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Tokyo. Toyota President Akio Toyoda, known as “the prince” in Japan, was groomed for years to head the motor-vehicle manufacturer his grandfather founded.

His appointment in 2009 was full of promise — a morale boost for the rank and file who expected that a youthful Toyoda in the hot seat would help steer the carmaker through a brutal slump in the global motor-vehicle market.

Half a year later, he is slammed as slow and indecisive as Toyota grapples with the worst crisis in its 70-year history — massive global recalls ballooning to 8.5 million vehicles in a matter of weeks and its once-sterling reputation for quality in tatters.

Critics are questioning whether Toyoda is up to the challenges he now faces. It is one thing to lead a company at its peak and another to pull it through such a dire crisis.

Toyoda, 53, said on Friday he planned to testify at a US congressional hearing next week about the motor-vehicle manufacturer’s recalls in the United States.

That announcement came just two days after he said he was not going and follows an onslaught of criticism from both the Western and Japanese media about his reluctance to go to Washington.

The chairman of the US House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee issued the invitation on Thursday for the Feb. 24 hearing, and he received Toyoda’s acceptance the same day. By issuing the invitation, the committee had essentially forced Toyoda to testify or face a subpoena.

“I am hoping our commitment to the United States and our customers will be understood,” Toyoda said. He intended to explain the measures the company has adopted recently to beef up safety controls, which includes a special committee he is heading.

Whether Toyoda — or the chief of any Japanese company — can deftly handle a hostile grilling by US lawmakers is in doubt.

The US government has opened a fresh investigation into Corolla compacts over potential steering problems. Toyota’s earlier recalls have been over sticky gas pedals, floor mats that ensnare accelerators and faulty braking programming.

Toyoda’s earlier decision to send in his place Yoshi Inaba, the head of Toyota’s US operations, to the congressional hearings was a clear outrage to some Western-style crisis-management experts.

“This is the place where you want to have your top guy,” Paul Argenti, Professor of Corporate Communication at Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, said of the congressional hearings. “If you have a leader who isn’t capable of handling global issues of this magnitude, he probably shouldn’t be in the driver’s seat,” he said.

Approachable in person, Toyoda is vocal about his love for sportscars and racing. He has appeared in racing outfits and zipped around test-drive courses in prototype vehicles.

Toyoda has headed Toyota’s operations in China, and has served as head of its joint venture with General Motors.

He has always voiced a humility about his position and played down his influence even as his rise to presidency became imminent. That kind of unpretentious behavior is valued in Japanese corporate culture.

Toyoda will have to respond to quite different, and much tougher, expectations in the US, said Ulrike Schaede, professor of Japanese Business at the University of California, San Diego. She said Toyota may not have been equipped to handle its overly quick rise to the top of the global motor-vehicle market, and its quality controls failed to keep up with expansion.

Heads of Japanese companies are chosen for their skills at ensuring harmony and stability. They are usually in their 60s or older and have made the rounds of the company’s divisions without rocking the boat.

Toyoda’s role is even greater because he was chosen, at a relatively young age for a Japanese president, for the charisma that came from family ties and associations with history in one of Japan’s most passionate corporate cultures. He owns less than 1 percent of Toyota stock, minuscule compared with other family owners like the Fords, but he is still perceived as having a stake in salvaging Toyota’s reputation.



Associated Press