Sainsbury's Leadership: Blake Mouton Model Report - Business Programme

This report examines the Blake Mouton Model, a framework for understanding leadership styles based on a manager's concern for people and production. The report analyzes the Autocratic leadership style, also known as Task management, observed within Sainsbury's. It details the positive and negative impacts of this style, such as improved productivity and clear communication in crises, but also potential demotivation among employees. The report concludes that the Blake Mouton Model is a valuable tool for managers to assess their leadership approach and provides recommendations for adopting more democratic styles, such as Middle of the Road or Team Management, to balance production with employee well-being and foster better team relationships. The report references relevant academic sources to support its analysis.

International
Foundation Programme
(Business)

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................2
RECOMMENDATIONS.................................................................................................................2
References:.......................................................................................................................................4

INTRODUCTION
Blake Mouton Model was developed by Robert Blake and Jane Mouton, under which
they present a graphic picture of leadership styles across a managerial grid. According to this
model, identification of leadership style can be done on the basis of concern of manager for
people and production. It explains 5 leadership styles i.e. Impoverished, Task, Middle of road,
country Club and team management. It is important for Human Resource Management because it
helps to understand the leadership style of competitors, which help the HR department for
making best policy for their organisation. As an individual, I was working there in a team as
subordinate and there I was led by the manager of Sainsbury and they were applying Autocratic
style. I was instructed by the manager for the purpose of completing assigned tasks. This report
is based on my observation of the organisation of Sainsbury.
MAIN BODY
Under Autocratic leadership style, leader makes various strategies and rules for
subordinates without doing any discussion in order to achieve organisational goals and targets
which is also related to the performance of employees towards their objectives (Harrison and et.
al., 2020). This leadership style comes under Task management of Blake Mouton Grid also
known as dictatorial or perish style, under which leaders are more concerned with the production
part and pay less attention on their subordinates or team members. People working in the
Sainsbury are required to the work according to the procedure, rules & regulations made by
leaders. This leadership style was giving both positive as well as negative impact on the
organisation.
It has various positive impacts on organisation such as it helps in improving productivity,
clear and direct communication is done etc. in the situation of crises, this style helps the
organisation a lot because under this style effective decisions are to be taken by the leaders in
time efficient manner, there is no need to ask anything from their subordinates, they just have to
make decisions and see the result (Smith 2020). For instance if the organisation is on peak point
and they have to increase the production to meet the need of consumers, this style will help the
organisation in the same situation by making various effective decisions strictly on instance
basis. After making various decisions, the complete organisation have to follow them. This will
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help the organisation in applying or adopting sudden changes at their workplace (Spencer-Oatey
2020).
In addition to this, Autocratic leadership style also have negative impact on organisation
because it does not offer a sense of professional ownership, also it implies lack of trust and
complete dependence of employees on leaders (Banwart 2020). Because of this leadership many
of employees got demotivated. For example Sainsbury had made a rule of working hours of 9
hours without making discussion with employees. This act influence the employees in negative
way, they will feel demotivate towards their work and this may result in labour turnover.
Autocratic style of leadership in Sainsbury is related to the Task management style of
Blake Mouton Grid because in this style, leaders mainly focus on the production and give less
importance to employees which result in increment of output in very short period of time. Along
with this, because of the strict rules and regulation, sometimes it may result in higher labour
turnover.
CONCLUSION
From the above report, it is concluded that Blake Mouton Model helps the managers to
analyse their leadership styles by a technique which is generally known as Grid Training. Along
with this, it also help the managers in the recognition of concerns about the production and
people. This also implies less involvement of employees while decision making as it is a time
consuming process and it may cause various confusion and massive activities. Furthermore, it is
analysed that Blake Mouton Model plays an important role at workplace as it help in analysing
the leadership style in the terms of concern regarding production and people in the organisation.
Sainsbury is using this grid for managing and analysing the leadership style and how the
organisation is making focus on people and production (Andersen 2019). Additionally, Task
management style in Sainsbury is mainly focusing on production and less on people.
RECOMMENDATIONS
It is recommended to the manager of Sainsbury that they should apply democratic
leadership style because in democratic leadership style, manager takes decisions only after doing
discussion with their subordinates so that they can feel motivate as being a part of management
and this will not work as strict burden over employees. By changing leadership style, they can
implement Middle of the road or team management style of Blake Mouton Grid. It will help the
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organisation in maintaining a balance between the production and people, so that employees can
work well with the feeling of motivation in the organisation by fulfilling the personal need. It
will also help the management in allowing more efficient solutions for solving problem as it
implies higher level of commitment. It will be beneficial in making team relationships by
increasing morale and job satisfaction.
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References:
Books and Journals
Andersen, J.A., 2019. Intuitive Managers across Organizations and Gender. Developing
Informed Intuition for Decision-Making, p.67.
Banwart, M., 2020. Communication Studies: Effective Communication Leads to Effective
Leadership. New directions for student leadership, 2020(165), pp.87-97.
Harrison and et. al., 2020. Leading the way: the entrepreneur or the leader?. Journal of Small
Business & Entrepreneurship, pp.1-17.
Smith, N. and Fredricks-Lowman, I., 2020. Conflict in the workplace: a 10-year review of toxic
leadership in higher education. International Journal of Leadership in Education, 23(5),
pp.538-551.
Spencer-Oatey, H., 2020. Global Leadership: Key Concepts and Frameworks. In Developing
Global Leaders (pp. 7-28). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
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