Integrative Leadership Paper: BUS500 Leadership Theory & WesTrac

This essay presents an analysis of leadership challenges at WesTrac Pty Limited, focusing on issues such as innovation, pricing strategy, sustainability, and skilled labor shortages. It reviews various leadership theories, including the Great Man Theory, Trait Theory, Behavioral Theory, Transactional Theory, and Transformational Leadership, to identify effective strategies for WesTrac. The essay emphasizes the importance of innovation, market research for pricing, and sustainable business practices. Ultimately, it recommends adopting a Transformational Leadership style to motivate employees, foster responsibility, and implement participative leadership, enhancing the company's competitiveness and growth. Desklib provides a platform to access this and many other solved assignments to help students with their studies.

Bus500 Leadership Theory
(Integrative Leadership Paper)
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Table of Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................3
Part 1: Leadership Problem.........................................................................................................................4
Part 2: Literature Review.............................................................................................................................6
Part 3: Lessons Learned...............................................................................................................................9
Conclusion.................................................................................................................................................11
References.................................................................................................................................................12
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Introduction
This section contains the leadership issues faced by WesTrac Pty Limited by explaining the
current position of the firm. The most important faced by the firm such as innovation, pricing
strategy, sustainability issues, and shortages of skilled labour have been explained in detail. The
literature review provides an insight into the personality traits of the leader along with discussing
the different theories and concepts related to leadership. The ways in which these concepts can
be utilised by WesTrac Pty Limited has been discussed along with providing a detailed
evaluation of benefits to the firm. In the last section, suitable recommendations have been
provided for improving the quality and productivity of the firm.
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Part 1: Leadership Problem
The company that has been considered for this study is WesTrac Pty Limited, which provides
equipment for mining and construction industries. It supplies a wide range of equipment
including backhoe loaders, hydraulic and mini excavators, scrapers, feller bunchers,
knuckleboom loaders, underground mining products and tractor-scrapers. The equipment and
tools supplied by the firm are used in industrial, mining, building and heavy construction,
forestry, and local government (WesTrac, 2018).
At present, the firm is facing the crisis related to effective leadership and management because of
which the firm has not been able to grow and develop as per the potential possessed by it. The
leadership challenges faced by the firm because of following reasons:
Innovation: The technology that is being used by the firm has to be upgraded as there is an
increasing competition. Innovation enables the firms to stand-out from the crowd and the firm
will be able to attract a large number of customers. The task of upgrading the existing technology
lies with the management since they take the important decisions related to the performance of
activities. Another major issue faced by the management is the emergence of new firms which
have been started with the sole reason of implementing new technology and methods for
performing various activities. Hence, it is advisable for the management to create an
environment for innovation within the firm for enhancing the competitiveness as well as to
increase the customer base (Walker and Lloyd-Walker, 2016)
Pricing Strategy: The pricing strategy is the key element which decides the future course of the
business and hence, the management has to revise the pricing policy regularly. Due to the
increasing competition levels, the customers have multiple options for selecting the services
from among the competitors. Also, they expect for availing the services of the firm at lower costs
which again becomes necessary for the firm for developing an effective pricing strategy.
Sustainability issues: The construction sector utilises the natural resources to the maximum
level and currently, the industry is facing the issues related to climate change and water
management. Hence, the management of WesTrac Pty Limited has to take measures for
developing sustainable business practices throughout its operations.
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Skilled Labour shortages: The firm is facing shortages of skilled manpower due to reduced
revenue generation; hence, the company is unable to hire professionals such as engineers,
supervisors, and estimators. This reduces the firm’s ability to innovate as the current workforce
lack the professional expertise of ascertaining the effectiveness of the operations and they will
not be able to provide expert opinion regarding the process that has to be followed.
The above issues have to be resolved by the management by taking appropriate decisions which
enables the firm to change the business strategy for surviving in the competitive market scenario.
It becomes the duty of the management to implement sustainable business practices in order to
save the environment and develop strategies aiming at reducing the carbon emission. The
operations of WesTrac Pty Limited have been illustrated below:
Figure 1: Current Operations
Source: (WesTrac, 2012)
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Part 2: Literature Review
There are various definitions which have been proposed for providing a clear understanding of
the meaning of leadership. The most suitable definition which can be linked to the companies is,
leadership can be defined as the art of motivating the employees for performing various tasks in
order to achieve overall objectives. Leadership is the combination of leadership skills and
individual personality traits which make the people follow the direction provided by the leader
(Dinh, et. al., 2014). The concept of leadership has been elaborated to merely taking decisions to
continuously look for new opportunities for sustaining in the competitive market scenario. In the
past decades, the management of the firms was related to error prevention and maintenance of
compliance and at present, the leadership approaches aiming at improving the efficiency of the
operations through factors such as ownership, engagement, and maintaining the relationship with
the workers as well as with the stakeholders. Hence, the dimension of leadership has expanded
and the management has to consider a wider range of aspects before taking important business
decisions (Antonakis and House, 2014).
The concept of leadership has been studied from the earliest time and the earliest known theory
was propounded by Thomas Carlyle in the 19th century which is known as “The Great Man
Theory”. The assumptions of this theory are; leaders are born and no made and great leaders will
arise when there is a great need. These leaders are born with those personality traits which set
them apart from others and these personality traits enable them to lead a group of men (Day, et.
al., 2014). However, with the advent of the industrial revolution and greater needs for the
managers to control the people with the varied mindset, there were many theories proposed for
identifying the personality traits such as Trait Theory which enlists the personality traits. In case
of Behavioural Theory of Leadership, it is assumed that leaders are made and not born and a
successful leadership is based on the learnable behaviour of the individuals. Hence, it propounds
that managers learn the art of leadership by continuously learning from their mistakes and this
experience guides them towards taking important managerial decisions. Also, a successful leader
is an individual who is not afraid to take risky decisions and learn from these experiences. The
Transactional Theory of Leadership was developed during the periods where the focus was on
producing a large number of goods and hence, the theory assumed that people can be motivated
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by implementing reward and punishment policy. The management should develop a strict chain
of command where the authority is completely vested with the leaders and the workers have to
obey the rules and regulations formulated by the management. However, the main drawback of
this theory is that importance is given towards providing monetary rewards and assuming that
money alone motivates the people for performing better. This theory completely ignores the
beliefs and social values of the people. But the concept of rewards and punishment is still being
followed across the firms with some modifications as the managers still believe that employees
can be motivated by developing an effective reward and recognition strategy (Muenjohn and
Armstrong, 2015).
With the changing trends and growth of globalisation, the latest theory which is applied is
Transformational Leadership as this is concentrated towards motivating the people for taking
risks. In this type of leadership, the aim of the leader is to inspire people by developing a vision
and communicate the future prospects of the organisation with the employees in order to
motivate them. These leaders lead from the front and they are always available for resolving the
issues and they continuously interact with the team while taking important decisions (Chiu, et.
al., 2016).
From the case study of WesTrac Pty Limited, it can be stated that the firm has the potential of
expanding its operations, however, due to the ineffective management; the growth of the firm has
been limited. The most important aspect of leadership is that leaders always find innovative
solutions for performing various tasks and for resolving the issues. The management has to
devise the strategies aiming at reducing the manual work and implement digitisation throughout
its operations. Leaders should also create a platform for exchanging ideas which are also an
effective way of promoting innovation in the workplace and provide suitable incentives for the
best ideas. This motivates the employees to perform an in-depth analysis of the current methods
and develop new methods which reduce the costs. Leaders know that multiple sources, both
internal and external, have to be utilised for creating an environment of innovation throughout
the organisation (Wang, et. al., 2014).
In a similar way, the leadership or management of WesTrac Pty Limited is bound by the duty
towards developing an effective pricing strategy. Leaders always conduct a thorough market
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research before finalising the prices for their products and services. This enables them to analyse
the actual position of the firm in comparison to their competitors. The pricing strategy is
finalised in such a way that the products and services are not overcharged which may result in
losing the market share and also, a suitable profit margin has to be earned else the firm may lose
the capacity of generating revenues if the services are under-priced. The current pricing strategy
aims at generating the profits by supplying the equipment at nominal rates and the competitors’
price is ascertained while finalising the pricing strategy and there are no provisions for
conducting research (Sethuraman and Suresh, 2014).
Hence, WesTrac Pty Limited can take the examples of Transactional and Transformational
Theories for motivating the employees and for implementing changes in the ways of performing
various tasks. As discussed earlier, leaders always lead from the front and take decisive decisions
this is very essential for the company since currently, both mining and construction industries are
facing serious competition. This has forced the firms to minimise the use of traditional ways of
performing tasks and hence, they are developing strategies for utilising alternative sources for
completing the projects. Hence, it becomes important for WesTrac Pty Limited to look for
alternative sources and use of alternative technology for surviving in the competitive market
scenario (Uhl-Bien, et, al., 2014).
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Part 3: Lessons Learned
WesTrac Pty Limited has to implement new strategies by adopting Transformational Leadership
style of management. As discussed earlier, this is the modern concept which involves taking
important decisions by motivating the employees for enhancing their performance. The
management will be able to develop new visions and communicate the broad views to the team
which helps to identify the leaders within the organisation as not all the employees take the risk
of performing new tasks or joining a new team. The success of the management depends on the
extent to which the employees are motivated to implement the new policies. One of the
important tasks of the management is to develop a sense of responsibility among the team
members by communicating the success factors and enlisting the benefits that can be gained in
the future. The employees have to be provided with the actual facts and the current situation of
the firm so that trust and confidence can be built along with finding new solutions to the various
issues faced by the firm (Nguyen, et. al., 2017).
The participative leadership concept enables the management to ascertain the aspirations of the
employees and suitable policies can be formulated aiming at fulfilling those aspirations. The
emotional and social factor of the workers and staff also has to be considered since the workers
have their family priorities. This approach is essential as employees are an asset to the
organisation as they help the management for achieving the goals by performing various tasks.
The management relies on the skills and expertise of the employees for performing the tasks
efficiently. Leaders try to generate trust and confidence among the co-workers for taking their
support so that the policies can be implemented easily which minimises the time taken for
changing the current business strategy. The leadership also ensures active participation of the
employees in the managerial decision-making process since their grievance can understand and
the policies can be modified if required. Companies follow this approach because of the presence
of competitors and the shortages of skilled labour faced by the industry (Wang, et. al., 2014).
Employees have the opportunity of working in various firms as there is a growing demand for
the skilled labour and the management cannot lose the skilled manpower as it can impact the
competitiveness of the firm. Hence, by providing the facilities to the employees, WesTrac Pty
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Limited will be able to retain the talent within the firm and the skills possessed by the employees
can be utilised for achieving the overall objectives. It also helps the management for creating the
second line of leaders and the firm will be able to implement its expansion plans. The successful
leadership always develop leaders within the organisation rather than hiring from outside as it
reduces the costs of recruitment as well as enhances the goodwill and reputation of the firm.
Since the firm is still evolving, the management will be able to devise the strategy of identifying
the managers and supervisors within the firm. Providing appropriate training and development
activities enable the employees to gain more knowledge and they will be able to understand the
actual requirements of the firm for moving to the higher levels of the organisation. The
Transformational Leadership concept has been devised by considering the needs and aspirations
of the employees as well as the role of leader in fulfilling those aspirations (Choi, et. al., 2014).
By this it can be understood that there are various leadership approaches that can be used by
WesTrac Pty Limited, however, considering the present changes in the business environment,
implementing Transformational Leadership concepts. The concept of reward and punishment of
Transactional Leadership is still being implemented and it is one of the important methods used
by the managers for motivating the employees. Although the “punishment” is erased while
formulating the strategies, “reward” is still being used across the globe. Since the employees
have more options for selecting the firm, retaining the existing talent is a serious challenge faced
by WesTrac Pty Limited. Also, the pressure on the management to minimise the production costs
has forced the management to hire employees with limited skill and experience which impacts
the overall productivity of the firm. Hence, the management has to devise the strategies for
motivating the employees by providing adequate training so that quality of the output can be
increased. The changes in the technology will enable the management for designing new
equipment and the management can also develop the strategy of partnership and collaborations
for expanding the operations (Mittal and Dhar, 2015).
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Conclusion
From this section, it can be concluded that leader is an individual with certain personality traits
and that there are various theories that have been formulated for understanding the importance of
leadership. The reason for the difference in opinion among various authors regarding leadership
is that these theories were propounded depending on the prevailing circumstances. Hence, the
concept of leadership has evolved over a period of time from delegating the authority to a
participative form of leadership. It is important for WesTrac Pty Limited to develop suitable
strategies because of the presence of competitors as well as changes in the use of technology.
The successful leadership ensures that the firm adapts to the changing circumstances and enables
continuous growth and development of the firm.
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References
Antonakis, J., & House, R. J. (2014). Instrumental leadership: Measurement and extension of
transformational–transactional leadership theory. The Leadership Quarterly, Vol. 25, No.
4, pp. 746-771.
Chiu, C. Y. C., Owens, B. P., & Tesluk, P. E. (2016). Initiating and utilizing shared
leadership in teams: The role of leader humility, team proactive personality, and team
performance capability. Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 101, No.12, pp. 1705-1711
Choi, S. L., Yusof, M., Mardhia, W., Tan, O. K., & Low, H. H. (2014). The impact of
transformational leadership style on job satisfaction. World Applied Sciences
Journal, Vol. 29, No.1, pp. 117-124.
Day, D. V., Fleenor, J. W., Atwater, L. E., Sturm, R. E., & McKee, R. A. (2014). Advances
in leader and leadership development: A review of 25 years of research and theory. The
Leadership Quarterly, Vol. 25, No.1, pp. 63-82.
Dinh, J. E., Lord, R. G., Gardner, W. L., Meuser, J. D., Liden, R. C., & Hu, J. (2014).
Leadership theory and research in the new millennium: Current theoretical trends and
changing perspectives. The Leadership Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 1, pp. 36-62.
Loosemore, M., & Lim, B. T. H. (2017). Linking corporate social responsibility and
organizational performance in the construction industry. Construction management and
economics, Vol. 35, No.3, pp. 90-105.
Mittal, S., & Dhar, R. L. (2015). Transformational leadership and employee creativity:
mediating role of creative self-efficacy and moderating role of knowledge
sharing. Management Decision, Vol. 53, No. 5, pp. 894-910.
Muenjohn, N., & Armstrong, A. (2015). Transformational leadership: The influence of
culture on the leadership behaviours of expatriate managers. international Journal of
Business and information, Vol. 2, No. 2.
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