University Leadership in Business and Society Case Study Assignment

This document presents a comprehensive case study analysis of leadership in business and society, examining various leadership styles, motivational factors, and management skills through the lens of real-world examples. The analysis delves into the leadership approaches of Sheryl Sandberg at Facebook and Mark Parker at Nike, exploring their strategic decisions, application of personality traits, and responses to internal and external pressures. The study also investigates team dynamics, conflict management, and the importance of clear objectives within organizations, using specific cases to illustrate these concepts. The document provides insights into effective leadership practices, including the significance of environmental sustainability, conscious decision-making, and the ability to foster a collaborative work environment. Furthermore, the analysis addresses the role of leaders in mitigating risks, promoting employee motivation, and adapting to evolving business landscapes, ultimately offering a practical understanding of leadership challenges and strategies.

Running Head: LEADERSHIP IN BUSINESS AND SOCIETY
LEADERSHIP IN BUSINESS AND SOCIETY
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Case: Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg
1.
From her behavioural leadership style it can be said that Sheryl is a very determined
and busy woman. Being committed to her work she is the COO of Facebook who works
regularly to make the company operate in a proper way. She takes up lots of responsibilities
for taking care of many people. According to the case study, she uses Democratic style of
leadership by practicing participative leadership techniques. By doing so, Sandberg sped
most of her work time emailing works and attending meetings through which she influences
and motivates other employees.
2.
The motivational factors that Sandberg’s book Lean are why, how and the process of
emotion that an individual passes though while matching their requirement. In this context,
the content of motivation names them as Maslow’s hierarchy of need, goal setting theory and
expectancy theories of motivation (Van der Voet 2014).
3.
Sheryl’s book Lean focuses on these theories saying that if women workers are
willing to settle down for less, they will be able to acquire an average place within the
workplace. Sandberg through her book encourages women to achieve success but not on their
desires to be success. She emphasis on the outcome of working hard by taking on the duties,
thereby breaking down the barriers.
4.
In this case, positive reinforcement may work for her and extinction may also work
for her as she aims to her best. In this context, it can be said the Sandberg falls under the

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personality profile of an effective leader as she is an independent woman and continuous
reinforcement can help her to encourage to work with her full potential.
5.
Five dimensions of leadership can be applied to Sandberg as COO of Facebook when
she states in her book that if more women join the workforce, people can change the structure
of power and will be able to increase the opportunities for all the human beings. Therefore “
more female leadership will result in the fair treatment for all the women”.
6.
The management skills that Sheryl needs to have are the way of understanding team
dynamics and motivating good relationship within workplace. Selection of appropriate people
and developing them in the proper way and motivating them she also needs to managing
disciplines while needs to have the capability to deal with the conflicts of communication
(Anderson et al. 2014).
7.
These, are the big personality traits are, consciousness, and openness avoidance
reinforcement, punishment and extinction. For instance, if one of the worker is not bothered
about positive reinforcement and if their behaviour is ignored, she might be harassed to do
the thing that is better for her whereas, another female may not like to fail. In this context,
Sheryl has the skills of effective leader as she has been able to leverage upon mixture of skills
and has experiences to speak from a point of authority and exert her own impact in
identifying and discussing about the differences in women within workplace.
Case 14.2
1.

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Russ Saffold being the manager of the company needs to help and support his team to
manage this crisis. In this context, Russ needs to take up leadership external environmental
leadership style for interacting with the employees for building networking with the
employees, advocating them and providing them with negotiating support, buffering and
analysing the issue and by sharing the employees with appropriate information about the
crisis within the workplace.
2.
In this situation all the team members need to take up environmental external
leadership to obtain situational awareness by collecting and assembling the major factors of
the incident and utilise multiple sources to address confusion and conflicts (Jackson 2016).
The team members as well as need to point out the crisis management that requires new
approaches provided with new thoughts to address the changes, they also needs to
communicate the crisis management in timely way.
3.
The first step the Russ needs to take towards the mitigation operational risk in
between the opposing parties of outsourcing IT are he needs to take processing of application
for a mortgage. He needs to manage the risk of confidentiality information by conducting an
occasional site visits for analysing the security and data caring controls. After that he needs to
communicate with the manages of the opposing company to resolve the issue.
4.
The features of team excellence that the team members lack are the clear and concise
goal, they do not have a outcome driven structure within organisation, all the team members
are not competent and do not share collaborative climate and lacks unified determination

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towards job. The most important thing that the company lacks is the external assistance,
identification and proper leadership standards.
Case 14.3
1.
The task force lack proper objective of the task that is to be done. They did not have
collaborative ambience within the university and lacked commitment towards work. As a
result of which team members did not understand their job role. Moreover, they were not
motivated tow work as they were not provided with proper support from the team hierarches.
2.
The task force had competent team membership and unified commitment towards
task. All the team members had sense of unity and identification that could have helped in
increasing the effectiveness of workplace. They had the willingness to learn their task (Chen
et al. 2016).
3.
Kim as a team leader is not able to manage the conflict arsing in between team. She
was not able to give the team members idea about the goal that is needed to be accomplish.
Other than solving the conflict she got more frustrated with the situation and eventually the
meetings stopped and report did not get a scope to be completed.
4.
Internal task function:
A leader is needed to emphasise on the objectives by clarifying the team members
with proper goal and accomplishing it. The leaders is also needed to support the decision

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making for gathering better information by increasing the coordination in between teams
(Farooq et al. 2017). The leaders is also required to train the teams both formally and
informally thereby evaluation their performance whenever required.
Case Nike
1.
When Mark parker assumed leadership in Nike, he had to face both internal and
external personal. In this context, one of the most crucial pressure faced by Mark Parker
consists of high expectation from the organisation as well as the consumers. The leader
wanted to get in to shoes of great leader. Alongside this, he was required to justify himself as
a leader for the employees and the directors (Farooq et al. 2017). External pressure has been
faced by Mark parker such as challenges to develop Nike as one of the premium brand.
2.
Mark Parker has been incredible strategic leader as he managed to maintain a high
credibility for the company. Alongside this, he was also responsible for motivating his
employees to function the strategies that have been formulated together to accomplish the
objectives of the company.
3.
Mark Parker understood the influence of environmental sustainability that had on
their business activities. Owing to various reason, they implemented the sustainable business
practices and plan. Utilising this plan, the company tried to implement a significant change
within the environment.
4.

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Mark Parker had conscious decision-making capability that helped to shape each
operation of business. He managed to streamline the process of reporting and removed the
middle system of managed and handled the round of layoffs.
5.
The Big five personality traits are applicable for Parker, as he uses a differentiating
approach of leadership thereby developing operational culture for encouraging the employees
constantly to adjust with the environment. He motivates the employees and provide them
various ways to enhance and adapt with the environment. He finds opportunity and discusses
with the staffs for the development of technologies. Parkers tries to look at things from the
bottom of ideas.
6.
During the time of Mark Parker’s appointment, Nike managed to reach the annual
revenue of $24 billion with almost 60%. They are always opportunist about serving the
shareholders so that they could lead in the industry
Video questions
1. Paying the employees in fair way is necessary responsibility of the customers in order
to avoid employee turnover within organisation. It is the first policy decision of
leadership.
2. Providing autonomy within workplace implies that employees are allowed to
maintain their own schedules. For providing, the employees with proper support to
succeed employers need to provide a sense of autonomy for the employees.
3. Allowing employees people make progress are necessary within the organisation to
drive the organisation towards the accomplishment of goals.

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4. Employees are needed to be trained and given the idea about their job role for
understanding their tasks. This will help the organisational management in motivating
the employees thereby moving towards the increase of productivity.

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Reference list
Anderson, N., Potočnik, K. and Zhou, J., 2014. Innovation and creativity in organizations: A
state-of-the-science review, prospective commentary, and guiding framework. Journal of
management, 40(5), pp.1297-1333.
Chen, L., Zheng, W., Yang, B. and Bai, S., 2016. Transformational leadership, social capital
and organizational innovation. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 37(7),
pp.843-859.
Farooq, O., Rupp, D.E. and Farooq, M., 2017. The multiple pathways through which internal
and external corporate social responsibility influence organizational identification and
multifoci outcomes: The moderating role of cultural and social orientations. Academy of
Management Journal, 60(3), pp.954-985.
Jackson, D., 2016. Modelling graduate skill transfer from university to the
workplace. Journal of Education and Work, 29(2), pp.199-231.
Van der Voet, J., 2014. The effectiveness and specificity of change management in a public
organization: Transformational leadership and a bureaucratic organizational
structure. European Management Journal, 32(3), pp.373-382.