higher customization and lesser demand. Since the disaster had affected the
production process of the Company to a great extent; such strategy helped the Company to
produce goods which assured of generating revenues instead of increasing its burden. The
production of models with lower demand were confined to build-to-order strategy to avoid
any wastage of materials, maintaining efficiency of operations and earning profits. Limited
resources or affected supplies encouraged such strategies and is beneficial in such crucial
time for the Company. Apart from the mentioned benefits, these strategies further helped
Nissan in simplifying its business operations and product offerings along with substantial
increase in its sales. This was urgently required by the Company to boost its sales and earn a
sufficient amount of revenues to enable persistent business operations without any barriers

Flow of income helps in improving the financial strength of the Company. It is a

major concern when the Company is facing huge financial problem that arising from such
crisis. Several functions such as sales, marketing and supply chain management were
integrated to decide upon allocation of supply globally to generate greater revenues. The
departments integration also able to reduce costs of lengthy processes that increases
company’s productivity. The company also able to easily supervise financial budgeting for
the integrated departments. As per Nissan’s case, six production facilities had been damaged
and about fifty (50) of its critical suppliers were weakened. Hence, the strategies adopted
definitely pulled the Company from such draining scenarios as they addressed exactly the
issue witnessed by Nissan.

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 The biggest advantage of build-to-order strategy is to gain specializations of products
manufactured. This occurs by manufacturing the product as per customers’ preferences and
expectations. This strategy eliminates unnecessary use of inventory by making goods which
are actually demanded by the customers. This provides productivity for Nissan as there are no
dead stock lying around in Nissan’s warehouse and improves the sales number. Other than
that, the strategy able to give higher product value creation to the customers. This is because
the customers able to appreciate the brand that provides satisfaction to them and focuses on
producing products that suitable to their wants. Highly customizable products would also
increase the value of the products the reason behind it is because it considers as a rare item
that difficult to imitate by other customers. The brand also would increase customer retention
because they keep communicating with the customers to get the specific orders and able to
get fast feedbacks regarding the product. Highly engaging brand would result to higher
customer loyalty.

As a conclusion, we see that the product line strategy gives most beneficial value for
the company. Each of the strategies focuses on improving work practices in the operational
level and the managerial level, which are very practical for Nissan to be competitive in the
market. In short, without doubt the response and recovery initiatives help Nissan in facing
catastrophic damage.

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CONCLUSION

From the case study we could learn that Nissan is a company that is very competitive
and able to rise from the damages that done by the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear
meltdown. The company regain their position by establishing the Recovery Committee, a
well-prepared advance response planning and the Global Disasters Headquarters. We also can
learn that each strategic intervention that were implemented by Nissan is embedded in their
working culture. This is because they are upholding to ‘crisis mentality’ work practices that
contributes to their readiness in facing disasters just like this. The use of information is
crucial in order for an organization to sustain. That is why most the interventions that
practiced by Nissan, putting a huge emphasize in gathering and distributing data. This helps
Nissan to able to produce strategic intervention that impacted all Nissan’s markets, inside and
outside Japan. In short, the adaptability of Nissan in crisis situation is a good example for
other companies to make them as a benchmark. Even the interventions that Nissan
implemented are strong, capable and adaptable, we also can see some room of improvements.
That is why we suggested the use of competencies developing, Four Drive Theory and
knowledge storage as an enabler for Nissan to make sure that their interventions are foolproof
in the long run of business. In making sure Nissan could be able to achieve beyond what they
had now, this could be a source of feedback that could contribute into their progress. On the
other note, from the case study itself we can learn that the external pressure towards
businesses are real. External environment is out reach of control for businesses and that is
why it could be a bigger risks factor that might take down an organization. This is one a
crucial reason for companies, especially Nissan, to able to assess the risks, prioritize the risk
and minimize the risk to make sure that the company is in a very safe environment. Lastly,
we learnt that it takes a good team to achieve the goal. A good team cohesion with diverse
perspectives increases team effectiveness that helps to achieve the goal productively. It is
shown by Nissan in producing strong intervention during the time of crisis and they improved
cooperation between all the regions outside Japan and Japan to mitigate the issues.

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