Chapter 11 Minicase. Please help with questions at the end.

Minicase Who Shall Rule? Carlsson Systems Ltd. (CSL) is a $4 billion, 50-year-old manufacturer of headlights, taillights, and desh boards for trucks, vans, SUVs, and cars. Over the years, CSL formed strategic partnerships with car manu facturers around the globe and currently enjoys a 15 to 22 percent market share in these three major product lines. The company is made up of 22,000 employees, most of whom are working at 30 different parts manus facturing plants. All of the plants are located near major automotive production facilities in Europe, China Japan, Korea, Mexico, Brazil, Canada, and the United States. The ideal contract for CSL is one in which it supplies all the headlights, taillights, and dashboards for a vehicle platform, such as the Chevrolet Impala or Toyota Tundra. However, most automotive manufacturers do not want to become overly dependent on sin gle-source suppliers, so they often award dashboard contracts to one supplier or partial taillight contracts to another The company has performed at a much higher level than other automobile parts manufacturers and generated 10 to 13 percent margins for the past eight years (the industry average has hovered around 4 percent). Because of its financial success, CSL had the resources to invest in autonomous self-driving car research CSL's Technology Division formed joint ventures with several major car companies and bought a number of small companies with hardware or software capabilities in this area. CSL's initial investments started quite small but now total over $400 million. The joint venture partners also invested heavily in this research, and together with this additional funding, CSL's Technology Division (90 percent of which is dedicated to self- driving cars) has become a $1 billion entity CSL's board of directors felt shareholders would see greater benefit if the Technology division was spun off into a separate company. The spin-off was overwhelmingly approved by shareholders, and the Board began the formal process of divesting the Technology division from CSL. It was going to take about a year to work through the regulatory approval processes with different countries around the globe, and during this time, the Board asked the 12 members of the Executive Leadership Team whether they wanted to stay with CSL or go to AutoDrive, the Technology division spin-off. The CEO and nine of the other Executive Leadership Team members opted to take positions at AutoDrive; only the general counsel and vice president of technology decided to stay with CSL. This turn of events was a big surprise and an even bigger problem for CSL's Board. CSL was doing quite well . and its profitability fueled AutoDrive's ability to become a stand-alone company. But in nine short months were CSL was facing the prospect of being rudderless, as it would not have a CEO, COO, CFO, CIO, CCO, CHRO, or the four presidents needed to run the Europe, Americas, China, or Asia-Pacific divisions. CSL had also not done a particularly good job with succession planning. The top leaders had put little effort in grooming successors, readiness tables included a large number of the same names, and many of those listed e taking positions with AutoDrive. The Board had no idea who had the potential to move into the top leadership roles or whether they had to hire from the outside to fill these positions. Knowing that being a regional leader (such as the vice president of operations for China) to being a global leader (such as the COO) was a big leap for most people, the CSL Board asked you to provide recommenda- tions on how it should evaluate internal candidates for CSL's Executive Leadership Team. What education, background, and work history would you want ideal CEO candidates to have? What information would you need to determine their job performance and unit effectiveness over the past three years? What information would you need to determine their potential for the CEO position? What would cause you to recommend that the Board go outside of CSL for the next CEO? 2. What education, background, and work history would you want ideal CHRO candidates to have? What information would you need to determine their job performance and unit effectiveness over the past three years? What information would you need to determine their potential for the CHRO position? What would cause you to recommend that the Board go outside of CSL for the next CHRO? 3. One of the other positions that need to be filled is the president of the Asia-Pacific division. CSL APAC has eight plants located in Japan, Korea, India, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia. What education, background, and work history would you want ideal candidates for this position to have? What information would you need to determine their job performance and unit effectiveness over the past three years? What information would you need to determine their potential for the division president position? What would cause you to recommend that the Board go outside of CSL for the next division president