Leadership and Management Styles at Advance Construction Scotland Ltd

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APPROACHES TO LEADERSHIP AND
MANAGEMENT IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT
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Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION........................................................................................................................3
BODY........................................................................................................................................ 4
LO1 THE DETAIL REPORT OF FUNCTIONAL AREAS OF ADVANCE CONSTRUCTION
SCOTLAND LIMITED (ACS LTD) AND THE HIERARCHY OF MANAGEMENT............................4
LO2 IMPORTANCE OF COMMUNICATION IN RESPECT WITH LEADERSHIP AND
MANAGEMENT EFFECTIVE CHANNEL OF COMMUNICATION IN INTERDEPARTMENTAL OF
ACS LTD................................................................................................................................ 7
LO3 THE CURRENT DRIVERS OF GLOBALISATION THAT IMPACTS THE ACS LTD...................9
LO4 THE COMPARISION OF TWO LEADERSHIP STYLES.......................................................11
CONCLUSION.......................................................................................................................... 13
REFERENCES........................................................................................................................... 14
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INTRODUCTION
In this report, the approach of leadership and management in the context of ADVANCE
CONSTRUCTION (SCOTLAND) LIMITED, an engineering and construction based company has
been discussed. As leadership is the ongoing process, dynamic in nature that includes more
and more interaction among the people (Hallinger and Wang, 2015). The fundamental
attributes of leadership are effective communication, accountability towards leaders and
integrated thinking. Vision is created by leaders of Advance Construction group ltd.; while
on the other hand, its management works within a vision.
Advance Construction (Scotland) Ltd was incorporated on December 22, 1999, by Mr James
Martin Shields. It provides services such as civil engineering infrastructure, training schools
and multi-utility installation (ACS Ltd, 2019).
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BODY
LO1 THE DETAIL REPORT OF FUNCTIONAL AREAS OF ADVANCE CONSTRUCTION
SCOTLAND LIMITED (ACS LTD) AND THE HIERARCHY OF MANAGEMENT.
The key functional areas of ACS Ltd. Includes both; job roles and responsibilities and
relationships among these roles that include, marketing, financing, human resource, prior
construction tasks and operations. A functional organizational structure of ACS Ltd increases
the efficiency of the operations and also helps in promoting the development of experts in
the various departments (Ilin et al., 2016). It also sets its members free and let them decide to
work on technical aspects along with meeting the limit of time and cost factor of the
project. The employees of ACS Ltd form a project team, which is guided and managed under
the supervision of the assigned managers. In the company, the decisions like salaries,
benefits remain with the top executive, while the decisions related to work is taken by the
project manager of ACS Ltd (ACS Ltd, 2019).
The organizational structure of ACS Ltd is given as under:
Figure 1 Hierarchy of ACS LTD.
(Source: ACS Ltd, 2019)
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The services provided by ACS Ltd are further classified under Groundwork division, Flooring Division,
Plant Division, Structure-seal Division, Multi Utility Division and Training Academy. The hierarchy, as
shown above, describes various functional departments, that controls the management from top to
lower level; the authorities flow from director to the management than to project managers and
finally to the on-field employees (ACS Ltd, 2019). There are some specific roles and responsibilities
of all the managers of every department. The technical unit of the ACS Ltd tracks the progress of the
unit, schedule the work to be done and hire contractors who will interface directly with the groups
that are functioning their work to meet the project requirement.
Starting from Project Department at ACS Ltd, this department is responsible for planning, scheduling
and managing the various projects and services that are provided by the organization. The project
manager decides the budget of each service and assigns the duties to each employee according to
their expertise in the field. Apart from this, the project manager might be responsible for the
supervision of the field, requires managing higher level of decisions. The reporting goes from the
project manager via functional units to the workforce working at the field and back to the project
manager through the functional units (Kerzner and Kerzner, 2017).
A quality manager is a person who has the authority to generate the quality control reports of ACS
Ltd throughout the organisation of the project (Ilin et al., 2016).
The role of purchasing department in ACS Ltd involves the purchasing of required raw materials
after comparing the valuable price and quality of the raw materials that are used regularly in the
construction projects and supplies it to the project department (Ilin et al., 2016).
At ACS Ltd, the engineer manager plans the project of construction that also includes
conducting the surveys, research, and solves and supports all technical issues that arise
during the project completion (Ilin et al., 2016).
For completion of every project that is under construction, there should be proper
recruitment of staff who are capable of handling the projects. The human resource
department of ACS Ltd is responsible for such recruitments and providing training and
development programme, benefits like compensation, insurance and also builds employee
relations in an organization (Ilin et al., 2016).
The finance department of ACS Ltd is responsible for managing the cash flow of the
company so that adequate funds are made available whenever required (Ilin et al., 2016).
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At last, the organizational structure of ACS Ltd consists of the marketing department that is
responsible for managing the logistics, storehouse, OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer)
centre and promoting the sales of the company (Ilin et al., 2016).
The highly trained and motivated employees with the proper workforce have made ACS Ltd
to achieve rapid growth across the private sector and public sector over the past 25 years
(ACS Ltd, 2019).
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LO2 IMPORTANCE OF COMMUNICATION IN RESPECT WITH LEADERSHIP AND
MANAGEMENT EFFECTIVE CHANNEL OF COMMUNICATION IN
INTERDEPARTMENTAL OF ACS LTD.
The communication skills act as a central component in leadership and management of ACS
Ltd, as leading a team in the global economy requires flexibility and firmness to direct the
challenges and priorities at the workplace and for this communication helps in increasing
the innovations, identifying the problems early and also creates the orientation towards the
goals effectively. The responsibility of the leaders of ACS Ltd is responsible for the flow of
information effectively (Jitwasinkul et al., 2016). To understand the strategic direction of a
company, all the roles and responsibilities of the staff should be communicated effectively.
It is the obligation of the management of ACS Ltd. to ensure that the stakeholders are
getting the value delivered and should lead in communicating and engaging to represent the
organization. The effective way of communication among managers and employees is
essential for good programming at ACS Ltd as it will build better employee relations,
increase the productivity, and problems will get solved faster (Jitwasinkul et al., 2016).
Effective communication is very important for the completion of the construction project at
ACS Ltd successfully. It improves the teamwork and leads to a proper collaboration of the
project by avoiding the issues and delays. As every department is interconnected with each
other, the communication channel should be established. So the project manager of ACS Ltd
encourages the cooperation between departments by structuring the ream interactions
with other departments from the ground level (Gamil and Rahman, 2018).
At the ACS Ltd, the engineer has the responsibility to communicate with the consultants
while the general contractors are responsible to communicate with the subcontractors and
suppliers. In the construction company, the basis of communication tends to be the
document that includes drawings and specifications (Gamil and Rahman, 2018).
Communication in the inter-departments at ACS Ltd takes place through verbally,
nonverbally, through drawings, signs and meetings. There are software solutions available at
ACS Ltd. for collaborating the project. It involves easily access and storage of the
information. These solutions prove to be a great source for effective communication (Gamil
and Rahman, 2018).
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Thus, in brief, it is concluded that a flow of communication easily affects the flow of
constructing the project. So when there is an effective collaboration of interdepartmental
communication, the project will run smoothly and no delays will be suffered by the
company (Gamil and Rahman, 2018).
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LO3 THE CURRENT DRIVERS OF GLOBALISATION THAT IMPACTS THE ACS LTD.
Nowadays globalization has dominated the entire public market and has set tendency to
operate on the global level across the domestic territories. It interlinks the economy of a
particular country with the rest of the world through the medium of export and import
(Najam et al., 2016)
In this report some of the recent drivers of globalization are being discussed:
ADVANCEMENT IN TECHNOLOGY:
The technology has reduced the cost of every tool like transportation, human resource,
communication, and enhanced the usage of mobiles and internet. Due to globalization,
MNC’s got the opportunities to enhance their potential growth (Najam et al., 2016).
TRADING INTERNATIONALLY:
Another factor that drives the globalization is international trade that encourages the
interrelation between the countries. It has increased the import and export of goods and
services to increase the standard of living. Eliminating the barriers of trading and reducing
the restrictions on foreign investment have enhanced the marketplace globally (Najam et
al., 2016).
Not only this but other drivers like market drivers, cost drivers that have influenced the
cheaper market, government drivers that have reduced the restrictions the trade policies
and allowed the free trade (Najam et al., 2016).
ACS Ltd, the construction industry in a global economy has contractors across the global
market, consisting the specialists and experts, various chains for supply management,
sources of plant and equipment hired across the world. Procuring the new projects,
services, materials, finance, equipment has become available internationally (Reed et al.,
2015).
The contractors of ACS Ltd are more pressurized to enter the global market of constructions.
Due to the technology factor, ACS Ltd has shifted their strategies from achieving the shares
in the global market with the help of joint ventures, mergers and acquisitions and
exchanging the FDI. It has also enhanced managerial activities like raw material tracking,
scheduling, financing, and organizing the subcontractors (Reed et al., 2015).
Some legal and economic reforms have also affected ACS Ltd, the engineering and
construction industry like the business tax, VAT, relaxation in foreign equity, etc.
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Globalization has positively impacted the ACS Ltd by reducing the cost due to technology
which has indirectly lead the benefit to the consumers availing the lower prices (Reed et al.,
2015).
Therefore, from all the above-covered situations, it is summarized that there are many
drivers in the globalisation that are crucially affecting ACS Ltd. Each driver is influencing the
limitations of the company. In the recent era, due to the global recession, there are many
criticisms of globalisation that had affected the increasing links among the countries in the
engineering and construction sector. But it is not necessary that every driver depends upon
one another but they influence the whole managerial environment of the construction
industries (Reed et al., 2015).
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LO4 THE COMPARISION OF TWO LEADERSHIP STYLES
In this report, the two leadership styles followed in ACS Ltd i.e. transactional leaders and
situational leaders are being discussed and a comparison is described between them, that
how both the leaders differ from each other. In an organization, projects are successfully
completed or fail only because of leaders, as the leaders are the only one who guides the
workforce from the beginning of the project to the completion of the project (Blomme et
al., 2015):
The two main leadership style that is followed by ACS Ltd is as follows:
TRANSACTIONAL LEADERSHIP:
This type of leadership in ACS Ltd focuses on the promotion of organizational goals with the
help of supervising the performance. The leaders in this style provide the tasks to the
workers and awards with either rewards or punishments for motivating them. The
subordinates are required to monitor the task carefully and ensure that they are able to
meet the expectations of the company (Rosenbach, 2018). When the workers at the ground
level perform best, they are eligible for reward; otherwise, they have to face the
punishment for not meeting the requirement. Transactional leaders of ACS Ltd enforce the
rules and regulations to maximize the productivity of its employees (Rosenbach, 2018).
SITUATIONAL LEADERSHIP:
In ACS Ltd, this is the most flexible style of leadership that manages and cooperates with the
existing needs and environment of the organization. It is adaptive in nature i.e. it reacts as
per the situation of the company. Situational leaders involve coaching leaders, democratic
leaders, affiliative leaders, coercive leaders, authoritative leaders (Lynch et al., 2018).
The basic difference between transactional leadership and situational leadership is that
situational leaders cope up with the current situation in the organization, while the
transactional leaders want the performance of their followers to meet the requirements of
the company in any situation (Holten and Brenner, 2015).
As above discussed the two styles of leadership, though the managers and leaders are more
oriented towards the completion of goals, being flexible towards the employees' comfort
zone is also necessary.Therefore, the most suitable leadership style in ACS Ltd is situational
leadership (ACS Ltd, 2019). As in the construction industry, teamwork is very essential, and
situational leaders empower the team members to develop the decisions which will inspire
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and motivates the employees and will result in greater satisfaction of employees. Situational
leaders in ACS Ltd are suitable as they consider the individualism and allows the employees
to work without any burden so that the employees are flexible to work in any given
situation (ACS Ltd, 2019).
Therefore, from the above discussion, it is clear that, the leaders at ACS Ltd adjust their
leadership style according to the situation which is leading a greater performance from the
workforce (Opoku et al., 2015).
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