Analyzing Leadership Issues in Woolworths Limited: A Detailed Report

This report provides an in-depth analysis of leadership issues within Woolworths Limited, a major Australian supermarket chain. It examines the impact of leadership styles, particularly the lack of effective leadership skills, on employee motivation and overall performance. The study explores various leadership theories, including transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire styles, and their influence on employee outcomes. The research investigates the relationship between leadership and employee performance within the retail sector, focusing on the need for strong leadership to drive innovation, productivity, and the achievement of organizational goals. The report also identifies specific leadership challenges faced by Woolworths, such as the need for strategic planning and change management. Finally, the study offers recommendations for improving leadership practices and enhancing employee motivation, with the aim of helping Woolworths regain its competitive advantage in the Australian marketplace.

Running head: ANALYZING THE LEADERSHIP ISSUES IN WOOLWORTHS LIMITED
Analyzing the leadership issues in Woolworths Limited- impacts of lack of leadership skills on
level of employee motivation
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:

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ANALYZING THE LEADERSHIP ISSUES IN WOOLWORTHS LIMITED
Table of Contents
1.0 Introduction................................................................................................................................2
2.0 Background of the organization.................................................................................................2
3.0 Research aims and objectives....................................................................................................3
4.0 Research questions.....................................................................................................................4
5.0 Literature review........................................................................................................................5
5.1 Identification of Leadership Issues that impact the level of employee motivation...............5
5.2 Effective leadership style would affect the performance of the employee............................6
5.3 Relationship between leadership style and employee performance into retail sector.........10
5.4 Possible solutions to improve employee motivation using motivational theories...............11
6.0 Research methodology.............................................................................................................12
7.0 Findings...................................................................................................................................13
8.0 Conclusion and Recommendations..........................................................................................14
8.1 Conclusion...........................................................................................................................14
8.2 Recommendations................................................................................................................15
References......................................................................................................................................16

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ANALYZING THE LEADERSHIP ISSUES IN WOOLWORTHS LIMITED
1.0 Introduction
The research study is based on analyzing the leadership issues in Woolworths Limited.
Woolworths Australia is one of the largest supermarket chains within Australia which are
providing fresh food to people. This supermarket of Australia is owned by Woolworth Limited.
Vann, Coleman and Simpson (2014) stated that leadership skill would encompass the capability
of an individual to lead the workers and entire organization. A better leadership would help an
organization to grow in the market with increasing into profitability as well as productivity. A
leader helps to set direction, build a vision and create of something innovative to meet its
organizational goals (Clarke 2013). Leadership should map where the organization need to go to
win a high value in the marketplace. The leader should set direction, use of management skills to
inspire and motivate people to go towards right direction for gaining of profitability.
This study analyzed the leadership issues in the supermarket and evaluated of new strategies
to improve its marketing leadership position in the Australian marketplace. This provides an
analysis of the contemporary position of Woolworths due to which its leadership position is
affected and forecasted its performance in Australia with recommendations to improve it in the
future.
2.0 Background of the organization
Woolworths has it’s headquarter in New South Wales, Australia and it is operated as a
retailer throughout the supermarket, merchandise stores and petrol stations. Their retail products
are consisted of fresh food, beverages, petroleum, grocery and others. As this supermarket is
mainly based on food products, therefore health of the customers is the main concern of

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ANALYZING THE LEADERSHIP ISSUES IN WOOLWORTHS LIMITED
Woolworths. Therefore, leadership skills is required to take right decisions concerning on health
of people. One of the main competitors of Woolworth is Coles. However, it is shown that Coles
consists of 37 percent of the market share of Australia where Woolworths consists of 43 percent.
Therefore, in order to gain more market share, Woolworths should require a great leader who
would take proper decisions and inspire others to gain organizational goals
(Woolworthsgroup.com.au, 2015). From few years, Woolworths was facing management issues
such as lack of leadership skills to regain a sustainable sales momentum. Good leader should win
customer trust and greater share into shopping basket.
Figure 1: Logo of Woolworths Limited
(Source: Woolworthsgroup.com.au, 2015)
3.0 Research aims and objectives
Retail sector are competitive especially the supermarket and to gain a competitive
advantage into the marketplace the retail organization needs of good leader helps to gain market
share and implement of new strategy. The aim of this research is to analyze the leadership
practices and aspects into Woolworths Limited. A study on the leadership issues is conducted
into a specific organization and country, Woolworths Limited as well as Australia respectively.
Mostly, the study is analyzed the impacts of lack of leadership skills on level of employee

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ANALYZING THE LEADERSHIP ISSUES IN WOOLWORTHS LIMITED
motivation into Woolworths Limited. This research study provides a critique as well as
application of the current theories of leadership. It also develops of leadership concepts and also
theories to analyze the selected research topic. The aim is to evaluate of recent leadership
theories which are developed by the researchers. This study is mainly about the effect of the
leadership style on the performance of employee. Following are the research objectives:
 To identify of leadership issues that impact the level of employee motivation
 To explore of relationships between leadership style as well as employee performance
 To analyze the significance of the leadership style into performance of employee
 To develop of leadership model that shows a relationship among leadership style as well
as employee performance
 To provide solution to the identified leadership issues and provide proper
recommendations for future
4.0 Research questions
Following are the research questions for this particular research study:
1. How much an effective leadership style would affect the performance of the employee?
2. What are the leadership issues which impact employee motivation within the business
operations of Woolworths Limited?
3. What is a relationship between leadership style and employee performance into retail
sector?
4. What are the possible solutions to improve the leadership style of leaders?

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ANALYZING THE LEADERSHIP ISSUES IN WOOLWORTHS LIMITED
5.0 Literature review
5.1 Identification of Leadership Issues that impact the level of employee motivation
Aydin, Sarier and Uysal (2013) stated that a leaderships is a process which can direct and
influence the behaviour of the others towards accomplishment of gaols. () suggested that a leader
should deal with organizational changes and focused on long term goals achievement. CEO of
Woolworths, Bradford Banducci was being criticised for its poor trading performance. The
supermarket is delayed into entering of convenience stores sector as well as set up of their online
operations in selling of food. Du et al. (2013) demonstrated that there are challenges into retail
industry due to streamlining the management team. Arnold et al. (2015) believed that an
innovative marketing strategy will help Woolworths to proper into competitive market. It helps
to enable of faster decisions throughout streamlined structures where the colleagues are
empowering under the leadership roles. Collaboration among the team members also help into
achieving of competitive advantage. Sometimes, the senior business leaders are caused delay in
responding with the solutions which becomes out of date (Nanjundeswaraswamy and Swamy
2014). The main challenges that a store manager faces when they are successful into managing
of stores include of managing a higher employer rate of turnover, delivery of quality services for
the customers, increase into profit margin and reduction of inventory shrinkage. Leadership
consists of many aspects like worker motivation, strategic planning and change management
(Anderson and Sun 2017). In an attempt to cover all those aspects of the leadership in this single
research will result into a poor research study.
Keskes (2014) stated that most of the retail organizations are required of strong leadership
style which would stimulate the performance of employee. The retail organization, such as
Woolworths Limited faces problems such as poor innovation, lower productivity and inability to

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Influence
LEADERSHIP
Leader-follower Organizational
objectives
Change People
ANALYZING THE LEADERSHIP ISSUES IN WOOLWORTHS LIMITED
achieve the performance targets. Those all identified problems are happened due to lack of
strategic leadership style of the leaders (Choudhary, Akhtar and Zaheer 2013). It will affect the
performance of the employee as they are not motivated towards their work and organizational
goals. Therefore, there is a requirement of effective leader those can lead people to become more
effective in the work. Leadership theories will help to understand the concept more accurately.
Figure 2: Key elements of leadership
(Source: Choudhary, Akhtar and Zaheer 2013, pp-437)
5.2 Effective leadership style would affect the performance of the employee
The research work is being designed to study the impact of the leadership style on the
performance of the employee within Woolworths Limited. In order to achieve of objectives as
well as goals, there should be a higher relationship among the leader as well as workers.
Therefore, productivity should be increased within the supermarket which is based on higher
performance of employee dependent on leadership style. Roueche, Baker and Rose (2014)

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ANALYZING THE LEADERSHIP ISSUES IN WOOLWORTHS LIMITED
categorized of various leadership style which is explained on scale to range from automatic
throughout democratic to show the degree of authority as well as decision makers to make the
power of leaders as well as employees. Ejere and Abasilim (2013) demonstrated that leadership
style is involved of all the members of team to identify of required goals and develop strategies
for reaching the organizational goals. This particular research study is explored to
transformational and transactional leadership style and it discusses the impact of the employee
towards the leaders and their performance into the retail sector in Australia.
Transformational leadership: In this type of leadership, the leaders are motivated the
employees to exceed the expectations. The leader leads the employees by offering an
organizational vision. The leaders of Woolworths Limited have lack of transformational
leadership style that would affect the employee motivation and performance. Dumdum, Lowe
and Avolio (2013) introduced that transformational leader should modify the attitudes of the
employees. According to Shahhosseini, Silong and Ismaill (2013), transformational leaders
should help the followers to gain organizational goals. The followers are encouraged by
influencing the beliefs, attitudes, behaviour as well as organizational values. The employees are
developed of trust as well as respect towards the leader and it wills to display of unexpected
behaviour to execute the expectations of leader.
Transactional leadership: Breevaart et al. (2014) mentioned that this leadership style is
that when the leaders are concerned on the achieving of the goals. The employees are rewarded
to accomplish of the tasks. The leaders are more concerned towards the finish of the task and the
employee’s performance. Both positive as well as negative reinforcements are to be achieved
required results. Tyssen, Wald and Spieth (2014) criticized two of the dimensions for this type of
leadership style such as contingent reward as well as expectation of management. Odumeru and

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ANALYZING THE LEADERSHIP ISSUES IN WOOLWORTHS LIMITED
Ogbonna (2013) stated that contingent reward is that the leaders use of rewards as well as
promotion to give required results from the followers. Management expectation means the
leaders are taking of correct actions when there is no control over the situations. The leaders
should have anticipation behaviour.
Laissez faire leadership: The leaders should avoid of making decisions. They are
unwilling to take of proper actions and avoid of the situations. The leaders are not providing
feedback to the followers (Avolio and Yammarino 2013). The employees are not satisfied,
unproductive as well as incompetent in the work. Therefore, they are not motivated to work.

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Transformational
leadership style
Inspirational motivation
Idealized influence
Transactional leadership
style
Contingent reward
Management expectation
Laissez faire leadership
style
Effectiveness
Extra effort
Job satisfaction
Subordinate perception of manage
behaviour
Subordinate self-perceived outcomes
ANALYZING THE LEADERSHIP ISSUES IN WOOLWORTHS LIMITED
Figure 3: Theoretical model of leadership style
(Source: Tyssen, Wald and Spieth 2014, pp-370)

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ANALYZING THE LEADERSHIP ISSUES IN WOOLWORTHS LIMITED
5.3 Relationship between leadership style and employee performance into retail
sector
McCleskey (2014) stated that there is a relationship between leadership style as well as
employee performance. Van Knippenberg and Sitkin (2013) argued that in another study it is
seen that there is a positive correlation among the leadership style as well as employee
performance that leads to job satisfaction. The retail manager of Woolworths should have
leadership qualities so that they can gain as well as achieve the organizational outcomes. The
leadership style influences the employee performance both internally and also externally (Tseng
2017). Transformational leadership style results into willingness of the employees towards the
desired organizational goals. While observing the employee performance and their job
satisfaction in context of the leadership, some of the predictions are being derived.
Transformational leaders should foster towards the job satisfaction due to sense of ownerships
(Birasnav 2014). They encourage the freedom of the employees and teach them their
responsibilities.
Northouse (2015) analyzed that the leaders encourage the development of the employees,
therefore the employees feel that their leaders are take care of them. In case of the
transformational leaders, the reward system is not good. Therefore, the employees think that
transactional leaders are better in this case as they provide a good reward and incentive system.
Price and Weiss (2013) argued that the managers are more satisfied to those managers who are
supportive. The employees are expected of good guidance and support from their supervisor,
when it helps them to take any decisions. From the entire study, it is analyzed that the employee

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ANALYZING THE LEADERSHIP ISSUES IN WOOLWORTHS LIMITED
retention is higher in case of transactional leadership as comparison to the transformational
leadership (Antonakis and House 2014). This transformational leadership style helps the
employees to develop their skills by increasing of job satisfaction as well as organizational
commitment. Therefore, most of the employees like the transactional leaders.
5.4 Possible solutions to improve employee motivation using motivational theories
McGregor Theory X and theory Y is the best human motivation and management
theories. This particular theory is applied by the managers in development of motivational
factors used to motivate the employees towards their work. Lussier and Achua (2015) stated that
theory X is analyzed the importance of the supervision, external rewards as well as penalties.
According to this theory, the employees of Woolworths Limited should provide with financial
incentives so that they should be motivated to work. As under this theory, it is assumed that the
employees are lazy and they are not interested to work (Turnnidge and Côté 2016). Therefore,
rewards as well as punishments are the best thing to motivate the workers. Based on this theory,
the employees are not wish to work and take work related responsibility. On the other hand,
theory Y is analyzed on the motivational role for satisfaction towards the job and encourages the
employees to do their respective tasks without supervision. People are happy to work and they
are already motivated towards their work (Roueche, Baker and Rose 2014). Therefore, there is
no need of rewards as well as punishments of employees as they are already willing to work.
According to this theory, the employees can achieve their goals by focused on efforts on the
organizational objectives.
Herzberg’s hygiene model is another motivational theory which is based on two factors
and therefore it is also a two factor theory. From the findings of this factor, it is analyzed that job
are related to both satisfaction as well as dis-satisfaction (Shahhosseini, Silong and Ismaill