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

This report explains the role of leadership, structure and culture in effective transitional change in Fitflop, a footwear retailer. It covers theories and models of leadership, team development and motivation. The report also discusses Fitflop's Feel Good Benefits strategy, organisational culture, and the use of Lewin's three stages model of change and force field analysis.

People in organisations

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
Question 1........................................................................................................................................3
Explaining the role of leadership within Fitflop and how the structure and culture of the
company may support effective transitional change...................................................................3
Question 2........................................................................................................................................8
Covered on PPT..........................................................................................................................8
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................9
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................10

INTRODUCTION
People in organisation is the most important element because they make the difference
and shape the organisational culture. Every people have different role in organisations such as
directors of the company creates the plans for business, employees of the company complete task
for the success. every people or group of people in the organisation are capable of inventing
ideas, generating new creative things, problem solving methods and exchanging information to
complete task.
The present report will be based on Fitflop which is footwear retailer, well-known brand
offers shoes for men, women and kids, personalized its well-being and health strategy by
developing its own programme. This company has been structured around various areas like US,
Putney, HongKong, Germany and Vietnam. They provide a shoe that aims for muscle comfort
and toning, this make Fitflop special. Also, the shoe developed by a personal trainer with some
good input from a biomechanical engineer. The case study will provide the role of leadership in
the company and importance of culture and structure to support effective transitional change.
This report will explain with the help of theories and models of leadership, team development
and motivation.
Question 1
Explaining the role of leadership within Fitflop and how the structure and culture of the company
may support effective transitional change.
Leadership is all about guiding people or a group of people to achieve success in the
organisation. It is the ability of people to influence and guide learners or employees of the
company so that they can easily complete task within time period. A good leadership focus on
developing others and encourage them with the help of their innovation, new ideas, strategic
thinking and action plans. Leaders of Fitflop work effectively and practice to develop cross
cultural communication so that it can be helpful to create bonding between staff members. The
major focus of leadership is to prioritize personal development, self-confidence and self-
awareness as these factors plays a vital role in developing personal and professional skills.
With the help of transformational leadership style, the company can inspire positive
changes in those people who want to achieve success in their career (Al Khajeh, 2018). The

leaders of Fitflop encourage and inspire employees to create change and make something
innovative ideas in order to accomplish tasks.
Communication is the key to success of the business, so Fitflop uses open communication to
create positive environment at the workplace (Waisbord, 2019). Human resources team of the
company interact with employees so that they can understand what improvement is needed in the
business practice. Throughout the year, staff members of the firm have the opportunity to attend
various types of benefits which eventually motivates them to work together as a team. They
share information through the company’s internal network, leaders and managers support them
to achieve their goals. Fitflop develop wellbeing programme for employees so that they can
share information while talking and exercising and doing yoga. The weekly meditation sessions
and outdoor yoga is beneficial for them to create bond between employees. Leaders and
managers ask for feedback and told them to make recommendations in order to keep the
channels of open communication.
Fitflop feel good benefits strategy
The ways organisations motivate employees
 All the employees working in the Fitflop are given a free pair of shoes to welcome them
to the company. Also, they provide benefits like a new pair of shoes each season and 50%
discount 10 pairs of shoes twice a year.
 The working environment is positive and safe so that employees can work effectively. All
the staff members are friendly and everyone is following open communication.
 To motivate people, the firm is running some weekly meditation sessions and outdoor
yoga classes. This has created relationships between staff members and leaders or
managers, which is good for company’s performance.
 They focus on asking feedback to employees and making suggestion to improve things in
the company. This has built trust and loyalty between them which is good for open
communication. By doing surveys company can learn about what doesn’t work and what
work, what are the things people like and what are their dislikes. They also consider the
negative feedback and solve issues related to shoes and any complaints.
 The company also established various programs to educate employees on wellbeing
benefits and invented activities related to it.

Hierarchical structure is used by company in order to maintain and follow a chain of
command from top level management to lower level regular employees or workers. With the
help of this organisation structure, leaders of the company make themselves accountable and
sometimes replacing someone through internal promotion activities.
On the other hand, When the firm is following only a few layers of management and in
which managers or leaders have a wide span of control with more employees then it is known as
flat structure because there is short chain of command as compared to hierarchical structure.

Organisation is a place where people come together to work for achieving common goals,
objective or target. managers of the Fitflop says that It is important to work as team and close
coordination in order to deliver and share important information within the firm. By doing so
employees can achieve the targets within time period for smooth running of functions.
Organisational culture plays a vital role in the company as it helps to improve and develop the
workflows and guide people to work effectively and guide them to make decisions process. With
the help of positive organisational culture, Fitflop helps teams overcome barriers of ambiguity
and unifies staff members. They focus on promoting organised work structure which helps
employees work together with purpose of achieving goals or objectives. Fitflop company culture
support employees and promote involvement of workers and provide them positive environment.
By adopting good company’s culture, employees of the firm get together for professional and
personal development activities and improving skills (Schunk and DiBenedetto, 2020). A good
culture has set expectations for how employees in the company behave and work together as
team and make business function successful and improve overall workflow. Every organisation
has different values and follows some rules and regulation made by top management teams and
human resources. It is important to strictly follow those guidelines which differentiate it from
others.
Handy’s model of organisational culture
According to Charles handy model of organisational culture, there are leading and
important kinds of culture that needs to be consider while learning about culture. He says that the
culture decides the way staff members interact with each other as well as outside parties. It is

important to adjust in a proper way in culture of company to enjoy their business work and stay
stress free.
Source: (Charles handy model, 2021).
Power- it has been observed that there are few companies’ where the poser remains in the hands
of only few people. They are responsible for taking decisions which is beneficial for the
company’s performance. Managers and employees in the Fitflop enjoy special privileges at the
workplace, because they are mostly involved in the important decisions and they ask to provide
suggestions and feedback. But it is important to managers to not being partial to someone,
otherwise it will create issues between management and employees if staff feel they are not
being respected.
Task culture- the company where team members are working on their projects or task and teams
are formed to achieve the goals or solve problems follows the task culture (Nasaireh, Abdullah
and Obeidat, 2019). In the Fitflop, all the employees work together to achieve success and work
together as a team. Managers of the firm has to contribute task and responsibility equally to
accomplish tasks in the most innovative and effective way.
Person culture- it has been noted that there are few firms where the staff members feel that they
are more important than their organisation. Such type of organisational culture follows a person

culture which sometimes creates conflict between people. In this type of culture, people are more
concerned about their own self instead of working for company they think about themselves and
sometimes they suffer. So, it is suggested to not use such type of culture in the company
otherwise it will create problem for the reputation of firm.
Role culture- in this types of culture people working in the company is getting their roles and
responsibilities according to his educational qualification, common interest, experiences and
specialization (Hiršová, Komárková and Pirožek, 2018). The manager of Fitflop says that If
employees work with interest and complete task with the help of his specialized skills then they
can achieve success. Fitflop is using this culture where employees decide what best they can do
and willingly accept the challenge.
By adopting such types of culture and structure company can effective maintain its environment
and this has support effective transitional change.
Lewin's three stages model of change
It has been said that change is an inevitable occurrence in any type of company which is
common, but it is necessary to manage such changes in order to avoid uncertainty in the future.
Kurt Lewin developed this model in order to support effective transitional change in any
organization. There are three steps in this model which must be taken into consideration before
making any changes and finalizing important decision.
Scenario- For example- if the company use technology advancement and use new tool for
marking attendance, it will create resistance for employees. They will not be able to use this tool
effectively, thus company have to provide training session to them so that they can use it easily.
This change will need more investment on employees and need efforts to make people
understand about the updated version.
Unfreezing- the very first stage shows that it is important to become ready to make a transitional
change. For example- the cited organization needs to involve anything related to change such as
evaluating a problem related to updated version of website for attendance marking and solve it.
Changing- In this stage, people actually make a change which is beneficial for them or
sometimes can be challenging.
Refreezing- At last, people are able to refreeze into a very new state, this occurs when they
accept their changes and believe their decision was right and feel like it was worth it. For
example- Fitflop employees make positive changes at work, feel more comfortable and

motivated towards their task. By using all three phases company can complete its change
management process successfully and help them understand why some people or company are
more committed towards work. It will also be helpful to encourage employees in important
changes in organization.
Force field analysis (FFA)
force field analysis is basically a tool used by company for root cause analysis that can be
helpful for them to take important action once the root cause has been identified by manager of
firm. This method is totally based on the assumptions related to any kind of situation. By
adopting this tool company is able to make business decisions related to implementation,
strategic planning and management of change process.
By using this methods, company can overcome with the challenges to changes such as
change in culture, behaviour of staff members towards their work and habits of people. The
major impact of change is organisational culture and structure, updating important information
about clients and employees.
To overcome with this challenges people must use communication system effectively, using
right communication channels is necessary. It is essential for management team to collect
feedback from staff members and create positive environment for them to work. Managers and
human resources must develop change management plan by using models and framework.
Question 2
Covered on PPT

CONCLUSION
To conclude, leadership focus on developing and encouraging people to accomplish goals.
By evaluating the report, it has been concluded that the company has successful achieved success
in the competitive world by adopting many different types of models and theory of leadership,
structure and organisational culture. The firm motivates their employees by developing Fitflop
Feel good benefits strategy in order to satisfy the employees and motivate them. In addition to
this, the firm offers many benefits to them and creates safe and positive culture which may be
supportive for effective transitional change.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Al Khajeh, E. H., 2018. Impact of leadership styles on organizational performance. Journal of
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Greer, L. L. and et.al., 2018. Why and when hierarchy impacts team effectiveness: A meta-
analytic integration. Journal of Applied Psychology. 103(6). p.591.
Hiršová, M., Komárková, L. and Pirožek, P., 2018. The Prediction of Financial Performance in
Dependence on the Type of Organisational Culture. Trends Economics and
Management. 12(32). pp.63-74.
Jones, D., 2019. The Tuckman’s Model Implementation, Effect, and Analysis & the New
Development of Jones LSI Model on a Small Group. Journal of Management. 6(4).
Mathieu, J. E. and et.al., 2019. Embracing complexity: Reviewing the past decade of team
effectiveness research. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational
Behavior. 6. pp.17-46.
Nasaireh, M. A., Abdullah, A. H. and Obeidat, K. A., 2019. The relationship between cultural
types according to Handy’s model and organizational structure in Jordanian public
universities. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social
Sciences. 9(1). pp.973-985.
Quade, A., 2022. Virtual Team Leadership, Operation, and Technology Deployment: A New
Model for Remote Working. In Handbook of Research on Digital Transformation,
Industry Use Cases, and the Impact of Disruptive Technologies (pp. 165-181). IGI Global.
Rheinberg, F. and Engeser, S., 2018. Intrinsic motivation and flow. In Motivation and action (pp.
579-622). Springer, Cham.
Schunk, D. H. and DiBenedetto, M. K., 2020. Motivation and social cognitive
theory. Contemporary Educational Psychology. 60. p.101832.
Waisbord, S., 2019. Communication: A post-discipline. John Wiley & Sons.
Online
Charles handy model. 2021. [Online]. Available through:
<https://www.mbaknol.com/management-principles/charles-handys-model-of-
organizational-culture/>
Fitflop puts the feel good factor into its benefits strategy. 2021. [Online]. Available through:
<https://employeebenefits.co.uk/fitflop-feel-good-benefits-strategy/>
Tuckman’s model. 2022. [Online]. Available through:
<https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_86.htm>