Leadership and Strategy at McDonald's: A Competitive Analysis

This presentation analyzes McDonald's leadership style, focusing on the path-goal theory, and identifies key functional areas such as human resources, finance, and marketing. It provides a company profile, highlighting McDonald's global presence and product offerings. The presentation then employs a SWOT analysis to evaluate the company's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. It suggests strategic recommendations including cost leadership, differentiation, and focus strategies for improving competitive advantage. The presentation concludes by summarizing the leadership style, functional areas, and strategic tools utilized, emphasizing the importance of these strategies for achieving McDonald's objectives. References to academic sources support the analysis.

ASSESSMENT 2 (TASK 2)

AIM OF PRESENTATION
•To improve the competitive advantage of McDonald's.
•To identify the leadership style and functional areas of McDonald's.

COMPANY PROFILE
• McDonald's is an American fast food company as restaurant operated in
California, US.
• Due to revenue, it is the world's largest restaurant chain which is
serving over 69 million consumers regularly in over 100 nations across
36900 outlets in 2016.
• Company is best called for their hamburgers, French fires and
cheeseburgers.

Leadership style and functional areas of organization
• Path-goal theory :
•This theory defines as being leader behaviour which can influence
motivation and job satisfaction of subordinates. It is the theory that
behaviour of leaders is acceptable to follower for future satisfaction.
• Path-goal theory presents that the perception of subordinates is affected
by behaviour, directive, supportive and participative of leaders.

CONTD….
•Functional Areas:
•McDonald's maintains functional areas in the structure of organization. For
instance, corporate operation, group for human resource management, supply
chain management, finance, information technology, marketing function etc.
within the organization.
•Human Resources: The HR manager needs to recruit and select the best
candidate who have ability to handle consumers services, marketing products
and services, take care of quality and standard of goods and services within the
McDonald’s.
•

CONT...
• Finance: The finance manager requires controlling all financial records,
handle cash flows for improving the financial position of McDonald’s.
• Marketing: The marketing manager needs to ensure that conducting the
appropriate marketing research and collecting the proper information about
prices, products, competitors in the marketplace.

Business analysis tool (SWOT )
• Strength:
• The strong brand image and high brand loyalty are the strength of
McDonald's. Company has offers variety of products such as burgers, wraps,
nuggets etc. which is also capability of business.
• Weakness:
• The financial planning of company is not properly and appropriate, so that
they use the cash efficiently for reducing the weakness in the business.

CONT…..
• Opportunities:
• The lower inflation and interest rate on credit to consumers which can create
opportunities for business.
• Threats:
• Due to online channels, changing the consumer buying behaviour which can
threat to existence physical structure of McDonald's. This can relate to
supply chain model.

RECOMMENDATION (STRATGEY)
• Cost leadership:
• It means firms provide reasonable value at the lower price.
McDonald's do cost leadership through continuously improving
operational efficiency which usually means paying their workers less.
• Differentiation:
• McDonald's should follow differentiation strategy to be unique in the
food industry along with some concepts which are broadly by buyer.
It is rewarded for their uniqueness with premium price.

CONT….
• Focus:
• McDonald's should follow this strategy for focus on target
segment and other division in the business.
• Therefore, company should follow this strategy for gaining
sustainable competitive advantages.

CONCLUSION
• This presentation has summarized that leaders of McDonald's
follow path goal theory as leadership style and various functional
areas such as finance, marketing, consumer service, human
resource for achieving the aims and objectives within the
company
• It can be concluded that company utilise SWOT analysis for
business and Generic strategy for improving the competitive
advantage in the business. This strategy involve cost leadership,
differentiation and focus which have followed by organization.

REFERENCES
• O'Cass, A., Heirati, N. and Ngo, L.V., 2014. Achieving new
product success via the synchronization of exploration and
exploitation across multiple levels and functional
areas. Industrial Marketing Management. 43(5). pp.862-
872.
• Al-Asfour, A. and Lettau, L., 2014. Strategies for leadership
styles for multi-generational workforce. Journal of
Leadership, Accountability and Ethics. 11(2). p.58.