University of Northampton: Leadership Theories and Culture Report

This report provides an in-depth analysis of leadership theories, focusing on the contrasting styles of authoritative and democratic leadership within the context of Wesfarmers. It examines how Richard Goyder's leadership approach, characterized by a lack of ego and emphasis on teamwork, has influenced the company's organisational culture and its strategic decisions, including the acquisition of Coles. The report explores the impact of leadership styles on employee motivation, organisational behaviour, and the challenges associated with transitioning between leadership models. Furthermore, it delves into the role of power and politics, the importance of teamwork, and the influence of Wesfarmers' diverse business portfolio on its overall success. The report also discusses the company's commitment to ethical practices and its efforts to improve its organisational culture through initiatives such as the Reconciliation Action Plan.

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Contents
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................3
Comparing leadership theories..............................................................................................................3
Organisational Culture...........................................................................................................................8
Power and politics.................................................................................................................................9
Conclusion...........................................................................................................................................10

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Introduction
Leadership and management are inseparable terms to understand the concept of achieving the
organisational goal through effective management. Leadership is a crucial component of
management whereas leadership behaviour stresses on building the environment through
which employee can excel and develop. Leadership is defined as the potential that can
influence the group efforts in order to accomplish the organisational goal. Every
organisational leader follow a particular leadership style or a mixture of leadership styles to
run the business and achieve the organisational goals. It is important for the organisational
leader to a follow a style because leadership is crucial function of management that helps to
maximise the efficiency through initiative action, motivation, guidance, building confidence,
and coordination. The report brings out the comparison of different leadership theories
followed by the leaders of the company. Moreover, it describes that how organisational
culture has been affected by changing the current leadership theory. Apart from this, the
report also discusses power and politics assessed by managers in such a way that how a
leader access his power to have a positive culture in the organisation.
Comparing leadership theories
Richard Goyder have been leading Wesfarmers as a managing director. He has carefully
observed the purchase and transformation of Coles that drive Bunnings to the pre-eminent
market position and it will deliver a certain level of return to the shareholders. He admits that
his personality has a relative lack of ego as its key attribute. He admits that Goyder surrounds
himself with the good people but it also highlights the high egoistic leaders that tend to do
opposite (Wesfarmers, 2018c). The most important aspect that he have highlighted top-level
management of Wesfarmers as very supporting. Even during Global Financial Crisis, at the
time of acquisition of Coles when people started doubting on its share price fell to $14 late in

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2008 (WESFARMERS, 2018d). He strongly believes for leadership lessons, which shows a
remarkable correlation between the business activities. At last, Goyder says that there do not
exist any magical recipe for leadership. Best leader always use strengths, identify the
weaknesses and he has been surrounding themselves with great people. When analysing the
responsibility of top-level management, the company provides numerous job-specific and
career development-training opportunities that includes customer service, technical work,
teamwork, and leadership too (Wesfarmers, 2018e). At Wesfarmers group level, talent team
should focus on the ability of leadership teams and general manager, which ensures that they
have ability to focus on the highly abled potential leaders. Wesfarmers launched a group wide
investment by awaking and capability building that is associated with data analytics while
focusing on single strategic areas. When acquiring Coles, many market researchers and
industrialists made some controversial statements, as Coles is also a great brand in
supermarket industry. Richard was a confident leader and the team that Wesfarmers has can
deploy more effective resources that can better Coles and can give good returns to the
organisations. Today, the company is at remarkable level Coles (a subsidiary business) that
has effective leadership traits with the combined efforts of management team.
Authoritative leadership Democratic leadership
As the traits, This leader dictate and control
the policies and procedures and decide what
goals need to be achieved.
These leaders are participative leaders in
which team members get involved in
decision-making process and this type of
leader can be applied to any organisation.
An autocratic leader retains control, power,
and authority and ultimately reserves the
right to create all the decisions in a proper
way.
It motivates the subordinates to create a
positive organisational culture at workplace.
Moreover, it also allow the team members
to remain very active during the decision

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making process.
Launching HR community of practise in overall group to share and strengthen the practises
(Wesfarmers, 2017). In 2018, the company has announced two major changes such as former
prime minister of New Zealand was appointed in the board of Perth-based conglomerate. Mr
Ward helped the transition of office supplies in the Wesfarmers group followed by
acquisition of Coles in 2007 (Business News, 2018). He became the member of advanced
advisory board with Bunning Australia and New Zealand board. As far as power is
concerned, Wesfarmers always make sure that board composition consist of directors that
brings an appropriate mix of skillset, expertise, diversity (especially gender) and experience
in the board committee. Current directors have mixture of skills, experience, gender diversity,
and expertise that will discharge the responsibility and will ultimately serve the
organisation`s strategic priorities with the current business in diverse operation such
supermarkets, hotels, home improvements, convenience stores, department stores, office
supplies, and also industrial divisions in energy and fertilisers, chemicals, safety products,
and coal. It has been identified that to address the organisational behaviour issues, the
organisation need proper designing. The company is facing emotion, personality, motivation
and attitude related issues at the workplace. A leader should encourage the employees by
increasing their work efficiency through higher incentives and giving them a better work
environment (Westphalen, 2017). It is important for the management and the leader to cut
down the expenses. A leader spends money in improving the communication by
incorporating the innovative strategies and technologies. Although the company spends
money in incorporating innovative strategies and dealing with the challenges associated with
training and development of employees. The management follows authoritative which can be
a serious issue for the company (Wesfarmers, 2018e). If the company undertakes to change,

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its leadership style from authoritative to other effective democratic style that can lead to
implement an improved productivity in Wesfarmers.
Following the democratic style can lead to involvement and more participation in the
decision making of the employees that motivates them to work harder. Although,
implementing new leadership style can be challenge because the leader himself as he has to
adopt the traits and start delegating his work to his subordinates as the leader has to identify
and rectify the ill effects of authoritative leadership. Here, in democratic leadership, the
leader has to plan to deal with the issues created by authoritative leadership. The company
needs to create a proper communication between the manager and the employees of the
organisation. Obtaining proper and regular feedback from the subordinates enable the
manager to become more aware of problems faced by the team members and find where there
is a need to improve. Receiving the feedback timely from the leaders help the organisation to
check the performance level of the each employee working in the company. Teamwork in the
organisation will help to achieve the objectives of the organisation in an effective manner.
Working in a team help the team members to increase their skills and knowledge. In this way,
teamwork increases the flexibility in the workforce with the help of cross training. Whereas,
if the OB model of the organisation is dissatisfactory because of poor performance as the
expected outcome result is not achieved. Lack of teamwork, proper leadership style and
inability to perform good causes disputes in the company among the workforce. Improper
management can affect the organisation culture to a large extent. Power in the company lies
in the hands of Ian Mcleod (managing director of coles), John Gillam (managing director of
Home improvement), Launa Inman (Managing director of target), Tim Bult (Managing
director of energy), Steward Butel (Managing director of resources), Olivier Chretien
(Managing director of industrial & safety), Ian Hansen (Managing director of chemicals &
fertilisers) and many more. It is seen that the company biggest strength is through its diversity

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of portfolio in outstanding retail brands (Wesfarmers, 2018e). It also commits to long-term
sustainable growth. All the success and reputation is possible only because of its efficient
human resource and its teamwork. These management leaders have evaluated a wide range of
investment opportunities which includes-
Existing Portfolio By imposing huge power in the business
operations, the leaders deploy capital in the
existing portfolio that will ultimately drive
to continuous growth in business by
maintaining the lead position in the market.
Another adjacent opportunities It leverage the existing assets and abilities to
take the benefit of other existing
opportunities.
Value-accretive transactions Leaders strives to conduct proper situation
analysis before investing in opportunities
and value added transactions by various
models.
By accessing appropriate power, leaders assessed several opportunities that applies long-term
horizon to investment strategy. Authoritative leadership shows the creation of value enabling
strategies such as strengthening the existing businesses by its operation and satisfying the
customer`s needs (Sullivan, and Gouldson, 2017). This type of work dedication by
authoritative leaders have changed the organisation culture and has encouraged the
employees to work hard to achieve the goals. Improved and positive organisational culture
secure the growth opportunities by entrepreneurial initiatives. It has renewed the portfolio by
value added transactions (Wesfarmers, 2015). Continuous work oriented company`s culture

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ensures sustainability with the help of long-term responsible management. When reviewing
the business operations, company`s diversified business portfolio includes lining up of
supermarket retailers with 750 retail stores in Australia. Moreover, it undertakes many
businesses and each business division has certain contribution in the whole operational
activities such as Coles, Bunnings, Target, KMART (retailer of value general merchandise
and apparel with a store number of 182), Curragh (developing coal mines in Queensland) and
Western Australia (premier Coal). In addition to this, every business contributes a good sum
of money to EBIT such as insurance, chemicals, and fertilisers, industrial and safety, and
energy and other many activities (Roberts, Roberts, Danaher, and Raghavan, (2015).
Organisational Culture
Core attribute of Wes farmer’s operating model is that each business operates with high
degree of autonomy. Actions other than managing the detailed strategies and implemented
plans, the company focuses on ensuring that several enablers in the business drive to best
operating performance. These best practises attract outstanding people and utilise the
individual talent, which always remained critical element in the sustainable success of the
organisation. The company ensures that it employs strong financial concerns for all the
decisions in the whole group. Wesfarmers has a clear differentiation of how to promote the
strong commercial capacity with a leadership base (Wesfarmers, 2018b). Wesfarmers have
recognised that empowering culture is analytical to the stimulating accountability in order to
deliver the results that is to be agreed with the help of Group`s corporate planning
framework. Wesfarmers use to stretch the targets to achieve the objective settings and that
encourages the team to remain proactive while driving in creating the value for the business.
The company also seeks to innovate that will lead to develop the culture, reward it, creativity,
and boldness. The valuable strategies has created a empowered business environment and
culture that includes respecting employees, suppliers, and customers that relentlessly focus to

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provide a safe workplace that adds to other fundamental way of operating the company
(Pulker, Trapp, Scott, and Pollard, 2018). The social responsibility has been extended to
maintain the high standards of conducting the ethical actions and maintaining the
environment in order to contribute to the community. In order to improve the organisational
culture, in 2017, the company created its seventh Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) in order
to develop it in conjunction with Reconciliation Australia. RAP of the company sets out and
aims to intend that will ultimately drive the business towards the goal of the workplace to
reflect that it serves a lot of backward communities and respect them such as culture of
Torres Strait and Aboriginals (Islam, Jain, and Haque, 2016).
Power and politics
Wesfarmers employs above 217000 person in Australia, Portugal, New Zealand, UK, China,
and Bangladesh. As far as politics is concerned especially if negative, at the end of 2018, the
company has opposed slavery in all kinds under the Modern Slavery Act, (2018) that
describes steps adopted by Wesfarmers and all wholly subsidiary business soon after its
introduction. In order to minimise the risk and uncertainty of slavery for the employees
especially that has been occurring in business and its supply chain. In the form of assessing
authority, the roles and responsibility are acknowledged to protect the employees according
to human rights with the help of ethical and sustainable business operations. Human rights in
the organisation gave more importance to the employees, customers, and society where they
will operate. Politics may involve unethical practises within the organisation where leg
pulling among the top-level organisation and the middle managers do not want each other to
grow (Klinger, 2015). Same as among the floor level people, jealousy, and negativity that
leads competition can hamper the performance of the employees and spoil the organisational
environment. Therefore, the company has decided to improve the modern slavery risk and
mitigation that results in continuous improvement. Consultation process (wholly subsidised

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business) which is undertaken to draft the statement (Wesfarmers, 2018a). Businesses should
prepare the annual ethical sourcing report that includes audit of factories through ethical
source training and programs. Wesfarmers has adopted the risk-based approach to improve
the modern slavery deeds (Farivar, and Ladd, 2016).
Conclusion
From the above discussion, it can be concluded that leadership and management plays an
important role in deciding the organisational behaviour and predicting it has extend to which
it can achieve and grab success. The report has also discussed politics as on how top level and
middle level manager assess negative power by not allowing anyone else to attain a higher
position and depleting jealousy among the team members, which further spoils the work
environment and encourages unethical issues within the organisation. In 2018, the company
has adopted Modern Slavery Act, (2018) in order to protect the employees from both inside
as well as outside slavery. The report highlights that how authoritative leadership lead to
unmotivated employees with the poor balance of proper performance. Whereas, on the other
hand, democratic leadership can improve the decision making process as subordinates
participate in this process and this motivates the employees to work hard. Wesfarmers has a
large portfolio of various businesses serving diversified purposes and undoubtedly, it needs
various leaders above every department to execute the work efficiently. From the above
critical analysis, it can be said that Wesfarmers leaders has been effectively deploying the
resources to get an effective results by assessing the power effectively further and give
profitable returns to the shareholders.

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