Role of Leadership, Organisational Structure and Culture in Transitional Change: A Case Study of Fitflop

This report analyses the role of leadership, organisational structure and culture in enhancing effective transitional change within Fitflop. It covers the types of organisational structure and culture, leadership approaches, and the importance of motivation and team effectiveness. The report concludes with the significance of Tuck-man's model of team development.

People in Organisations

Contents
Introduction:.....................................................................................................................................3
Question 1........................................................................................................................................3
Explain the role of leadership that may exist within Fitflop and how the structure and culture
of the organisation may support effective transitional change...............................................3
Types of organisational structure.......................................................................................5
Types of organisation culture..............................................................................................6
Question 2........................................................................................................................................6
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................8

Introduction:
The purpose of the people in organisation is to achieve organisational goals and
objectives by utilising necessary resources in order to create it into valuable products and
services. For the present report Fit-flop company is taken into consideration which is a global
business brand known for creating comfortable shoes and is headquartered in Putney, London.
The report will analyse the role of leadership and the type of organisational culture and structure
for enhancing the effective transitional change within organisation. In addition to this, The report
will cover role of motivation in developing effective teams by undertaking Maslow's theory of
motivation into consideration. Moreover, the report will cover team effectiveness theory that
may contribute to company's success by using Tuck-man's model of team development.
Question 1
Explain the role of leadership that may exist within Fitflop and how the structure and culture of
the organisation may support effective transitional change
Leadership is defined as an ability of a person or a leader to guide or influence the
behaviour of the followers towards the attainment of specific goals of an organisation.
Role of a leadership
It is a situation where a leader is responsible for managing the entire team members and the
situation ethically or effectively in which they work. There are some leadership role that are
played by a good leader which are as under:
 Coach: It is an important role where a leader provides support and guide their team
members in setting goals to work towards them and also provide regular feedback where
the shortcoming falls (Guthrie and Jenkins, 2018).
 Communicator: A leader need to communicate various information like meeting details,
sales strategies, policies and goals with different people in the organisation. They can be
the team members, subordinates, clients or suppliers of the business.
 Delegator: In this role, a leader assigns tasks to the team members and make them
accountable for the assigned responsibilities (Luu, 2019). He also provides them

opportunities to learn new skills and use these to achieve the goals of the business
concern.
 Strategist: A leader makes various strategies to get the best way of achieving goals of
the organisation and share his vision with the team members or provide them guidance to
work.
In this case study, Laura Pearce who is an HR business partner of FitFlop played the above
mentioned leadership roles that a leader must have. She also shared her strategy of health and
well-being with their team members by creating a structure including many key areas that would
help the company to achieve its objective and furnish positive influence to the entire workforce.
Approaches to the leadership
Leadership styles are considered as leadership approach as these provide direction to their team
members, set goals to work and also inspire them to attain specified goals. Some of the
approaches or styles are described below:
 Authoritarian: This leadership style also known as “autocratic leadership” that mainly
focus on the command or order given by a leader to the followers or followed by the team
without any intervention (Leroy, Segers, Van Dierendonck, and Den Hartog, 2018). This
type of leaders make all decisions himself without any interference of any group member
and followed strict and obedient environment in which he expects perfection from the
workers.
 Participative: This style of leadership also known as “democratic leadership” where the
team members are allowed to intervene and communicate their ideas and opinion and
help in the process of decision making. This leadership encourage creativity, advance
productivity and provide high job satisfaction to the group members.
 Strategic leadership: In this leadership a leader follows various strategies by grabbing
the available opportunities to achieve the goals of the of organisation. He accepts the
burden of the group members interest and provide them healthy environment. A leader
makes day to day decisions that enhance the long term viability of the business concern.
He aligns the activities of the company with its mission and have clear ideas of
company's customer so that he can adds value to their lives.
As per the case study, Pearce has adopted strategic leadership style in FitFlop as she has also
made a health and wellbeing strategy “Feel good at FitFlop” that have been structured in five key

areas. According to her, when employee feel good, happy and healthy so they would be more
productive and outperform earlier. So, this perpetually evolves welfare strategies that create a
healthy and happy workforce which suit the needs of the employees.
Structure of organisation
It is an structure or system in which roles and responsibilities of person are decided by the top
level in order to achieve the goals of a business. It determines the flow of information from top
level to bottom level whether it is centralised or decentralised (Su, Chen and Wang,2019). There
are various benefits of adopting organisational structure which helps in decision making,
improves operating efficiency, eliminate duplication of work, reduce employee conflict and
makes better communication.
Types of organisational structure
There are many types of organisational structure that may be adopted by the company in order to
achieve the business goals which are as below:
 Functional organisational structure: This is also known as bureaucratic organisational
structure wherein the division of work takes place according to the area of specialisation
of the employees such as finance, marketing etc. Each department has a supervisor who is
administered by the top authority or an administrator. This allows the employees to focus
on their roles, feel self-determined and encourage specialisation. This structure starts with
highest level of responsibility and goes down to bottom where employees are segregated
as per their specific skills and there related function in the company.
 Divisional organisational structure: This is also known as multinational organisational
structure where leadership team is made on basis of the products, projects or subsidiaries
(Romero-Silva, Santos, and Hurtado, 2018). This helps in focus on single goods or
services and they all work towards the common objective who manage or control its
budget and allocates it resources accordingly.
 Horizontal organisational structure: This structure is also known as flat organisational
structure where only single top authority works as an administrator. This gives employees
more responsibility, implementation of new ideas and adopt open communication. This
structure is mainly adopted by the small business concern that wishes more involvement
from all employees and support less supervision.

 Matrix organisation: This organisation is a mixture of two that includes both functional
and divisional structures which create dual command situation. There are two managers
in this structure to whom an employee has to report and both are responsible for
employee performance. This also provides flexible workplace environment.
In context to FitFlop, this has been considered that it has adopted functional organisational
structure where an employees are divided according to the area of specialisation or skill they
have. Its head office is in London from where it has defined the majority of position within the
operations, design teams and field sales as well.
Culture of the organisation
Organisational culture is defined as the collection of values, believes, attitudes, assumptions and
practices that helps in understanding the behaviour of the team members. It assists organisation
to achieve its objectives by pulling the right or skilled employee to the specific job. It also
include the vision, norms and system of the business concern that can be impacted by an
employee behaviour. A great culture represent positive traits that lead to improve performance
of an organisation.
Types of organisation culture
There are four types of organisational culture that can help the organisation in knowing the
behaviour of employees which are as under:
Clan culture: This culture is completely people focused where an employee is highly valued and
provide communicative or collaborative work environment. It encourage mentorship and
teamwork that provide opportunities to employees in improving their skills.
Adhocracy culture: In this culture, employees are encouraged to be more creative and bring
new ideas and innovation which lead to market growth and success to company (Oh, and Han,
2020). It also provides professional development opportunities that are easy to justify.
Market culture: This culture mainly focus on the competition and growth in the market which
stress importance of reaching targets and getting results.
Hierarchy culture: This culture focus on the internal organisation by way of clear chain of
command and multiple management tiers so the work can be done in a right way.
In context to FitFlop, it has adopted clan culture as their champions helps other
employees in doing their work, this help employees in getting opportunities to lead the projects.

Question 2
(COVERED IN PPT)
Conclusion
From the above report it has been concluded that leadership is an important quality for
managers to drive inner potential of workers to perform optimally. In addition to this, it has been
analysed that how leadership and favourable organisational structure and culture helps the
company to support its transitional change. Furthermore, it was concluded that motivation is an
important factor necessary to stimulate employee performance and productivity level. Moreover,
it has been concluded that Maslow's theory of motivation is essential for knowing the factors
which affects motivation level of employees. In addition to this, It has been analysed that
development of effective team is crucial for the firm to gain competitive advantage in market.
Furthermore, it was concluded that tuck-man's model of team development helps the firm to
develop suitable strategies necessary for developing effective and competent teams.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Bake, M., 2019. The importance of leadership and employee retention. Radiologic
technology, 90(3), pp.279-281.
Guthrie, K.L. and Jenkins, D.M., 2018. The role of leadership educators: Transforming learning.
IAP.
Leroy, H., Segers, J., Van Dierendonck, D. and Den Hartog, D., 2018. Managing people in
organizations: Integrating the study of HRM and leadership. Human Resource
Management Review, 28(3), pp.249-257.
Luu, T.T., 2019. Building employees’ organizational citizenship behavior for the environment:
The role of environmentally-specific servant leadership and a moderated mediation
mechanism. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management.
Oh, S.Y. and Han, H.S., 2020. Facilitating organisational learning activities: Types of
organisational culture and their influence on organisational learning and
performance. Knowledge Management Research & Practice, 18(1), pp.1-15.
Romero-Silva, R., Santos, J. and Hurtado, M., 2018. A note on defining organisational systems
for contingency theory in OM. Production Planning & Control, 29(16), pp.1343-1348.
Su, Z., Chen, J. and Wang, D., 2019. Organisational structure and managerial innovation: the
mediating effect of cross-functional integration. Technology Analysis & Strategic
Management, 31(3), pp.253-265.