Capstone Project: Leadership and Ethics at Royal Dutch Shell

This capstone project provides a comprehensive analysis of leadership and ethics within Royal Dutch Shell. It begins by identifying the founders and current CEO, Charles O. Holliday, and then examines the CEO's management competencies, focusing on international commercial, strategic, and environmental issues. The project explores the use of transformational leadership and discusses its effectiveness, proposing the laissez-faire style as an alternative. It reviews the company's CSR and sustainability policies, emphasizing the goal of addressing climate change, and assesses the alignment of business operations with the company's vision and values. The project also considers how the company is perceived ethically and offers recommendations to improve its reputation, such as developing sustainable sourcing practices. The project utilizes several academic references to support its findings.

LEADERSHIP AND ETHICS IN ROYAL
DUTCH SHELL

LEADERSHIP
 i. Identification of founders and CEO of the firm
 The organization was founded by Marcus and Samuel
Samuel in the year 1907. The executive management
of Royal Dutch Shell is mainly managed by the CEO or
Chief Executive Officer of the firm Charles O. Holliday.
 ii. Management competencies of CEO that is
important to the firm
 The CEO of Royal Dutch Shell or Shell has a major level
of understanding of the international commercial,
strategic and the environmental issues that have an
impact on the firm. The risk management and safety is
an important part of the extensive levels of experience
that has been gained by the CEO (Saleem 2015).

LEADERSHIP
 iii. Use of leadership models and concepts and description
of leadership style of CEO
 The transformational leadership style has been used by the CEO of
Royal Dutch Shell in order to maintain the operations of the firm.
 iv. Critical discussion of leadership style of CEO
 The leadership style that had been depicted by the CEO of Royal
Dutch Shell is mainly based on the ways by which the opinions of
Board members are taken into consideration.
 v. Examining alternative style that is more effective
 The alternative style of leadership that can be followed by the CEO
of Royal Dutch Shell is the laissez-faire style.
 vi. Recommendations based on suggesting appropriate
style of leadership
 The implementation of laissez-faire style of leadership will help the
CEO to improve levels of creativity within the firm and the time
required for decision making will also be reduced (Yahaya and
Ebrahim 2016).

ETHICS, CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
AND SUSTAINABILITY
 i. Reviewing the CSR and Sustainability
policies of the firm
 The major aim of the Shell’s Net Carbon
Footprint is based on the ways by which
climate change can be tackled in order to
meet the goals set by the Paris Agreement.
 ii. Levels of business operations based
on vision and values
 The values and vision of Royal Dutch Shell is
based on the potential environmental impact
of the activities of the firm during the lifetime
of various projects (Shell.com 2019).

ETHICS, CORPORATE SOCIAL
RESPONSIBILITY AND SUSTAINABILITY
 iii. Ways of considering company to be
ethical
 Royal Dutch Shell can be considered to be an
ethical organization and the social and
environmental performance of the firm is
focused on challenges that affect the
business.
 iv. Recommendations offered to improve
the reputation of the firm
 Development of more sustainable sourcing
practices in order to improve the operations
(Yahaya and Ebrahim 2016).

REFERENCES
 Saleem, H., 2015. The impact of leadership
styles on job satisfaction and mediating role of
perceived organizational politics. Procedia-
Social and Behavioral Sciences, 172, pp.563-
569.
 Shell.com 2019. Board of Directors. [online]
Shell.com. Available at:
https://www.shell.com/about-us/leadership/boar
d-of-directors.html [Accessed 15 Sep. 2019].
 Yahaya, R. and Ebrahim, F., 2016. Leadership
styles and organizational commitment:
literature review. Journal of Management
Development, 35(2), pp.190-216.