Leadership and Leading: Impact of Power, Politics and Conflict on Employees in Unilever

Leadership and leading

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
TASK...............................................................................................................................................3
Academic Analysis.................................................................................................................3
Reflective statement...............................................................................................................8
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................10
REFERENCES:.............................................................................................................................11
Books and Journals...............................................................................................................11

INTRODUCTION
Leadership and leading refers to the influencing the behaviour of people in the
organisation. Whereas leading means to indicate the way to ab individual for carrying out the
activities or future tasks. Leadership and leading play an important role for organisations in
directing the resources of the business in order to achieve the objective and efficiency.
Leadership contributes towards the various benefits of the organisations like organise resources,
motivate employees to grow, conflict management and fulfilment of business goal (Azorín,
Harris and Jones, 2020) .Unilever is the largest consumer good company of UK. It was
established in 1929, it deals in wide ranges of products like food items, beauty and personal care
products. In this report, there will be discussion on impact of politics, powers and conflict on the
employees of the organisation. It will include the explanation regarding definition, impact and
theories related to them. Also there will be explanation of short reflective summary on the
learning outcomes based on concepts related to power, politics and conflicts.
MAIN BODY
TASK
Academic Analysis
Every organisation consist several factors which influence the performance level of the
business. Factors like power, politics and conflicts influences the behaviour and performance
level of the employees (Kammerhoff, Lauenstein, and Schütz, 2019). The concepts related to
power, politics and conflicts in context of Unilever is described below in detail:
Power
Power refers to the ability of leaders or mangers of the organisation to influence the
behaviour of the firms employees in order to get tasks done. Power is basically used by the top
level of the organisations. In context of Unilever, leaders of the organisation use power in
directing, staffing the working of their subordinates (Lukoschek, Gerlach, Stock, and Xin,
2018) . Different forms of power are used by the mangers and leaders for influencing
employees, can create different impact on relationship between members of the organisation. It
helps in proper effective working of the organisation which creates positive impact on the

organisational performance. There are following various types of power which is used by the
firms.
Types of power
Coercive power- This power refers to influencing the people to perform the task against
their choices and interest. It is considered as a punish power and create a negative impact on the
employees. It can lead employees termination and push them to leave the job. In context of
Unilever company do not focus on this type of powers because it can leads employees turnover.
It can create negative brand image in the mind of employees and reduce the productivity level.
Reward power- It refers to providing benefits to people for performing something. This
power is considered as a most benefited power which requires at every stage of the organisation.
In context of Unilever, the higher level of mangers and leaders provides financial and non-
financial incentive to employees who perform well. For example- salary, wages, safety and
health securities. This helps in increasing the organisational efficiency and create positive brand
image.
Legitimate power- It refers to monitoring and controlling business resource for effective
working. Unilever leaders are responsible for managing organisational resources and takes all the
decisions. Effective control over the resources enables the mangers to find not performing
resources and weakness areas of the organisation.
Expert power- It indicates the power remains in the hands of person who is highly
skilled and knowledgeable. This power is considered as an most powerful power in business.
Unilever leaders and mangers formulate all the strategic plans and decision that subordinates
needs to follow. CEO and leaders of the company are accountable to use such type of power and
no other subordinates allowed to use.
Referent power- This power is derived from a person attractiveness, worth and values.
Unilever leaders hold this types of power at workplace and decides all working strategies, rules
and regulations. It enables the members of the organisation to maintain proper communication
and coordination chain among them. Proper allocation of resources, authorities improves the
productivity level of the organisation.
Informational power- It refers to the ability of a person to control the information which
is necessary for functioning. Unilever leaders and managers checks and collect necessary
information related to the specific tasks. Proper flow of information enables the employees to