Engineering Leadership: Sasol Company Management Analysis Report

This report provides a detailed analysis of Sasol, a South African chemical and energy company. It examines the company's background, vision, mission, and objectives, along with a critical evaluation of its organizational culture, short-term and long-term plans, and corporate social responsibility initiatives. The report delves into stakeholder analysis, competitive advantages, and the strategic approaches adopted by Sasol, including a SWOT analysis. Furthermore, it identifies essential management skills and leadership styles necessary for the company's success. The report references key sources to support its findings, offering a comprehensive overview of Sasol's operations and strategic positioning within the industry.

ENGINEERING
MANAGEMENT
Leadership : Sasol
chemical and energy
company
Location : South Africa
Student Name:

Table of content
 Organization background - Salol
 Critical analysis of vision, mission & objectives
 Organization culture
 Critical analysis of short term and long terms plans
 Corporate social responsibility
 Stakeholder analysis
 Critical analysis of competitive advantage
 Critical analysis of strategic approach adopted by Salol
 SWOT analysis of Salol
 Essential management skills and leadership styles needed
 References
Table
of
Conte
nt

Organization Background
 Sasol was established in the year 1950 in region of South Africa
 Sasol is an international integrated chemicals & energy corporation
 It has expertise in technologies and employing approx. 32000 people across 32 countries.
 It has developed & commercialized technologies in order to produce a range of premium
products such as liquid fuels, chemicals and low-carbon electricity.
 Major projects in South Africa and Northen America
 Maintain its position as nation’s biggest investors in wealth projects & expand in high-tech
research and development.
 It has been registered on the JSE in SA & New York Stock Exchange in the United States

Critical analysis of vision and mission
 After observing vision, mission and objectives of the company, it was observed that
(sasol.com):
 Sasol has a customer oriented focused delivery approach for its business. They have sold more
than 7 million tons of quality chemical products annually, to more than 8,000 customers across
130 countries and have identified more than 50% of the value enhancing opportunities for their
customers and stakeholders; leveraging digitization
 Sasol has a structed process and criterions for Human resources; Sasol has invested around R2
bn in skills enhancements and has recruited thought leaders with domain knowledge & highly
skilled engineering staff
 Sasol manufactures & sells premium chemical and energy products on a competitive rates;
there are focused on increasing customer footprints and become leaders in Chemical Industry
 Sasol is focused to deliver value to its customers and other stakeholders; thereby maintaining
South African heritage value with each chemical product delivered (Omarjee, 2017)
 Aims to build good organizational culture around to enable faster organic growth
missio
n
visionGoal

Model of
organizationa
l Culture at
Sasol
Safety &
Sustainabili
ty
Develop,
empower,
retain
Employees
Innovation
and
digitalisati
on in
processes
Respect &
integrity in
team
Create &
comply
with rules
Value to
stakeholder
s
Ownership,
accountabil
ity high
performanc
e
Organizational Culture

Critical analysis of Short term & long goal
• Sasol is adopting value based strategy where it aims to deliver
valuable products and services to their suppliers along with
developing technology which enables them to Emphasis on reducing
debt from balance sheet, & Start executing LCCP (integratedreport.sasol.com, 2018)
• With adopting new technology and production system, Sasol is successively excel in
market and ROI for shareholders is increasing. The growth rate is approx. 20%.
• Sasol aims to grow taking their shareholders with them as they are planning to keep
Ozambique as a long term strategic partners and deliver best quality products to them
• Research accurately to predict demand of products in the market on daily basis and
maximize shared value and lessen industry threat for key partners by developing
accurate R&D. company has increased its investment in R&D by 20% since last year and
aim to optimize the available resources
• Sasol is looking for low cost operation and hence looking to establish their plants
wherever there is a least investment required, therefore planning to start operation in
West Africa
GoalLong
term
Short
term

CSR at Sasol
 Deliver value to key stakeholder by designing and developing technology
and processes which converts low-cost hydrocarbon feedstock into a range
of high-value product streams
 Considers assets, skills and relationships while considering CSR at Sasol
 Human Capital – considers the aspect of human right
 Social Capital
 Natural Capital – reduce CO2 emission and climate change impacts -
 Financial Capital – increase Social investment
 Manufactured Capital – Sustainable manufacturing processes
 Intellectual Capital - Governance and stakeholder management
 68th rank in CSR out of 17,334 companies

Stakeholders and responsibility, Relationship
 Media roundtables – Regular meetings and insights by CEO
 Employees – Motivation and high performance tactics
 Government – Collaboration and trust
winning deals
 Communities – Sasol for Food initiative

Competitive advantage of Sasol
Largest producer of synthetic fuel/motor fuel from coal
• Inherited strong technical and operational efficiency
• Competitive cost advantage due to large economies of scale
• Experienced energy and chemical R & D team for designing
sustainable processes
• Establishes customers relationship national and international
• Sasol has value based company strategy (MÜLLER, 2018)
• List of top four Sasol Ltd. competitors in
market
• 1. ExonMobil Corporation Ltd
• 2. Royal Dutch Shel plc.
• 3. Chvron Philips Chemical Company LLC
• 4. BP plc

Critical analysis of strategic approach
Sasol adopted three-pronged approach
 First - extract value efficiently from its established product range to retain
market share and remain competitive in the market; this involves a review of its
assets.
 Second – Focused on value-based growth , expansion of chemicals business,
Continuous R&D & production in Mozambique & West Africa, enhance level of
presence in Southern Africa.
 Third - systematic resource and capital allocation, discontinue investing in
greenfields gas-to-liquids (GTL) projects, oil filtering capacity

SWOT analysis of Sasol
Strength
 Salol has greater and skilled workforce of around 34000 across 40 countries , enables
them to deliver quality products and services
 Sasol has launched its business covering every horizon of the world such as America ,
Asia and Africa and still counting more
 It has highest diverse and cash generative product portfolio which helps them to reduce
the risk
Weakness
 As it has established in Eskoms, few moments their products gets interrupted due to
power cut
 It needs to develop more in growing region of the world such as Asia pacific to generate
more revenue
 Legal issues of collusion and excessive pricing from Govt. hamper their brand image

SWOT analysis of Sasol
Opportunity
 Sasol has capabilities to develop internationally
 The government project names Coal to Liquid has enabled Sasol to promote itself as a
sustainable brand in the mining industry
 The demand for global energy is growing and therefore Sasol has good opportunity to
capitalize on demand
Threats
 However government of SA has stringent legal practices in the industry
 The profit margin in the industry is volatile which may affect Sasol revenue adversely
 change in foreign trade regulation affect the international business of sasol