Individual Case Study: Deliveroo's Organisational Theory and Practice

This case study analyzes Deliveroo, a food delivery company, focusing on its organizational theory and practice. It examines the management style, principles, and functions employed by CEO William Shu, particularly in response to challenges like the COVID-19 pandemic. The study explores the steps taken to enhance organizational performance, including contactless and cashless delivery, and their impact on work culture and staff. It describes the CEO's democratic leadership style and its role in enhancing organizational effectiveness. The analysis further investigates the effects of power, influence, and conflict within Deliveroo, along with various motivational approaches used. Corporate examples and literature are used to justify the analysis, and recommendations are provided to enhance the overall output of the firm. The study concludes with suggestions for improving Deliveroo's performance and effectiveness, considering its current business model and the competitive landscape.

Organisational theory
and practice - individual
case study
1

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION..........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
TASK A...........................................................................................................................................3
The management style and state the principle and functions of management used by the CEO
of that retail firm.....................................................................................................................3
TASK B...........................................................................................................................................5
Analyse steps taken by the CEO to enhance organisational performance and their impact on
work culture and members of staff.........................................................................................5
TASK C ..........................................................................................................................................6
Describe the leadership style of the CEO of Deliveroo to enhance the organisational
effectiveness...........................................................................................................................6
TASK D...........................................................................................................................................7
Analyse the effects of power, influence and conflict at Deliveroo........................................7
TASK E............................................................................................................................................8
Discuss several kinds of motivation approaches used at Deliveroo......................................8
TASK F..........................................................................................................................................10
Use befitting corporate examples and literature to justify your stand .................................10
TASK G.........................................................................................................................................11
Several suggestions / recommendations to enhance overall output of the firm..................11
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................12
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................13
How Deliveroo is transforming its business model to survive, 2018 [Online] Available through
<https://medium.com/mion-innovation-that-rocks/deliveroo-show-me-the-money-
fc926b29e4ea> ..............................................................................................................................14
2

INTRODUCTION
Management is a function that is associated with performing functions that includes
planning, organising and prioritizing of work in a business organisation. Management style vary
with every organisation, each individual and also according to the different levels of
management in an organisation. Presently the report is based on Deliveroo that is a food delivery
company started by William shu in the year 2013 and has its presence across London, England.
They are operating across tow hundred locations that include France, Italy, Australia, Hong
Kong, Ireland and other different locations. The report is based on making analysis of the
management style, principle and functions used by CEO ad analysis of the steps taken to bring
required changes in the organisation for the objective of achieving higher performance. Further
theories description of the leadership style that is used by CEO for enhancing the effectiveness in
organisation. There is evaluation of effect of power, conflict and influence of Deliveroo along
with certain recommendations based on whole discussion.
MAIN BODY
TASK A
The management style and state the principle and functions of management used by the CEO of
that retail firm
Management issue: There have been issues that are faced by delivery that is a food
delivery company since the situation of COVID-19 and also because of the prevailing situations
of lock-down. Deliveroo went into a financial death spiral which reduced the profitability of the
firm. Apart from COVID-19, concerning issues related to increasing cost and high rivalry in
various regional and global markets in which Deliveroo operates (Bedford and van der Laan,
2020) . This situation leads to creation of a need for the purpose of managing the survival of this
food delivery brand.
The impact of COVID-19 virus has lead to some steps to be taken by William shu as
CEO of Deliveroo in order to reduce the negative impact on the overall functioning of
organisation. There was a cutting of staff members by 367 and there has been a situation where
the brand is dealing with extra ordinary global health crisis (Zhang, Jiang and Jin, 2020)
Deliveroo has to deal with such challenges and ensure that they are able to maintain their
strongest for solution possible following the post COVID-19 impact.
3

About the CEO
William shu is a UK based American business man who is CEO and co founder of
Deliveroo that is an online food delivery company. He was born in year 1979 and is educated
from Wharton school of university Pennsylvania.
Management style of William shu:
Deliveroo is winning combination is based on developing a eat platform for its users as a
solid logistic system for different restaurants so that they can be put ahead of competition
(Srivastava, 2017) . There is focus on use of authoritative management style in order to
determine the way different functions have to be performed in the context of internal
functioning. There delegation of roles & responsibilities based on assigned tasks and functions.
Management functions used by William Shu:
William Shu utilises four functions of management which were developed by Henri
Fayol and are the most commonly used management functions in the current business
environment. Various management functions and their utilisation by William Shu are provided
below:
 Planing: This management function involves construction of detailed plans with
information about resources needed and time limit under which various tasks needed to
be finished. William Shu understands the importance of formulating an effective plan and
utilises this management function to construct strategies which help the firm accomplish
their current objectives while considering future conditions and goals of the firm
(Sopelana and et. al., 2020) . He plans appropriate schemes and communicates with
concerned employees for regular improvement which helps the firm complete various
objectives under given time limit.
 Organising: This function includes delegating tasks according to the skill set of
employees and ensuring that each employees has resources in order to complete their
daily operations. William Shu utilises this tasks by regularly checking if the firm ha
ample resources and collaborating with the staff to delegate responsibilities to skilled
employees (Seong and Hong, 2018) . This increases productivity and quality of service
which positively reflects on consumer satisfaction and overall profitability of the
company.
4

 Leading: This function is related to directing the company during challenging phases and
helping the company overcome barriers by showcasing leadership sense and guiding staff
when preparing objectives and interacting with the employees. William Shu utilises this
function by helping the company overcome from the negative impact of COVID-19
(Sayed and Ansari, 2020) .
 Supervising: This function involves monitoring daily operations conducted at the firm to
gain information about any changes needed to help the firm achieve various business
objectives swiftly and effectively. William Shu regularly monsters daily activities
conducted and employee performance to modify various activities in a way which
enhances performance and profitability of the enterprise.
TASK B
Analyse steps taken by the CEO to enhance organisational performance and their impact on work
culture and members of staff.
After the COVID-19 pandemic, the CEO of Deliveroo William Shu has taken various
steps to exploit the opportunity given by increasing usage of online portals for food delivery
various steps taken by the CEO and their impact on organisation culture are mentioned below:
Contactless delivery: The company is offering contactless delivery to their consumers
which involves leaving the package outside address given by the consumer to reduce risk of
spreading virus (Perreira, Berta and Herbert, 2018) . This decisions increases the safety and
hygiene standards of each delivery which attracts consumers and helps the company increase
their profitability. Impact of this decision on work culture involves employees feeling safer while
delivering various products and encouraged to take more orders as compared to situations which
involve delivering products in person.
Cashless delivery: This procedure involves taking payments from consumers through
online payment applications, bank cards or any other cashless mode of payment. This has helped
the company conduct payment procedure swiftly and collaborate with financial institutions such
as visa to offer discounts and cashback offer. This is another way of attracting consumers and
increase profitability and productivity of the firm (Osei, Osei-Kwame and Osei Amaniampong,
2017) . The main effect of this step on the work culture is that every employee needs to be
5

trained on ways to take cashless payments from employees safely such as using card swipe
machine.
PPE and hygiene products: The respective company utilises PPE kits to protect their
employees or consumers from getting COVID-19 virus and conducting their daily operations
with emphasis on safety of consumers. In relation to organisational performance this has
introduced an extra set of activities which need to be conduct before leaving for delivery. This
has impacted the overall delivery time of the company (Budur and Poturak, 2021). The
employees are not able to effectively connect with their co-workers due to social distancing with
consumers which has made a significant impact on the consumers.
TASK C
Describe the leadership style of the CEO of Deliveroo to enhance the organisational
effectiveness.
Effective Leadership is an important and high authorities of the organisation aim to use
an effective leadership style appropriate for their company. Various leadership style help CEO
maintain high productivity and achieve organisational goals swiftly. Several kinds of leadership
styles are given below: Democratic Leadership style: Decision making process in this leadership style is
conducted by considering views and opinions of every employee and giving equal
importance to every idea during formulating a strategy. This is time consuming process
but increases employee satisfaction and employee engagement which helps in
construction of loyal workforce. Autocratic leadership style: This leadership style is centred around single authority
taking decisions without consulting other staff members which leads to swift decision
making process and construction of clear series of command (Gehring, Dorsch and
Dörfler, 2019) . Transformational leadership style:This type leadership style aims to continuously
transform their employees and enhance their skill set so that they can take new
responsibilities in the company. Motivating employees for their continuous growth is a
major quality of leaders which follow this style.
6

 Transactional leaderships style: This type of leadership style involves giving
employees rewards and incentives on the basis of their performance. This encourages
employees to continuously improve their productivity and quality of work so that hey
get rewards from their leaders. The leaders utilise reward programmes so that they can
achieve business goals effectively. This style fails to develop future leaders and hinders
creativity at the workplace (Harvey and et. al., 2018).
CEO of the respective firm utilises democratic leadership style in order to run their
company and construct a workforce which is dedicated to helping the company achieve various
goals swiftly and effectively. This style helps the CEO interact with employees and gather
different opinions about each operation conducted or programme initiated at the firm. This helps
the company make flawless decisions as various opinions are taken into consideration which
boosts employee morale and reduces turnover rates. All such factors enabled by democratic
leadership style will help the company grow exponentially and swiftly recover from the negative
impact of pandemic (Hong and et. al., 2020) .
TASK D
Analyse the effects of power, influence and conflict at Deliveroo
Effect of Power: Leadership is a skill which requires gaining a profound understanding
about how to utilise power to creating organisational change and controlling the firm in a way
which helps in perpetual growth and development.
Leadership at the respective organisation utilises expert power which is one of the six
distinct kinds of power. Individuals with profound knowledge and expertise are able build a
relationship of reliance and respect with their workers which helps them delegate various tasks
effectively. The CEO of respective firm has high expertise in corporate world as he was recruited
at prestigious organisation for several years and gained education from various esteemed
university.
This along with presence of expert trainers and employees has helped the company
manage and delegate responsibilities effectively while maintaining trustworthy bonds with the
workforce (Hosseini and et. al., 2020) . This type of powers also reduces conflicts and errors in
the workplace which has a positive impact on overall quality of products.
7

Effect of influence: Influence is defined as capability to have an impact on the attributes,
growth, or behaviour of an individual. Leadership at Deliveroo have positive influence on their
employees. The effect of positive influence involves providing employees additional value
through guidance from leaders. Another impact of positive influence is improvement in
performance of employees as leaders direct, guide and mentor their employees at every situation.
This will enhance the performance of the company and give the organisation competitive
advantage (Müller and Stephan, 2020) . Positive influence has a positive impact on every aspect
of employee's career and overall output of the respective firm.
Effect of conflict: Conflict resolution is an essential part of every organisation as it
improves efficiency of the firm and creates a positive working environment for the organisation.
Deliveroo is currently facing the huge conflict in the form of COVID-19 which has impacted
every operation of the firm and created an unfavourable business conditions for the company.
Due to this conflict the company has to take various sanitation measures in order to eliminate
spread of COVID-19 virus to their employees or consumers.
In order to deal with this conflict, the company is utilising collaboration strategy which
involves collaborating with associated employees in order to deliver quality services while
ensuring safety of consumers and workers (Nguyen, Seddaiu and Roggero, 2019) . The
organisation is battling with this conflict by making a co-ordinated effort with every division of
the company and implementing various legislations associated with pandemic safety regulations
enforced by government.
TASK E
Discuss several kinds of motivation approaches used at Deliveroo
Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a motivation theory developed by psychologist Abraham
Maslow and describes five phases of human needs which control human behaviour. Various
phases in Maslow's hierarchy of needs and their utilisation by British delivery firm Deliveroo is
provided below:
Physiological needs
These lowest phase in this hierarchy is associated with fundamental requirements
necessary for human survival such as food, water, resting hours and overall health (Bedford and
van der Laan, 2020). These needs to be completed before moving to the nest phase.
8

Physiological needs are fulfilled by the respective firm by giving employees a uniform for free
which involves quality made jacket and bag which fulfils their clothing needs. Health and rest
needs of employees are fulfilled by giving them free medical insurance and allowing them to
chose their weekly working hours. This motivates employees to work diligently and stay with the
company for a longer time period,
Safety needs
Safety neds comprise of financial, emotional and physical safety along with shielding
from criminal elements and violence. Deliveroo aims to motivate their employees by
constructing a healthy and safe working environment and following every act of employment
legislation in order to eliminate unlawful activities from being conducted at the workplace. As
employees gain confirmed financial payment for their services they become financial secure and
motivated to enhance their quality of work in order to help the company recover from negative
effects of COVID-19.
Belonging needs
Formation of a workplace identity, participating in a community, constructing emotional
relationships and connecting with fellow workers are major components of this phase in the
hierarchy (Zhang, Jiang and Jin, 2020) . The respective firm has constructed a positive and
supportive working environment with emphasis on building community in the workplace in
order to fulfil various belonging needs of the employees. The organisation has implemented
policies to reduce conflicts so that employees forge strong bonds with their co-workers and make
extra effort during COVID-19.
Esteem needs
Self- confidence, self respect and assurance of self- growth are main factors of this phase
which need to be addressed in order to achieve high level of motivation. The respective firm
provides drivers free skill development programmes which increases their self-confidence and
connection with the organisation. This also motivates them to enhance their performance
regularly and help the company during pandemic (Srivastava, 2017) .
Self actualisation needs
These types of neds are associated with becoming the top-grade variant of oneself. The
company provides their employees career progression opportunities and helps them develop
skills in order to move upwards their career graph which helps the complete their self
9

actualisation needs. Employees are motivated to stay with the company even in adverse
conditions such as COVID-19.
The respective organisation has used various techniques to fulfil employee needs at every
phase of the hierarchy which has resulted in construction of motivated workforce which is
devoted to helping the company achieve various goals and develop skills to ensure their
personnel growth while being recruited at the organisation (Sopelana and et. al., 2020) .
TASK F
Use befitting corporate examples and literature to justify your stand
According to Sebastian Matoso, (2018) deliveroo is modifying their business model in
order to increase their longevity in the corporate world and secure benificial position in the
industry. The organisation primarily markets to restaurants and aims to deliver high quality
products to consumer in limited time. The firm has launched deliveroo editions which helps
various restaurants connect with consumers beyond their current geographical coverage by
taking services from deliveroo (How Deliveroo is transforming its business model to survive,
2018) . In order to identify such restaurants with high demands the organisation will be using
data it has collected over the years. This vast amount of data will help the company in
determining food chains which will give the company high profits after de4livering to locations
which are far away from their current regional coverage. The organisation will be able to predict
the demands of particular products such as certain ethnic culinary products in regions which
frequently order products through online platforms. The main idea behind this concept is fulfil
the demands of consumers which want to eat and order certain cuisine but live in areas which
lack such restraints. The organisation apart from giving delivery services give these restaurants
various instruments, infrastructure and tools required to eliminate growth barriers and help the
restaurant achieve success by increasing their consumers base. The firm will take certain
payment from their clients depending on their locations and their demand in the selected location
which will increase the overall profitability of the firm. This is revolutionary concepts as it will
help the company stand out from their rivals and generate new income sources.
10

TASK G
Several suggestions / recommendations to enhance overall output of the firm
The respective organisation needs to modify few aspects of their company in order to
achieve maximum profitability and productivity. This will help the company grow swiftly after
affects of pandemic are reduced and become a leading member of their industry:
 It is recommended that the company utilises authoritative leadership style in situations
which require swift decision making to reduce time wastage.
 The organisation needs to invest in new technology such as Drones for delivery and
other advanced delivery equipments. This will reduce labour costs, increase speed of
delivery and offer untouched products to the consumers which will improve the
profitability (Seong and Hong, 2018) .
 The organisation needs to give their employees sanitation tools to reduce the spread of
virus and protect consumers.
 The organisation needs to take regular feedback from their employees in order to
improve morale of the employees in such tough times and construct a closely connected
community at the workplace. This will increase the performance of such employees.
 Apart from this the company needs to invest in developing leadership skills in current
employees so that they can handle various situations and delegate responsibilities at
their level (Sayed and Ansari, 2020) .
11

CONCLUSION
From the above report it is determined that leaders and high authorities have a major role
in the development of the firm. Utilisation of appropriate management style and management
functions help the leaders effectively control the company and lead the firm towards continuous
growth. Efforts and decisions taken by the leaders have huge impact on work culture and
workers of the company. Leadership style needs to be selected on the basis of current conditions
and future goals of the company. Power and influence have a huge impact on daily operations
and human resource of the company and misuse of power can lead to destruction of the
enterprise. Various conflict resolution practices help the company construct a harmonious
workforce and reduces time wastage which increases the productivity of the firm. Motivation
theories need to be utilised by every firm in order to construct a dedicated workforce which
recovers the company from unfavourable business conditions and stays with the company for a
longer time periods. Developing future leaders and leadership skills in their current workforce is
another important factor which will help the firm eliminate obstacles to growth and development.
12