Woo Choong Kim & Daewoo Corporation
LDR/531 – Organizational Leadership
June 18, 2011
Woo Choong Kim & Daewoo Corporation
This paper’s will provide the background of the Daewoo Corporation, its Chairman and founder Woo Choong Kim, and the business cultural environment for South Korea known as Chaebol. Secondly, the paper will describe the leadership results and styles of Woo Choong Kim and the results of his influence over the government and the organization. Finally the paper will conclude with a look at the managing style of Kim as he presided over one of the world’s largest companies.
History of Daewoo
Woo Choong Kim founded Daewoo Industrial in 1967. ...view middle of the document...
He was later pardoned in 2007 by President Roh Moo-hyun.
The Culture of the Chaebol
To view the organizational behavior of Daewoo, we must first understand the business culture of industry in South Korea during the Daewoo growth era. The Daewoo organization is as a Chaebol (jay-BOL). A chaebol is a large, conglomerate, family controlled firm characterized by strong ties with government agencies. The chaebols were able to grow because of their access to special favors from the South Korean government, foreign loans and foreign technology. These organizations were so government favored; they were allowed special privileges which gave them the impression of economic success that wasn’t always accurate as the world learned about the Daewoo organization.
The founder and chairman of Daewoo, Woo Choong Kim’s behavior, was a major factor for the failure of the conglomerate. Also contributing to the failure was the reluctance of the government to establish checks and balances to the Chaebols of South Korea.
Chairman Kim’s Leadership Failures
Chairman Kim had always been a man of tremendous drive and ambition. From his humble beginnings he was an extraordinary leader. He was inspirational and epitomized the can-do spirit of the first quarter century of the South Korean economic development (Clifford, para. 9). A good leader is always a follower as much as he is a ruler (Russell, p. 77). Kim has never been a follower, but he was always a ruler of his businesses. Kim was able to use his leadership ability of persuading and convincing all government officials that everything was achievable. For several years of economic turmoil, Kim was able to keep the Daewoo conglomerate afloat by using his leadership skills to gain access to more foreign and South Korean government loans. His reputation for leadership and influence, notwithstanding his corporate dictatorship of the Chaebol, was powerful to lead accounting gatekeepers, public sector advocates, government officials, and stockholders from speaking out against all the signs of deception and foreseeable collapse. Kim was a highly effective leader, unfortunately for dishonest outcomes.
Chairman Kim’s Management
Woo Choong Kim’s management style was derived from basic Chaebol principles. First and foremost, Chaebols maintained a patriarchic management style that revolved around the...