Developing Strategic Management and Leadership skills Note:The chosen Organisation for the assignment is Tesco Introduction Tesco is a global grocery and general merchandise retailer headquartered in Cheshunt, United Kingdom. It is the third-largest retailer in the world measured by revenues (after Wal-Mart and Carrefour) and the second- largest measured by profits (after Wal-Mart). It has stores in 14 countries across Asia, Europe and North America and is the grocery market leader in the UK (where it has a market share of around 30%), Malaysia, the Republic of Ireland and Thailand. The company was founded by Jack Cohen in 1919 and opened its first store in 1929 in Burnt Oak, Edgware, and Middlesex. The Tesco name first appeared after Cohen purchased a shipment of tea from T.E. Stockwell and combined those initials with the first two letters of his surname. Originally a UK-focused grocery retailer, Tesco has diversified both geographically and into areas such as the retailing of books, clothing, electronics, furniture, petrol and software; financial services; telecoms and internet services; DVD rental; and music downloads.
30
Embed
HYGY Developing Strategic Management and Leadership Skills
This document is posted to help you gain knowledge. Please leave a comment to let me know what you think about it! Share it to your friends and learn new things together.
Transcript
Developing Strategic Management and Leadership skills
Note:The chosen Organisation for the assignment is Tesco
Introduction
Tesco is a global grocery and general merchandise retailer headquartered in Cheshunt,
United Kingdom. It is the third-largest retailer in the world measured by revenues
(after Wal-Mart and Carrefour) and the second-largest measured by profits (after Wal-
Mart). It has stores in 14 countries across Asia, Europe and North America and is the
grocery market leader in the UK (where it has a market share of around 30%),
Malaysia, the Republic of Ireland and Thailand.
The company was founded by Jack Cohen in 1919 and opened its first store in 1929 in
Burnt Oak, Edgware, and Middlesex. The Tesco name first appeared after Cohen
purchased a shipment of tea from T.E. Stockwell and combined those initials with the
first two letters of his surname. Originally a UK-focused grocery retailer, Tesco has
diversified both geographically and into areas such as the retailing of books, clothing,
electronics, furniture, petrol and software; financial services; telecoms and internet
services; DVD rental; and music downloads.
Tesco is chosen for the assignment due to certain reasons. Tesco is one of Britain’s
fastest-growing and most innovative retailers, recognized as one of the best
companies to work for in the UK. Tesco gives their employees clear objectives and
expectations. At the same time, they also allowed more freedom for individual
initiative than most other retailers, as they believe that it is ultimately this sort of
personal touch that can make all the difference to their customers. (:
http://www.tesco.com)
Task(1.1): Explain the link between strategic management and leadership .
To explain the link between strategic management and leadership we should
have a clear understanding of what these two terms actually mean. After
understanding these two terms we can easily explain the link between them.
Strategic Management: According to Barratt and Mottershead (2000), strategy is
described as the way of achieving our objectives. Strategy enables us to ensure
that all our work and things we do every day are going to help us in the long term
interests of the organization.
Strategic Management is the process of establishing and maintaining good
strategies. Making and defining strategy is not enough, you will have to work out
a plan for implementing that strategy in its true spirit. Good strategic
management is plays a key role in approaching business opportunities and
challenges.
Leadership: There are different ways of describing leadership so it is very
difficult to provide a single definition that fulfills the task. As Brindley and
Buckley (2004) argued that, “Leadership has been identified as the process by
which individual and group activities are influenced towards organizational
goals”. The same thing is narrated in Business Management Study Manual
compiled by The Association of Business Executives (2007). They are of the view
that, “Leadership is a process by which individuals are influenced so that they
will be prepared to participate in the achievement of organizational or group
goals.” While Marcousé (2008) narrates that, “Leadership, at its best, means
inspiring staff to achieve demanding goals.” All these things emphasize on one
basic idea and that is Inspiration or Influence. So we can say that Leadership is
the art of getting things done by inspiration or influence of the leader on its
followers while Management mainly depends on the analysis and ground
realities.
After all the discussion we came to the conclusion that Leadership and Strategic
management are interlinked with some minor differences. In the case of strategic
management we are trying our best to achieve some long term goals and the
same is the case with leadership. In both cases we should have someone with a
broad vision; either it’s a leader or a manager. The bottom line of all this
discussion is beautifully captured by the golden words of Field Marshal Slim that
(quoted in Business Management Study Manual), “Leadership is of the spirit,
compounded of personality and vision: its practice is an art. Management is more
a matter of accurate calculation, of statistics, methods, timetable and routine: its
practice is a science.”
Task(1.2): Analyze the impact of management and leadership styles on
strategic decisions .
Leadership and Management Styles: There is famous saying that, “Change is
the only unchangeable thing in nature” (Heller & Hindle, 2008). Similarly in our
daily life things are changing rapidly and we have to adopt ourselves to these
changes. We can’t say that we will remain in the same situation forever. We have
to act according the situation. Similarly there certain ups and downs in
organizations as well. So the managers and leaders adopt different styles for
different situation. According to Whitcomb (2000), some famous and widely
recognized styles are:
a) Autocratic: In this style people are told what to do and how to do. They
have no role in decision making. Once made, a decision must not be
questioned.
b) Democratic: In this style decisions are made on the views of as many
people as possible that are involved.
c) Passive: In this style people are given general directions on the tasks to be
tackled and then left alone to achieve them in the way they think is best.
d) Charismatic: In this style leader influences and motivates others because
of his/her outstanding personality or character.
As mentioned earlier, that these styles depend on certain situations and to be a
good leader/manager you would have to adopt all of them. All these styles of
management and leadership have certain impact on strategic decisions. The
organizations led by Autocratic leader are basically Task Oriented. According to
Jenkins and Hamman (2001), the advantage of such style is that the decisions are
made quickly because people know where they stand. But the employees in such
organizations are not happy to some extent because they have no role in decision
making. As Barratt and Mottershead (2000) is of the opinion that in Autocratic
leadership the Work-force is not encouraged to think for itself, and emphasis is
more on quantity than quality.
While the organizations led by Democratic leaders have proved good because
they are both Task oriented as well as Relationship oriented. But according to
Barratt and Mottershead (2000) the decision making process is slow and that
can be dangerous.
And the organizations led by Passive style are Relationship oriented. And
Marcousé (2008) is of the view that this only occurs when the manager is very
busy or very lazy or has confidence on his/her team and knows what they are
capable of. According to Whitcomb (2000), Charismatic style of leadership is
very rare but can be very successful in the extent to which they can motivate
others to do things to support them.
Task(1.3): Evaluate how leadership styles can be adopted to different
situations.
Leadership styles can be adopted according to the situations. For example;
during a war a commander has to make quick decisions (Brindley and Buckley,
2004), or in the case of a natural disaster there is no time for suggestions from
the people, so autocratic style will be perfect. The bottom line is that for quick
decision you should always go for the Autocratic style. In the case of a Research
and Development Organization, employees are highly trained, skilled and
professional people, so the style that best suits this situation is Laissez-faire.
Because employees know what they are doing and what are their goals. And the
situation that is the best candidate for Democratic style is a youth club planning
for their summer camp. They will have to take suggestions from all the persons
involved and then will make a decision. In this case the decision making process
is slow but effective at the end of the day.
Task(2.1): Review the impact that selected theories of management and
leadership have on organizational strategy in your chosen organization .
Every single person on this earth is different. The difference may be in way of
thinking, analyzing something, working or implementing something. Along the
course of life humans made many theories about things around them, some of
them were wrong and some proved successful. Human are called the most
superior species on planet earth and this superiority is due to the fact that
humans learn from their mistakes. So humans learnt a lot from their mistakes
and devised new theories. In this task we are going to focus our attention on the
different theories of leadership and management made during 19th and 20th
century.
Theories of management and leadership: According to Morris (1999), “The
first-rate way of making a fool of oneself is to propose as new an approach tried
and rejected by earlier generations”. There are a lot of ways of doing something,
some of them have been tried before and some are not. So a successful manager
always learns from the past experiences and tries not to repeat the mistakes. The
20th century has seen many theories of management applied to the
organizations; some of them are described below.
a) The Classical School: According to Morris (1999), this approach is based
on the main purpose and the structure of the organization. The
organization is just like a machine, just feed the input and get the output.
The role and position of every individual is defined. People are supposed
to do things as mentioned by the higher level, human feelings are
irrelevant.
b) Bureaucracy: The main emphasis is on the performance and duties of the
individuals. The duties of the all the individuals are fixed according to the
area of their expertise. And like Classical School theory, human feelings
are irrelevant.
c) Systems Theory: This theory was developed in 1950s and 1960s. The
theory is based on the working of a typical system. It takes certain input
(raw material, people) and transforms them through a process into
output (organizational goals).
d) Human Relations Theory: This theory was developed in 1930s. The main
theme of this theory is the human relations. The Association of Business
Executives in Organizational Behavior mentioned that, “to understand and
improve an organization, you need to understand the people who work
for it.”
e) Contemporary Theories: These theories are based upon the idea of
sticking to the key functions of the organization and puts emphasis on
going towards excellence.
f) Contingency Theories: This theory emphasizes that there is no single
particular way of running an organization. Everything is dependent on the
situations through which the organization is passing by.
Impact on Tesco: Tesco is one of the leading organizations, with a vision of
providing people everything they need, under one roof at affordable price. Now
we see the impact of the selected theories of management on the strategy of
Tesco. The impact of Classical School theory on Tesco’s strategy is a bit
disappointing because Tesco believes in excellence with the help of its
employees. So the Classical Theory is surely going to inversely affect the strategy
of Tesco. The Bureaucratic Theory’s impact is similar to the Classic School
Theory. But this approach is providing a helping hand in organizing the overall
working of the Tesco. But only defining the duties of the employees and
organizing them is not enough. The Tesco’s strategy is to run the organization in
a disciplined manner, keeping in mind the feelings of its employees. The impact
of Human Relation Theory on Tesco’s strategy is not good enough. It should be
kept in mind that this theory alone is not enough to provide any progress in long
term. But the good thing about it is that it takes into account the ideas of all the
employees. The Contemporary and Contingency Theories have a good impact on
Tesco’s strategy. Both these theories are leading Tesco towards excellence.
Changing the style according to the situation and sticking to the overall
performance is surely good enough for Tesco’s progress in long term.
Task(2.2): Create a leadership strategy that supports organizational
direction in your chosen organization.
We have seen the impact of different theories of management and leadership on
the strategy of Tesco. And we came to the conclusion that there is no single
theory that can support Tesco’s strategy. Everything depends on the situation of
that organization in a particular time frame. So in the case of Tesco the best
strategy that supports organizational direction is the Bureaucratic approach
along with a flavor of Human Relation theory. The Bureaucratic approach will be
helpful in achieving the organizational goals and keeping everything on track. It
will also help Tesco to maintain its day-to-day budgets in control and will make
some serious profits for the organization. The Human relation approach will take
into account the feelings and needs of the staff and the people attached with
Tesco. It will ensure that the workforce is enjoying its time working with Tesco
and take their work to perfection. This new combination will be very helpful in
maintaining the discipline in the organization and will be very beneficial for the
employees. So the working and the progress of Tesco will be very smooth. The
people will be aware of their position and duty in Tesco and they will be free to
work out a plan for performing their duties efficiently. Although this new
leadership strategy seems a bit odd to many people but if it is implemented in its
true spirit, it will be very helpful.
Task(3.1): Use appropriate methods to review current leadership
requirements .
There are certain methods available for reviewing the leadership requirements.
Some of them are listed below.
Blake and Moulton’s Managerial grid: According to Mullins (2005), Blake and
Moulton’s Managerial grid is one of the several methods available for reviewing
leadership requirements. According to this method, all managerial and
leadership styles are reviewed on the basis of two main rules. 1. Concern for
Results; and 2. Concern for People. In the first case, manager diverts all its
energy on the accomplishing of tasks in given time. This is shown along the
horizontal axis on the grid. While in second case, employees and their needs are
given importance. And this is represented along the vertical axis of the grid.
Barratt and Mottershead (2000) have narrated this grid as a Matrix of