Evaluating Leadership and Management Practices at ASDA Plc: A Report

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the leadership style and management practices within ASDA, a prominent UK-based retail company. It begins with an overview of ASDA's history, its current market position, and the rationale for selecting it as a case study. The core of the report examines the company's vision, identifying transformational leadership as a key element, particularly under CEO Roger Burnley. It explores the hierarchical organizational structure and the adoption of a relation-oriented leadership style. The report also details ASDA's management practices, including classical management concepts, rational systems, and scientific management, as well as strategies like cost leadership and differentiation. The report further addresses how these leadership styles and management practices are achieved and implemented within ASDA, focusing on the impact of transformational leadership. Finally, the report concludes with recommendations for future improvements, including the implementation of situational leadership theory, Vroom's Expectancy theory, and strategic market positioning, offering insights for ASDA's continued success.

THE LEADERSHIP STYLE

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION....................................................................................................................... 1
MAIN BODY.............................................................................................................................. 1
1. An overview to the ASDA................................................................................................... 1
2. Vision, leadership style and management practices of ASDA..............................................2
3. How this achieved and implemented in ASDA....................................................................4
4. Recommendation for future improvement...........................................................................5
CONCLUSION............................................................................................................................ 6
REFERENCES............................................................................................................................ 1
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·INTRODUCTION
Leadership plays an important role in an organisation to motivate people at the
workplace and they are responsible for developing the vision and implement various style to lead
the followers to reach the vision. The style of leadership in every organisation vary up on
company's structure, situation and as per the vision. The study aims to evaluate the leadership
style in ASDA Plc. It will start will the brief summary and history of ASDA and afterwards, the
leadership style and management practices will identify. Along with it, it will also summarise
that how these styles, practices and strategies will achieve and implement. The study will end up
with some recommendation for future improvement in the company.
·MAIN BODY
·1. An overview to the ASDA
Illustration 1: ASDA PLC.
(Source: ASDA, 2019)
History
ASDA Plc was founded in 1949 by a group of farmers from Yorkshire and in 1999, it
was obtained by Walmart and reached to £6.7 billion (Akinbode and Al Shuhumi, 2018). The
Asquith family ran a butcher's shop in Knottingly, West Yorkshire that was eventually expanded
to seven shops. The two son of the W.R. Asquith, Fred and Peter were actively involved in the
family business and they both lately becomes the co-founder of ASDA. By 1978, the company

had 60 superstores and after two years the sales marked more than £1 billion. From 2003 to 2014
it was the second largest supermarket chain in Britain by market share.
Summary
ASDA Plc. Is currently the third largest retailing company in UK (ASDA, 2019). The
products of the industry includes; food, lifestyle, clothing, kids section, lifestyle, general
merchandise, etc. ASDA is one of the four big supermarket along with Tesco, Sainsbury and
Morrison. ASDA is headquartered in Leeds, West Yorkshire. ASDA have more than 165,000
dedicated colleagues who serve more than 18 million consumer in the store every week. They
also add new department such as; Pharmacies, jewellery, opticians and beside this they also sell
books, music and videos. Revenue of the company is mentioned as £21,666 million in 2016 and
operating income was £791.7 million.
Beside this, ASDA has featured prominently in the list of “Best companies to work for”
that is the result of successful management and leadership in the company.
Rationale
The major reason to select ASDA in the leadership style is because the company has
been face various ups and downs and many changes in the ownership that changes the leadership
style as well as management style so it helps in to understand in which phase, leadership style
appeared as a boom or bane for the company's success.
l壱2. Vision, leadership style and management practices of ASDA
Leader of the company is responsible for setting the vision and lead the followers to
reach towards the setted vision and the management practices is essential to practically and
systematically develop strategies for achieving the objective effectively (Alonderiene and
Majauskaite, 2016).
Vision statement of the company
The company was started with the vision of the founding fathers to make the industry a
one stop shop for all the needs of the consumers. The vision of the company is to produce and
provide a good quality products at low prices.
Leadership style

ASDA is proud to count of the most well known names in retailing. All leaders from the
founding father of the Asquith and Stockdale families through to recent executive board, uphold
the same belief and value to provide the consumers the very best services and values. Although,
style of them can vary as per the situation (Amanchukwu, Stanley and Ololube, 2015).
Transformational Leadership is the core of ASDA plc. That focuses on the morale and
motivation of the employee. Leader of ASDA makes use of transformational leadership style.
Roger Burnley, the CEO of ASDA is a charismatic kind of leader and he mostly utilises
transformational leadership style (Bell and Harrison, 2018). The transformational leadership
style is where the individual in the organisation engage with others in such manner that the
leader and his follower raise one another to get high level of motivation and morality. It
encourages creativity and innovation. The style enables the employees to come up with various
suggestion that how business function and process can be improved.
ASDA follows hierarchical kind of organisational structure. Thus, based on the structure
of the company, it is essential for the business to change their leadership style. Currently ASDA
follows relation oriented leadership style (Gençer and Samur, 2016). With the help of this style
managers of the company share healthy relation with his subordinates.
Management Practices
Management practices implemented by the company are not only limited to assigning the
task to the team. The manager of the company is responsible to initiate communication among
the team members and resolve conflicts within the working environment. Management of the
company focuses on empowering the staff and develop new schemes to improve the quality.
ASDA follow various approaches of management based on their types of parameters. The
company follows classical concept as management practices (Kasemsap, 2017). The CEO of the
company clarifies that the organisational theories practices in the management of ASDA are;
Rational System and Scientific Management.
The organisation has developed new method of mapping the goals and objectives to meet
them effectively. ASDA has formalised structure of command where all the information and
communication passed from top to all the different units. To perform the basic function of
manager, they use various kind of approaches such as; steering approach and approach of
passive management (Stewart-Banks and et.al., 2015).

Strategies
The leader and manager of ASDA develop and follow various strategy in the
organisation include; cost leadership and differentiation that improve the consumer service. The
supermarket business has not been a pleasant place to be for many years now in the UK. The
competition is brutally increasing and the politics are tricky. As per the company's strategy
ASDA and Sainsbury have decided to combine their businesses in a merger that will create the
largest chain in UK. The combined market share of both the company is 31.4%. By merging
ASDA appeared to have a bright future.
The focus of their strategy is to cut down the cost of production and operation and hence
to gain leadership position in the marketplace (Akinbode and Al Shuhumi, 2018). The strategy
of the industry is to control the organisation and enhance the satisfaction of consumer and
maximize the revenues are the ultimate objective of the company.
l壱3. How this achieved and implemented in ASDA
The leadership style and management approaches and practices developed and
implemented effectively in the company that affect the whole organisation and the people within
them. For effectively achieved the vision with the help of the theories and style, various
strategies were implemented by the company that the change do not affect employees and system
in negative way.
Leader implements the transformational leadership style and democratic style form
autocratic style in the company. That helps leader and manager to understand the humans as the
part of company not just as resource (Alonderiene and Majauskaite, 2016). The current
leadership style made a big difference in the performance of the company as the performance of
the employees also develop in positive way. For implementing the management practices,
company change the structure of the organisation from flat to hierarchical. Implementation of
the practices effectively help the company to reach the goal with the team work as per the
leader's vision.
The role of leader is to lead, motivate, encourage and set the vision. The vision is set by
the leader that is achieved by the effective leadership style and accordingly the management
practice is dependent on the style and vision developed and implemented by the leader. To

implement the transformational style, leadership attributes to top CEO and the visionaries. By
adopting transformational leadership style, leader of ASDA able to effectively set a vision,
communicates it and then delegates tasks to the team towards that vision (Amanchukwu, Stanley
and Ololube, 2015).
Democratic leadership style is very important and effective as ASDA implement this style in its
company according to situations. For example, If the company feels that their subordinates are
very expert in context of technologies then it can take support of them by including them in their
decision making process. When it feels to creating ownership then also they can involve and
implement this leadership style (Bell and Harrison, 2018). It will make team members much
more committed to overcome barriers which they feel in the growth of their business.
For implementing transformational leadership style a manager of ASDA company need
to become a leader that should have a proper understanding of all the things of the company such
as organisational skills, project management etc. It can be implemented in some situations. For
example, by giving promotional opportunities to their employees when they feel high level of
labour turnover. By getting this opportunity all the workers will do their best and work hard that
will increase team engagement and will also inspire members to become more productive in
their work.
l壱4. Recommendation for future improvement
ASDA have top position in the marketplace because of an effective leader in the
company who leads the people as whole towards achievement of the organisational goals and
whenever needed, he responsibly motivates and encourage the followers (Gençer and Samur,
2016). Apart from that, there are some recommendation that help the leaders and managers to
perform their role.
·It is recommended to the industry that they should implement situational theory of leadership to
effectively handle any conflicts and as the company is facing downside at the current stage the
theory will help the leader and manager to act as per the demand of situation. It should similarly
apply in the context of employees. The theory state that, leader should not depend on only one
style, they should able to be flexible to adopt different style in the company.

·Company like ASDA which is the second largest supermarket chain in UK, it is important for
the workforce of the industry to feel that they are being valued within the company (Stewart-
Banks and et.al., 2015). ASDA is recommended to follow Vroom's Expectancy theory. The
leader and manager should aware that there is need of proper process of measuring employee's
effort after than, they should be rewarded. Thus, it is suggested that proper performance review
should followed in ASDA.
·Other than the theories, company is recommended to implement the strategy of margin in
Sainsbury that will surely help them to position in the market effectively. The strategy of cost
leadership should be market efficiently in the consumers mind so that they can put ASDA on the
prior position.
·It is recommended to the CEO or top management of the company to train the leader and allow
him to develop and adopt various style as per the situation demanded. In the hierarchical
structure the communication channel should be strictly control but they should make sure that
employees within the company are able to communicate their issues, decisions, thoughts with
others so there are less chances in arising of conflict (Amanchukwu, Stanley and Ololube, 2015).
·CONCLUSION
From the present study it has been summarised that leaders and managers play an
important role in the success of ASDA. They utilised or implemented various style in the
organisation to manage and lead the employees towards the vision and the objectives. From the
founder to the new leaders all have to maintain and follow the values and beliefs of the
company. But it also has been seen that the leadership and management of the industry has to
bring change in their approaches. By analysing the style of leadership in ASDA, it has been
concluded that they currently having relation oriented leadership style that help the company to
develop loyal employees in the company by building good and healthy relation with them.

·REFERENCES
Books and journal
Akinbode, A. I. and Al Shuhumi, S. R. A., 2018. Change Management Process and Leadership
Styles. PEOPLE: International Journal of Social Sciences. 4(2).
Alonderiene, R. and Majauskaite, M., 2016. Leadership style and job satisfaction in higher
education institutions. International Journal of Educational Management. 30(1).
pp.140-164.
Amanchukwu, R. N., Stanley, G. J. and Ololube, N. P., 2015. A review of leadership theories,
principles and styles and their relevance to educational
management. Management. 5(1). pp.6-14.
Bell, J. and Harrison, B. T., 2018. Vision and values in managing education: Successful
leadership principles and practice. Routledge.
Gençer, M. S. and Samur, Y., 2016. Leadership styles and technology: Leadership competency
level of educational leaders. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences. 229. pp.226-
233.
Kasemsap, K., 2017. Management education and leadership styles: Current issues and
approaches. In Innovation and shifting perspectives in management education. (pp.
166-193). IGI Global.
Stewart-Banks, B. and et.al., 2015. Education Leadership Styles Impact on Work Performance
and Morale of Staff. Journal of Marketing & Management. 6(2).
Online
ASDA. 2019. [Online]. Available Through:<https://www.asda.com/>.