Strategic Leadership and Human Resource Practices in Organization

This report discusses the importance of strategic leadership and human resource practices in organizations, with a focus on Gulf Air. It covers the role of leaders in change management, two change management models, and the application of leadership theories according to the situation. The report also emphasizes the importance of monitoring after implementing change.

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Strategic leadership and human resource practices in organization
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STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP AND HUMAN RESOURCES PRACTICES IN ORGANIZATION
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Introduction
Due to Globalization, every organization has to face such a climate created by its external factors
in which any company is free to enter in any kind of business in which they interested along with
no boundaries for international business. Change has become a crucial part of any organization
to survive in the competitive world (Pieterse et al, 2010). The wind of change has altered the
entire climate right from the privatization process of public sectors to customers changing tastes.
Without change, no organization can survive because today's is the time of diverse work culture
where the transformation of culture, behavior, learning, and attitudes occurs and if the
organization is not able to adjust in the massive diverse environment, the organization will not be
able to handle the different competitive and tough business situations (Burnes and By, 2012).
Change transformation and the role of leader
Gulf Air is the popular carrier airline services of the UAE. The Headquarter of Gulf Airline
based in Muharraq which is the third largest area in Bahrain. Gulf Airlines was the oldest airlines
of UAE on the basis of their international flights. In 1970, the state of Qatar, the Abu Dhabi and
Oman government decided to manage this airline corporation BOAC which was relatively small
airlines in compare to British Airways (Hooper et al, 2011). But in 1980, the government decided
to expand this airline on the international level and its first international flight landed at Riyadh.
In 1998, Gulf Air entered into the no-smoking policy which was created in Singapore. The result
of this policy was that after the 1998s the Gulf airways were started getting losses and moving
towards the weak zone. Therefore, the UAE association decided to expand its business
worldwide by focusing on its operational cost in 2015, where every airline company was
struggling badly. Gulf Air revenue fall down from 28% to 23% but still, it was favorable for
them (Kassem and Habib, 2011).
The Gulf Airways was facing the same problems in the 2015`s when the global aviation industry
was in economic crisis. In this phase, we can adopt the continuous change process and have
decided to go restructuring the organization by reducing its operational cost. The top executives
of the Gulf Air will play a major role in this change by spending more time among the staff and

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listening to their issues and problems, provided training to managers to handle the situation if its
panic during the change process.
Change management is defined as the regular process of upgrading an organization in the form
of guidelines, structure, and ability to handle the changing wants of external and internal
business environment. Change is present in the Gulf Air both at the process and strategic level.
Therefore, the doubt should not be there related to the importance to the Gulf Air of its capability
what needs are required in future and how change can be explored in the Gulf Air (West-
Burnham, 2009). Therefore, due to this, it is not that only business source is being transferred,
also the workforce gets transferred which creates a situation which is full of diversity including
different culture, values, and beliefs. There can be two types of change in the Gulf Air; first is
continuous change and the second is discontinuous change. Continuous change is that change in
which there is a connection between pre and post-change and no sudden change is planned.
Actually, continuous change is a need of internal environment of the Gulf Air (David, 2014).
While in discontinuous change is a sudden change in the Gulf Air and there is no connection
with previous or post change that has already taken place in the Gulf Air. The discontinuous
change will always bring problem for the Gulf Air and will also create lots of problems to get
adjusted with the change process. The Gulf Air people have no idea about this type of change nor
have they planned for it in association with the external environment of the business. In the
above case, management planned a discontinuous change and leaders play a democratic style of
the leadership role in the organization (Dawson and Andriopoulos, 2014). The cultural factors
and diversity in the Gulf Air will play a crucial role in the change management process, while the
change agent also takes a major part to bring changes in the organization.
My role as a change agent is also a crucial part of change management in Gulf Air. The role of a
change agent for Gulf Air is of great importance when internal members resist accepting the
change. In this case, the senior manager, team leaders and top executives of the Board members
play an important role to establish an understanding between the employees who oppose the
change and the change agent (Jarventie-Thesleff, Moisander and Villi, 2014). Normally people
having no idea of the new change, or they unable to adjust to the new changing environment,
resist the change in the organization. The external change agency also plays a crucial role in
bringing change. The change agency basically overviews the need of change related to the

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particular situation and provide the suggestion related to the pattern to carry continuous change
in the organization or a need if a discontinuous change is required (Yukl, 2008).
In the era of globalization and due to continuous organizational change the role of managerial
skills has been increased in the modern day of the business environment in all over the world.
Due to globalization, innovation, and technological advancement for expansion of Gulf Air, a lot
of issues related to the workforce as well as shifting towards social trends can emerge and
change should be done according to the demand of time (Naranjo-Valencia, Jiménez-Jiménez
and Sanz-Valle, 2011). As there is no restriction of the organization to carry out business beyond
boundaries, this has motivated the Gulf Air to introduce their business on the international level
and have also encouraged international organizations to go for the domestic level. Therefore, for
expanding the business in the market many organizations are actually competing for the same
product or services. In recent time the number of Airways companies in the aviation industry is
increasing day by day that cause’s tough competition for other existing players like Gulf Air in
the aviation industry (Augier and Teece, 2009). Corporate culture is a hard thing to get right and
it takes time to grow and evolves.
Two change management models and the application of leadership theories according to
the situation
Situation- Expansion of business
Gulf Airways is in need of change transformation in their culture and cost reduction of
operations by apply ‘Theory O' which will change the behavior and culture of the whole
organization and ‘Theory E' which will focus on operational cost reduction. Because of the
expansion of Gulf Air, there was an increase in the number of employees, the number of routes
served, starting of air training college, and outsourcing some of the catering services. Culture is
an important aspect of organizational change. It can be said that it is possible to “lead”
organizational change using culture as a vehicle (Battilana, Leca and Boxenbaum, 2009). The
culture of an organization influences the change management process but a change in the culture
does not necessarily impact the change management. Every manager of the Gulf Air is well
aware of the importance and role of organizational culture in the Gulf Air's success. But it is not

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always factored into change management processes. Changing culture is the most frightening
process in any organization because it is not easy to understand the different culture in the same
place with different angles (ILO, 2018). The culture of Gulf air is a soft concept where there is
no real way of defining or assessing culture then it is a hard job to measure it. Normally, it is
very hard to change the behavior of an individual then how a person can change the culture of
the whole organization. But if a leader wants to build a high-performing organization it is
necessary to focus on bringing cultural change in the organization.
A study was done over media organization for bringing change in the organization. Data was
collected, analyzed, interpreted, and structured. But it was found that organization is not ready to
think out of the box rather they just want to remain in their own world as there is no such world
of external business environment and are standing still with their inertia . Therefore, the need to
pursue both continuous and discontinuous change is actually a challenging one. If the
organization wants to be succeeding then it has to avoid inertia and it should remain open for the
innovation and creativity. This need of doing the thing in a unique way will definitely give rise to
the importance of change will help in implementing change in the organization with full
potential.
The role of power in Gulf Air change will become crucial and very impactful. Power is related to
complexity and diversity which is the important source in the area of organizational development
and change. The three main viewpoints related to power change in strategies, the role of change
agent and inspiration behavior related to decision making determines the success or failure of
power change (Cummings, Bridgman, and Brown, 2016). Generally, employees resist the power
change and impact is also rigid of it on the organization. The power change basically connected
to three points. First is the nature of the organization, second is the analytical framework and
third is the change agent. This basically concerned with two different leadership styles;
transformational leadership style and transactional leadership style. The transformational
leadership mainly deals with the change by considering the interest of co-worker and employees
while the transactional approach of leadership in change management remain untouched with the

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co-worker system and mainly focus on the value systems of the co-worker and provide them
with the necessary benefits from this (Karp, 2006).
Here the role of the change agent will be so crucial. The role of a change agent is also important
in bringing change in the Gulf Air. The ill-preparedness and inappropriate planning of change
agent can result in the unexpected outcomes of change implementation. Old approaches and
philosophies to change suggested that if the organization does not adopt change then it cannot be
effective (Grabs, et. al, 2016). It was also stated that if an organization want to be successful in
the future, people need practices to be operative and able to improve their performance with the
help of continuous change.In Gulf Airways, the top leader of the company such as Chief
executive and the chairperson play the role as a change agent. The continuous interaction of top
leaders with the staff members and the continued training can soften the harsh impact of cultural
and organizational change.
All leaders own some pattern which differs from individual to individual with
contingency approach. Some front-runners have autocratic personality, some have a democratic
personality, some have transformational personality and some have bureaucratic personality. But
between all them most significant is transformational style. Transformational frontrunners
introduce new thoughts, constant upgrading, implement springiness in the work procedure and
uphold a good association with not only associates of the company but also from the outdoor
world (Langley et al, 2013). They typically shape their association with the workforces by means
of some of the aspects like charm, motivation and individual deliberation. Carrying alteration in
an organization is not an easy object. Change continuously brings antagonism. Antagonism leads
to confrontation. It has been seen that workforces always hate change because they have to
absorb new procedure again by giving up the earlier procedure; they must to give up their
preceding work design and have to accept the new design of work. In short, they have to regulate
their entire life into a novel one which will have an influence on the steadiness life of the worker.
So, here originates the character where a leader can attain the trust of his worker and can
demonstration them that they actually care about their workforces. In this title role, the leader act
as a counsellor or trainer (Yilmaz and Kilicoglu, 2013). The leader tries to discovery out the first
importance of his/her workforces and then start guiding them consequently which is also known
as modified consideration.

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Here leader starts systematic approach by supervisory his workforces in such a mean that
their importance may not get troubled and also coach the worker about the welfares of fetching
this alteration in the company along with how this alteration will reform their upcoming (Ulrich
et al, 2007). If the leader actually wants to attain the faith of his workers the most significant
thing which the leader must keep in mind is that in any condition the work time of worker must
persist stable with the private life of the worker (Weber, Reichert and Rinderle-Ma, 2008). The
leader can achieve this by authorizing the workforces to accomplish things on their own. Leaders
can offer exercise session in which the leader can offer them the essential knowledge about
stabling life. The leaders can also introduce workshops in which the worker will face the actual
circumstance and from the circumstance, they will learn the essential skill that they might need
in complementary their private and specialized life. If this feature is unexploited it can clue the
company to sit on the red-hot stove.
After all these change implementation the final stage comes in the form of monitoring. As we
know that after implementing any change, if we will not fix this change the situation will move
towards the previous one which means total failure of strategy. Hence, as a change leader I will
apply Measure & evaluation plan under which each change will be measured according to the
circumstances and then proper evaluation will be done to ensure the continuous progress in this
change strategy.

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Conclusion
The major focus of Gulf Air should be the cultural change transform for the expansion of the
Gulf Air so that it can provide the customers the same quality service all over the world so that
people without seeing the name of the airline can recognize its service related with the company.
The role of leaders will be very important during the change management as CEO of the
company will always interact with the staff and also ensure their presence in all operational
processes includes managing flying crew members to the program which are designed for
managing people first. Overall we can say that the expansion of Gulf Air will be successful only
because of their strategic planning and adoption of the proper change process. The continuous
model of the change process ensured that no staff opposed the change process. The decision of
top management related to the restructuring of Gulf Air will help them to survive in economic
crisis and can operate very well in the present and future time. The expansion plan of the Gulf
Air was not very successful because it was not able to properly introduce change management in
the operation of the Gulf Air and for achieving excellence it must utilize the change management
in proper phase because expansion means diversity of technology and workforce only culture act
as gum.

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