Leadership in Management and Business: A Comprehensive Report

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of leadership in the context of management and business. It begins by highlighting the importance of understanding strategic management and leadership, emphasizing the key constituents of an effective leader, including communication, decision-making, and conflict management skills. The report then delves into various leadership theories, with a particular focus on transformational leadership and its practical application within organizations. A scenario is presented to illustrate the application of leadership principles in addressing organizational issues, followed by a case study exploring real-world leadership challenges and solutions. Finally, the report addresses future situations that demand effective leadership, concluding with a synthesis of key findings and implications for leadership development. The report emphasizes the need for leaders to adapt their styles to meet the evolving needs of their organizations and employees, ensuring a positive work environment and fostering employee engagement and productivity. The report draws on relevant literature to support its arguments, providing a well-rounded perspective on leadership in the modern business landscape.

LEADERSHIP FOR
MANAGEMENT AND
BUSINESS

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
1. Importance of understanding strategic management and leadership.......................................1
2. Constituents of an effective leader..........................................................................................2
3. Leadership theory and its application to organization.............................................................3
4. Scenario...................................................................................................................................5
5. Case..........................................................................................................................................6
6. Future situations that require leadership..................................................................................8
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................12
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................13

INTRODUCTION
The presented report is based on the elementary components contributes to generate an effective
leadership. This report will be generated on the basis of leadership theories and its application to
organizations.
1. Importance of understanding strategic management and leadership
Leadership is a broad concept and attribute that do not restrict with certain job roles
within any workplace involving different effective approaches to lead a team according to the
situations. Strategic leadership includes number of processes such as task delegation, monitoring,
evaluation, situation analysis that an employer or employer has to perform at different work
stages. The responsibility of a leader is not restricted towards delegating the task and
responsibilities but also to enhance the relationship among team members. Other important
element of a leader is to motivate, stimulate and reward the team members without being biased.
The style of leadership may vary according to the job roles that tend to manage different sections
and group of people differently (Simsek et.al., 2015). It is necessary for every employee to look
after a strategic working and resource allocation process which directly falls under the process of
effective leadership. Each and every individual inhibits the quality of leading any group, team or
tasks and therefore, there is a need to have a broad perspective of strategic leadership that aligns
with their other leadership qualities. The execution, implementation, designing and directing
business activities require to understand the importance of an effective leadership and its styles.
All the aspects of strategic management must align with leadership styles and patterns adopted
by any leader or an individual (Thompson and Glasø 2015). Employees of any organization must
adopt a suitable leadership framework to lead a team or group activity in a standardised way.
Therefore, directing every task with suitable allocation of resources is extremely important to
understand for every employee working in an organization. Understanding the importance of
strategic management and leadership is an important aspect for every employees of the
organization. It will contribute to the efficiency of employers and employees to understand
things better from the perspective of strategic working and effective leadership as well as
management functions. With the help of strategic management, the employers will be able to
address organization’s issues effectively that will also supports the decision making functions.
The business activities and plans would turn to be highly profitable if designed with balanced
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combination of management and leadership elements. The employers as well as employees of
any company should reflect the components of strategic management and leadership within their
working patterns; it will help them to comply each and every business functions effectively.
Therefore, applying a balanced combination of strategic management and leadership by each and
every employee of the company will deliver desired results and increase the efficacy of
employees. Furthermore, to increase the leadership competencies of employers and employees;
the executives may devise certain related and suitable training functions and assessments. In this
way, the compliance of business activities would be carried out by the proper implication of
leadership style and employees would be able to match their leadership responsibilities with
accurate attributes of strategic management. Therefore, to accelerate the growth of overall
organization in a proper direction; the collaboration of standardised managerial activities need to
be done with strategic leadership and processes.
2. Constituents of an effective leader
Leadership is a combination of numerous traits and characteristics associated with a
leader or an individual. The process of leading a team is influenced by personal qualities of a
leader and consists of different analysis based on particular situations. It is not a single entity but
a combination of variant styles, qualities and behaviours that persists within an individual and
reflects on the strategies planned by them. The process of leadership consists of various actions
that combines and form a strategic leadership within any company or organization. The
complexity of leadership builds up due to the components like situation analysis, decision
making, delegation, allocation and many more similar activities. All these activities and
processes need to be carried out by a leader to deliver desired results or outcomes. Leadership
highly depends on personal traits of an individual and their efficiency to control and manage a
team according to the business needs and situations. A leader can perform in different ways that
can also be affected by the size and type of organizations. Leaders are responsible to deliver
positive work environment, analyzing organization culture and developing suitable organization
culture to increase productivity. There are numerous of skills that contribute to an effective
leadership or a leader such as communication style, decision making, team building, conflict
management and other analytical skills. A leader need to be responsible to work according to the
situations, contingencies and different sudden circumstances arises within an organization.
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Therefore, it can be said that leadership is the compilation of various elements that must be
matched with organizational needs. In terms of complexities that directly refers to traits,
behaviours and contingency, an effective leader have almost all the constituents of these
complexities that supports them to deliver a desired outcome (Ford and Harding, 2018). They are
bound to perform in a way that efficiently matches their decision with the organizational
situations and tend to build various strategies with the help of their personal traits. There are
number of ways which influence the leadership skills of different leaders and thus, it also
increases the complexity of the process (Langley et.al., 2017). Due to such complexities, the
leaders sometimes become restricted to perform or adopt a certain model irrespective of their
capabilities. Many times leaders have to alter their current leadership style as per the need of
employees and organization. Along with it, an effective leadership process also depends on
factors such as efficacy of long term vision, adaptability of culture and understanding of leader-
member relationship. Thus, by the inclusion of such complexities, leadership has become a multi
variable process which has certain specification for an effective leader. A leader would be
effective enough if he or she is highly structured and constructive in terms of their decision
making process and innovative ideas to generate friendly working atmosphere to address all the
issues of employees. They would promote open communication, moral values, motivation,
recognition and other similar traits that they have in themselves. Therefore, an effective leader
always tends to be task, relationship and result oriented and builds suitable decision as per
situations.
3. Leadership theory and its application to organization
There are number of leadership styles, approaches and theories that can be adopted within
different organizations as per its objectives. Some organizations tend to adopt a combination of
different leadership theories to achieve set goals and objectives. These theories and approaches
can be selected based on the plan of action developed in concern of different business activities.
The leaders of global firms and industries tend to be highly involved with the employees and
develop an open culture to resolve the issues of employees effectively. One of the most effective
theories of leadership is the transformational theory that can contribute to increase the
productivity of any organisation. Transformational leadership theory mainly focuses upon
directing and leading a team with high level of participation and collective decision making. A
transformational leadership theory suggests the building of an effective team by influencing,
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motivating and inspiring every individual of a team separately. This approach or theory of
leadership aims to coach and promote the intellectuals within a team or a group by adopting a
culture of open communication. Any company or organisation with transformational leaders
yields or deliver superior performance standards and self efficacy among employees. An
organisation tends to be highly employees centric if it adopts a theory of transformational
leadership and will have an unrestricted communication patterns which reduces the chances of
misunderstandings among the employees and employers (Ghasabeh et.al., 2015).
Transformational theory of leadership can highly influence the strategy of company FedEx in
terms of synthesizing internal business activities. With the help of transformational leadership
style, the employers or executives will be able to find out the problems related to operations as
well as employees. This approach would improve the productivity of employees within FedEx.
The issues related to distribution and all the related aspects of operation management can be
smoothly operated by adopting transformational style of leadership. The process of task
delegation may become simpler and simultaneously the workload on employees reduces
effectively. In this way, the working culture of FedEx Company can be efficiently managed by
involving the elements of transformational leadership theory. Furthermore, it will directly
support the workforce to come up with the persistent issues in organisation and thus cultivate
easier part for leaders to focus specifically on the principle issues suggested by employees. With
inclusion of this leadership theory, the process of change management and reluctance of
employees towards change can be smoothly handled. Such leadership style will motivate
employees and welcome their innovative ideas and in this way the company will be able to
receive new ideas of addressing certain technological or operational issue. Employees will be
self motivated to learn new and advanced skills to increase their productivity and to deliver
desired outcomes. Therefore, applying the elements of transformational leadership FedEx will be
able to sustain with structured and systematic way of service delivery. Transformational
leadership theory will promote open discussion and culture of open communication among
employee and employees of the company that will help them to resolve the issues of delivery of
packages, selection of routes and other operations related activities.
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4. Scenario
As per the given situation, the organization is facing some serious issues that need to be
addressed by the implementation of a proper action plan and leadership quality. The entrepreneur
can efficiently manage the team members by setting and designing some standardised protocols
that should be strictly followed by the team (Subramony et.al., 2018). There is a need to identify
the loopholes in working criteria of the employees and strategies need to be addressed as per the
identified situation. The entrepreneur can undergo for overall assessment of organization in
terms of working patterns, culture of the company. Being an entrepreneur and head of company
there should be a focused action plan must prepare to turn the organization more effective and
disciplined (Covin and Slevin, 2017). A hierarchical structure in the organization can be
proposed to deliver an appropriate chain of command, flow of reporting and responsibilities
within the employees. Work distribution and deadlines can be set and strictly followed to gain on
time outcomes that will also improves the efficiency of employees as well. Furthermore, the head
of company may follow a task delegation process that must be time bound for each day. Proper
working hours of employees will deliver them work life balance and introduce discipline
working culture in the company. Given conditions in the case highlight, the issue related to tasks
structure that can be planned by effective task distribution process. The identified issues can be
controlled by initiating and implementing basic rules and regulations related to walking patterns
of team members (Schoemaker, Heaton and Teece, 2018). The entrepreneur can adopt a suitable
time frame and specify working hours by discussing it with team members. Working schedule
can also become flexible by dividing the working hours into shifts as per the choice of the
employees. The entrepreneur can further develop a proper business outline addressing the
objectives and policies of organization that must be openly communicated with team members to
let them know about business priorities (Appelbaum et.al., 2015). Focused approach must be
delivering to deadlines, task allocation and working shifts to perform activities in a more
professionalised way. Some business protocols such as documentations, reporting time, work
records and weekly meetings should be strictly involved within the working system. The
entrepreneur may look after the issues related to informal atmosphere and can regulate it with
introducing specified rules and regulations. The mismatch of personality styles can be addressed
by promoting engagement activities and team work building sessions (Bertram, Blase and
Fixsen, 2015). The uniformity of working schedule among the team members must be developed
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by delivering continuous emphasis on punching or time reporting sessions. Furthermore, the
organization can control the amount of projects taken up by them as per the employees’
efficiency. Copy of new rules and guidelines must be prepared and distributed among the team
members which should specifically focus on top organizational priorities. In this way, the
entrepreneur would be able to sustain with a clear and accurate communication with the
employees regarding the primary needs of organization.
5. Case
The case inhibits number of problems that directly relates with poor people management
and unsuitable working culture. The newly appointed operation manager of production facility
may work on the current issues of employees by setting goals and priorities. First of all, the
operation manager should look after the current performance standards and activities carried out
in the firm. The manager would effectively resolve all the issues by strengthening
communication and direct discussion with the employees and can adopt certain strategies as per
its feasibility. As it is mentioned that the working criteria of production supervisor is highly
strict, process oriented and least focused on employees needs or demands. Therefore, the
principle aim should be to construct or develop employee centric working culture and to promote
flexible working patterns and supervision process (Schoemaker, Heaton and Teece, 2018). The
plan of action must be framed with the involvement and participation of supervisor, quality
expert and some employees to reach up to a uniform decision. Operation manager should directly
consult with production supervisor and address the issues of employees developing due to strict
supervision and monotonous working patterns. Open discussion with production supervisor to
know the reasons for selecting such tight supervising strategy can also be a part of the process.
Supervisor should be communicated with all the needs of employees and the effect of tight
working schedule on their productivity so that the supervisor may develop a friendlier working
environment. A standard protocol of regular meetings and feedback session with employees can
be useful to generate an employee centric culture that improves their productivity and efficiency
(Bertram, Blase and Fixsen, 2015). Along with it, the operation manager can build an effective
reward system and recognition programs at regular basis to motivate employees. Their stress can
be reduced by organizing certain stress relieving activities and indoor games on week days.
Workforce can also be facilitating by provision of flexible working schedules as per the
feasibility of organization and workload. To eradicate the monotonous working culture, the
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operation manager may adopt the process of task or job rotation timely; it will also enhance the
skills of employees. Apart from this, the production supervisor must be trained towards an
effective people management approach and employee- centricity to make them feel motivated.
The workers must be provided with fixed breaks during the working hours to reduce the
instances of in-between working breaks taken by them. The suggestions of employees must be
welcomed and the production quota can be set high to reduce the overload of working
responsibilities. The employees of company have some issues related to job insecurity as well
which highly demotivates them that can be managed by providing them career solutions,
promotions and consistent job enlargement (Ruben and Gigliotti, 2016). The engagement
processes among executives and employees must be promoted to improve communication and
collective decision making process. Along with this, the operation activities can be highly
supported by enhancing working proficiency and speed of employees through provision of
effective training sessions. It would be fruitful if the training focuses on quality advancements of
the production to reduce the issue of decreasing quality of production. The quality control team
should arrange certain auditing program to look after the standards quality parameters of
products and they must provide training to employees about certain quality margins that need to
be addressed and followed. In terms of leading the team of 170 employees effectively, the
operation manager may select one of the suitable leadership styles to regulate all the persisting
issues (Meuser et.al., 2016). The company may perform in a desired way when it would lead by
combination of transformational and situational leadership. In order to align organizational
objectives with business activities, the manager can adopt these leadership styles to effectively
address the issues of employees. The operation manager of the production facility can drive the
performance of employees by providing those positive feedbacks, structured working conditions
and schedules. With the help of situational leadership, the manager may take alter current
working patterns and policies as per the situation and employees must be trained effectively to
manage in such circumstances (Wilkinson and Kemmis, 2015). Along with transformational
leadership style, the development of open and supportive working culture can be promoted and
employees can feel motivated, admired and inspired. In this way, the presented case can be
resolved by the application of these two leadership styles.
Operation manager should work closely with the quality experts to understand the real
cause of inefficiencies persist with the production activity. The operation manager can closely
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work with production supervisor and quality controller to find out the root cause of quality and
efficiency deterioration. Feedbacks of an individual performance can be directly taken by the
supervisor and suitable training programs can be planned for employees to develop their skills
(Perruci and Hall, 2018). Along with it, the employees can be provided with the some sort of
indirect rewards as well that will help them to perform in a desired manner. To increase the level
of interest towards the tasks, operation manager can provide the employees some form of
leadership opportunities for certain group of employees. In this way, they will be able to focus on
increasing their leadership skills and tend to learn new things as well which reduces the
monotonous working patterns. Therefore by adopting a more standardised form of leadership
style or approach, the operation manager will be able to effectively solve employees’
concerns(Perruci and Hall, 2018). Few steps regarding the alteration in supervision process and
quality monitoring should be the primary focus for providing desired change within the
production facility. Operation manager can undergo for participative model of leadership in
which the emphasis should be given on suggestions of employees and policies can be altered
according to their needs or demands. With the help of such leadership style, the efficiency and
interest of employees towards work responsibilities can be increased. By adopting such
leadership criteria, workforce will tend sense a secured work environment and will openly
discuss about their issues that can be easily addressed on time.
6. Future situations that require leadership
The developing era of technology and globalization is influencing the current business
functions of every organization and will also impact future operational strategies as well. The
companies will have responsibility of developing a systematic marketing analysis and
assessment criteria that will be possible only after strategic leadership and management
activities. Companies at global and international levels will have to be highly efficient in terms
of selecting the workforce, providing them training functions and to retain them by strengthening
the organisational portfolio and facilities (Strese et.al., 2016). Future organisations will be highly
dependent on leaders and their actions taken to address any organisational situation in a correct
manner. The principal focus will be given to appoint and retain knowledge workers and turning
them into leaders to design a suitable working environment for employers and employees.
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. Organisations will have to contribute and invest in developing their pool of knowledge
persons and leaders to strengthen their upcoming strategies and its alignment with certain
business situations. Global companies in every sector are facing few basic and common business
situations at present and will face in the future as well (Denning, 2019). These functions are
closely related to and influenced by globalisation and technological advancement in the field of
corporate, industrial and other field of work or sectors. The effect of globalisation will be seen on
operations, culture and strategies of global companies that have to be incorporated by advanced
leadership functions. The leaders of companies will have to be extremely attentive in terms of
planning training functions, selecting business technologies and creating innovative ideas to
sustain with future situations of globalisation and modernization. To align all the future business
situations with the era of globalisation, the leaders will have to drive their attention towards
strategic business policies and developing their roles to promote productivity and efficiency at
different levels (Tang, 2019). Different e-commerce platforms like Amazon will tend to have a
great requirement of an effective leadership style to manage its various future business situations.
There are number of future instances or situations that can be effectively managed only by strong
leaders and their processes
Cross-Cultural adaptability
One of the elementary and most influential future business situations would be the
cultural adaptability and developing organisational structure to manage all sort of cross-cultural
relations. At Amazon, due to globalisation there will be number of instances where the leaders
have to develop cultural friendly working environment. It will not only increase the engagement
process but also strengthen the organisational image at global level. The leaders will have to
generate a sense of social behaviour, openness, acceptability and integrity towards the employees
of different cultural backgrounds (Santos, Caetano and Tavares, 2015). Modern and future
organisation will have to promote the backward communities bye involving them into their
business operations and does require a sensitized working culture to make them feel motivated.
Therefore, Amazon will need suitable form of leadership style to cultivate search responsive
organisation culture and to inspire local employees with the sense of unity and respect towards
different cross cultural relations.
Training functions
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In upcoming time, there will be an extreme need of developing proper training functions
to build a technology friendly working environment. To manage such training functions, a
suitable leadership style will become an elementary part of the organizations (Wilkinson and
Kemmis, 2015). At Amazon, the employees will need to be trained effectively with all future
advancements in supply and distribution facilities that will contribute to the success of
organization. In such scenario, the leaders will have to be efficient enough in terms of selecting
suitable equipments and developing standardised training functions for the future organization
(Huang, Weng and Chen, 2016). With growing dependency on technologies, Amazon will have
to be active enough to build a technology centric atmosphere by providing rigorous training
functions. Digitalised business activities will also introduced in the company to operate
managerial, administrative, operational and delivery functions which highly require a proper
management and leadership processes.
Organizational change
It is one of the necessary aspects of a company that require an effective leadership in
terms of maintaining standardized flow of communication during change management. Leaders
at Amazon Company will have to plan suitable strategies to sustain a desired change process.
With developing globalization and modernization, change management will be a continuous
need of the company that need a focused action plan (An et.al., 2019). Due to developed
automation, there will be a need to reconstruct the delivery, warehouse and support systems
which requires a suitable leadership quality to manage overall activities. Along with it, the
company also will have to construct different policies timely to maintain an effective working
environment for employees at global level. There will be a need to leading team and group with a
constructive ideology of sustainability and turning out all business activities in concern with the
social and environmental issues (Luu, 2019). For desired change management activities in future
organizations, there is a need of efficient leaders and leadership. Therefore, to address and align
with all such future instances Amazon will have to drive its focus on strategic management and
effective leadership.
Competition
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