Leadership Theory and its Role in Organizational Success

This article discusses the role of leadership in organizational success, focusing on the positive and negative influences of leadership styles. It includes a case study of Marks & Spencer and explores the challenges associated with their transactional leadership style. The article suggests the implementation of a situational leadership style for better flexibility and adaptability.

Leadership Theory
(Assessment 3)

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7
.........................................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Leadership is refers to the process of guiding or leading the group of people in a direction
that leads to accomplishment of organisational goals along with personal objectives. The
leadership plays a significant role within the growth and success of an organisation by ensuring
that the effort of employees must be directed in right manner so that they can work over the
vision which in turn contribute toward accomplishment of organisational goals and objectives
(Antonakis and House, 2014). In order to perform this project Marks and Spencer is taken into
consideration which is a larger multinational retailer which deal in variety of product categories
such as clothing, food items, grocery etc. As the organisation operates its store at international
market leadership style plays a significant role as it help in keeping the employees engaged
within the actual goals or target of the organisation. In this report a detailed investigation over
the role of leadership within an organisation along with its positive and negative influence at
workplace has been studied. Along with this it also focuses over analysing the issues that are
associated with a particular leadership style that presently an organisation is facing.
MAIN BODY
Leadership is basically refers to the art of keeping employees motivated for performing
the operations in a particular direction in order to achieve a common goal. In business setting it is
mainly refers to as a directing workers as well as colleagues over the strategy formulated by
organisation in order to achieve certain objectives. An effective leaders is one which ensures
that its follower get directed in a manner that they become able to achieve their personal goals
while the accomplishment of organisational goals and objectives. A leaders is consider to be a
main person behind the success or failure of an organisation as a leaders is one who work as a
mediator between the top management as well as employees. In addition to this leaders is also
responsible of dividing the strategies formulated by top management into set of activities to be
performed by the employees (Tyssen, Wald and Spieth, 2014). This in turn contribute toward
aligning the efforts of employees in the direction of accomplishing the organisational goals and
objectives. In addition to this it also play a major role within keeping employees motivated
toward the work or task assigned to them by providing them direction and influencing or
encouraging them with set of actions such as guiding, appreciating, recognising them while
making regularly encouraging them to perform well through providing several development
1

opportunities by challenging them skill or capabilities through assigning them with typical tasks.
These actions performed by a leader support the employees in their development by regularly
sharpening up their skills and capabilities. This support an organisation in keeping the employees
aligned with the goals and objectives which in turn contribute toward the growth as well as
success of an organisation by enhancing the quality as well as level of productivity (Hamstra and
et. al., 2014). This in turn also support in keeping the employees prepared for future challenges
while keeping them aligned with the vision and mission of organisation which direct them
toward the pathway of organisational success.
Marks & Spencer is a larger multinational retailers which operates its chain of
supermarket throughout the world in order to offer variety of products or services to customers.
The major product categories in which Marks & Spencer is dealing are clothings, luxury food
items, household products and grocery items which it offer throughout the world by maintaining
their own stores. These brings up several challenges but the organisation is growing in effective
manner which become possible only because of its effective management practices which
allowed Marks & Spence to approach new heights. The Marks & Spencer make use of
transactional leadership style where the current CEO of organisation is committed toward the
achievement of organisational goals by ensuring the higher performance of employees can be
maintained by the teams at each and every level of hierarchy structure. A transactional leaders
are one who put emphasis over the value, order as well as structure. These leadership styles are
mainly adopted by larger multinational organisation where international projects are being lead
by them which requires to follow the rules and regulations for completing the objective and
ensuring flow of people and supplies in an organised manner (Rowold, 2014). This leadership
style brings up several benefit to Marks & Spencer such as it help in keeping employees
motivated toward their work as this leadership style is based on the reward and punishment
system. Under this leadership style employees are being encourage by to perform well in order to
achieve incentives and another benefits. On the other side this leadership style also perform
operations in a structured form where employees are provided with clear instruction and
expected to follow a chain of command for performing operations in pre specified manner. The
employees of Marks and Spencer are being assigned with instructions for their day to day
operations so that their remain a clarity about the set of actions to be performed which in turn
help in avoiding the risk of duplication of work.
2

Despite of all these, as the transactional leadership deals work in a structured manner
while considering all the rule and regulation as well as remain rigid toward passing the orders to
its employees and order them to perform operations in instructed manner (Khan, 2017). As a
result of which it do not allow the people to share their view or ideas which in turn restrict the
flow of innovative and creative ideas at workplace. Therefore there are number of issues that
Marks & Spencer may face due to transformational leadership. These issues can be better
understood using following points:
 Limits the amount of innovation:- The transactional leaders are mainly rigid and
unyielding where rules are remain similar and being implied for longer durations. This
attitude limits the innovation as team members remain focused toward the tasks that are
assigned to them. Structured policies under the transactional leadership keep employees
more focused toward the assigned tasks which do not allow the introduction of new ideas.
As a result of innovational practices mainly not get performed where the transactional
leadership style is being followed. Hence, Marks and Spencer is performing the
operations with the pre specified standards and practices while making use of
transactional leadership practices. But as the competition is continuously growing within
the retail industry it is crucial for Marks & Spencer to bring up innovative practices in
order to offer high quality services to its customers so that competitive edge can be
achieved.
 Bring employees dissatisfaction: - As the transactional leadership is more focused over
guiding the people toward performing a particular set of actions instead of brining new
pattern of working and sharing the ideas of people with others. Although reward are the
part of transactional leadership but still the transactional leaders put more emphasis
toward the consequences of failure. Under this people who performed the task are being
blamed in term of any issue being identified at the outcome of particular task instead of
blaming the leaders (F. Vito, Higgins and S. Denney, 2014). This in turn influence the
performance of employees by demoralising them. This is the main issue that Marks &
Spencer is facing i.e. employees dissatisfaction and the main reason behind this is that
task and activities are being directed and guided over a single phenomenon. This in turn
restrict the suggestions from employees as their will is not consider by the leaders and as
3

a result of which it increases the distance among the employees and also leads to increase
the dissatisfaction among them.
 Not always motivate employees:- There are several methods or ways through which an
employees get motivated such as tasks in their work, incentives, reward, recognition,
social contacts etc. But the transactional leadership approach fails in this as it only
focuses over the reward and punishment over the good or bad practices performed by an
employee (Antonakis and Day, 2017). But the reward not only remains a factor of
motivation for the employees rather there are certain other factors which are crucial for
motivating the employees. This is so because some workers are being motivated with the
help of a internal triggers. On the other hand some people get motivated with the
interaction of relationship which they maintain at workplace. Hence the Marks and
Spencer must focuses toward adopting such a leadership style or practices where
employees are being motivated by making use of several new methods instead of
working over single reward. This is so because when the team members are not get
motivated by the reward that are offering by an organisation within a transactional
environment then it become more difficult to encourage the people as after which their
remains no chance of increasing the productivity of organisation.
 Less suitability for certain leadership situation:- Another weakness of transactional
leadership is the inflexibility it maintains. This is consider to be its weakness because at
some point of time there is a requirement that the managers must interact with its
followers in a manner where the ideas of other followers are also being consider while
formulating decisions (Zareen, Razzaq and Mujtaba, 2015). But it fails to involve such
practices this is because the autocratic nature of transactional leadership not remain
suitable for the situation that require a strong collaboration and coordination among the
employees. Further more this leadership style also involve chain of command that is
required to be followed by the employees which is not always required by the employees.
This is because sometimes as per the situation it is crucial for the leaders to become
flexible at their leading practices and follow up the democratic leadership style where
people must be provided with the opportunity to perform their operation in effective
manner by brining up maximum productivity. Therefore, in order to enhance the level of
performance and practices Marks & Spencer is required to remain more focused toward
4

adopting such leadership style which is flexible and possible to mould as per the
situation. This is so because transaction leadership practices are good as they help in
keeping the work aligned as per the standardized manner. But as several situation get
arises where it is essential to firstly discuss the work to the employees and then proceed
over implementing it (Obeidat and Zyod, 2015). This is so because the floor employees
of Marks & Spencer have a direct interaction with the customers visit. Hence they must
have more information about the customers as well as their changing demand. Therefore
by discussing the changes to be anticipated within the organisation it become easier for
Marks & Spencer to be able to brings changes or perform practices as per the requirement
that further contribute toward achieving greater success and competitive edge at
marketplace.
 Promotes the disadvantage of Authoritarian Leadership :- The transactional
leadership shares some of the common characteristics of authoritarian approach which in
turn also brings up several disadvantage in bundle of this approach which revolves
around the personal control over decision. Some of these limitations that Marks &
Spencer is mainly facing due to this strategy are inability to make better decision because
of lack of input and insight from different sources, elimination of innovation, the lack of
feedback mechanism that needed to make corrective changes and more dependencies
among employees over the instructions of leaders (Saeed and et. al., 2014). In addition to
this there are also certain drawback for Marks & Spencer in term of using this
transactional approach which is decrease in morale and motivation of followers as they
have to work over the instruction of leaders and are not allowed brings up their own
thoughts and views regarding the issues. As a result of these strict adherence to
compliance or imposition of stringent rules as well as processes create boundaries to the
micro management. This in turn discourage the individuals that want a higher degree of
freedom in order to perform their task by implementing several skills or capabilities they
are having.
Therefore it can be state that leadership plays a significant role within the organisational
success by keeping all the resources and employees align with the strategies that are being
formulated by the top authorities for the performance of an organisation in market place. But in
order to achieve success it is crucial for an organisation to make right selection of leadership
5

style. This is so because the kind of leadership style an organisation choose have a huge
influence over the pattern that employees follow in order to perform their operations in effective
manner toward the accomplishment of organisational goals and objectives. Marks & Spencer
follows a transactional leadership style in order to operate its business practices in effective
manner (Moriano, and et. al., 2014). This is so because it maintain a range of stores throughout
the world which make it difficult to manage all the stores in effective manner. Therefore, the
transactional leadership style support in ensuring that the operations performed by employees
must be directed toward the objectives that are being formulated by the top authorities and must
perform operations toward the vision of Marks and Spencer. This is to be done by ensuring that
the employees work must be performed over the instruction of leaders so that each activity get
perform in a systematic manner so that most positive outcome can be achieved. But this
leadership style have several drawback and also not much effective as per the changing demand
of market. Therefore, Marks & Spencer must focuses toward the implementing situational
leadership style as this leadership style is more flexible as compare to transactional one (Afshari
and Gibson, 2016). This is because it allows a leaders to make use of different leadership
approach as per the situation present in front of the leaders so that it become easier to deal with it
and reduce the challenges that may affect the performance of employees.
CONCLUSION
From the above mentioned information it can be summarised that leadership is consider
to be a most significant part of an organisation which support in directing the work as well as
efforts of employees in right direction. This in turn support in aligning all the operations toward
the accomplishment of organisational goals and objectives. There are set of activities that are
performed by a leaders such as breaking down of objectives into strategies, delegating the work
to follower as per their capability, guiding them over their operations and many more. These all
contribute toward aligning the efforts of employees toward the main goals and objectives of
organisation. Therefore leadership activities remains crucial for organisational success and
development.
6

REFERENCES
Books & Journals
Afshari, L. and Gibson, P., 2016. How to increase organizational commitment through
transactional leadership. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 37(4),
pp.507-519.
Antonakis, J. and Day, D.V. eds., 2017. The nature of leadership. Sage publications.
Antonakis, J. and House, R.J., 2014. Instrumental leadership: Measurement and extension of
transformational–transactional leadership theory. The Leadership Quarterly, 25(4),
pp.746-771.
F. Vito, G., E. Higgins, G. and S. Denney, A., 2014. Transactional and transformational
leadership: An examination of the leadership challenge model. Policing: An
International Journal of Police Strategies & Management, 37(4), pp.809-822.
Hamstra, M.R. And et. al., 2014. Transformational and transactional leadership and followers’
achievement goals. Journal of Business and Psychology, 29(3), pp.413-425.
Khan, N., 2017. Adaptive or transactional leadership in current higher education: A brief
comparison. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed
Learning, 18(3).
Moriano, J. A. and et. al., 2014. The influence of transformational leadership and organizational
identification on intrapreneurship. International Entrepreneurship and Management
Journal, 10(1), pp.103-119.
Obeidat, B. Y. and Zyod, D. S., 2015. The associations among transformational leadership,
transactional leadership, knowledge sharing, job performance, and firm performance: A
theoretical model. Journal of Social Sciences (COES&RJ-JSS), 4(2), pp.848-866.
Rowold, J., 2014. Instrumental leadership: Extending the transformational-transactional
leadership paradigm. German Journal of Human Resource Management, 28(3), pp.367-
390.
Saeed, T. and et. al., 2014. Leadership styles: relationship with conflict management
styles. International Journal of Conflict Management, 25(3), pp.214-225.
Tyssen, A.K., Wald, A. and Spieth, P., 2014. The challenge of transactional and transformational
leadership in projects. International Journal of Project Management, 32(3), pp.365-
375.
Zareen, M., Razzaq, K. and Mujtaba, B. G., 2015. Impact of transactional, transformational and
laissez-faire leadership styles on motivation: A quantitative study of banking employees
in Pakistan. Public Organization Review, 15(4), pp.531-549.
7