Lest we forget many executives are highly educated and rose on merit, suggesting they might be among "us":
Yahoo has a link to a fascinating article from Business Week, concerning Nissan's relocation of its U.S.-based management team from Los Angeles to Nashville, where Nissan has a large manufacturing plant.
I'll excerpt below what for me are the money items, but I ask (always) for you to click thru and read the article for yourselves, both in respect of BW's copyright and some surprisingly candid journalism from a business writer.
Gist of the story: a huge number of Nissan's white collar team refused the relocation, de facto losing their jobs, accusing the Republican VP of orchestrating the move for political reasons.
Nissan's Long Haul To Nashville By David Welch
Fri Jun 23, 8:08 AM ET
Carlos Ghosn isn't just a turnaround artist. He's also the auto industry's most brazen daredevil. ...
Now, with Nissan's U.S. sales slumping, the Renault-Nissan boss is again pedal to the metal. Even as Nissan gears up to launch four models that Ghosn hopes will rev up sales, he has the company moving its North American headquarters from Los Angeles to suburban Nashville, where Nissan has a factory. Ghosn aims to save money and juice creativity by putting his team under one roof.
But the relocation has roiled the company. More than half of his 1,300 U.S. white-collar staffers have quit over the move -- and some were instrumental in the turnaround. ...
That's a big maybe. On learning of the relocation, some staffers were so ticked off they went on Nissan's blog to accuse James C. Morton Jr., senior vice-president for finance and administration, of pushing the move to further his agenda. They said the active Republican had political aspirations that were more easily realized in red state Tennessee than on the Left Coast. Morton denies it. "I'm looking forward to getting back to the South," he says. "But I have no intention of running for public office."
And there's no getting around the fact that the loss of some top U.S. executives could hurt the rollout of the four cars and, longer term, Nissan's ability to keep coming up with hot models. Sending a new car to market is something of a black art in the best of times, let alone when newbies are replacing veterans. Auto makers need to make sure they have the selection of options that consumers want. The correct mix of cars and trucks, with all their different configurations and paint colors, must be sent to regions where they're most in demand. Finally, the marketing guys need to settle on an ideal blend of national and local advertising to cut through the clutter.
John E. "Jed" Connelly, senior vice-president for sales and marketing, and his team were very good at all of that. And he's leaving. So, too, is Jack C. Collins, vice-president for product planning, who played a big role in engineering Nissan's turnaround by cranking out tasty street candy. Seven of Nissan's top nine product planners have also left. "Nissan has to recreate the organization," says Jim San Fillippo of Automotive Marketing Consultants Inc. "They lost a huge amount of talent."
Oh, and that Confederate work ethic?
Also, let's not forget that the last time Nissan tried to do so much, it stumbled. In 2003 it opened a factory in Canton, Miss., to build large pickups, SUVs, and minivans that it had never made before. Ghosn and his team swore building newly minted vehicles in a virgin plant with an upstart workforce and a new chain of suppliers was doable. But quality problems plagued the trucks and the minivan. Consumer Reports rates Nissan's large SUVs among the worst cars on the market for reliability.