Analysis of Leadership and Management in Shell UK: A Comparative Study

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Management and Operations

Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
First Section.....................................................................................................................................4
Second Section.................................................................................................................................9
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................13
References......................................................................................................................................14

Introduction
The operations, functions, difference of the leaders and managers are also shown in this
assessment. The various roles and characteristics of managers are shown. The title role of the
leaders, their skills and operational procedure are also analyzed. The way the managers influence
the organization and the way leaders do it is a grave factor to the organization that also has been
shown.
The first section of the study deals with the relationship and differences between a manager and a
leader. The way they influence an organization and how they can be productive for an
organization. The second section deals with the operations management and how the thinking of
the leaders is influenced by external factors.

First Section
1. An introduction to the organization and management
In this study, are going to learn about the company Shell, UK. Its full name is Royal Dutch Shell.
It is a British Oil and gas company. It is the sixth enormous company in the world in terms of
turnover. It was founded in April 1906. The combining up of two companies, which combined to
beat the Standard Oil Company, made it. Those organizations were the Royal Dutch petroleum
company and the Shell Trading and Transport (shell.co.uk, 2019). It was the main purveyor of
petroleum fuel during the First World War.
2. Definition and roles of manager and leaders, highlighting the differences between
managers and leaders
Managers and leaders are not the same thing. Managers should have leadership qualities but a
leader is not required to possess any managerial skills. The CEO of Shell, UK is Ben Van
Beurden.
A leader should be honest and true about his talks so that people will follow him . He has a
vision for the coming future like the CEO of Shell, Ben Van Beurden had years ago which turned
the organization into such a gigantic organization (shell.co.uk, 2019). A leader always inspires
his team to achieve great success like the CEO of Shell, UK did. He combined an organization
and created turnover greater than expected.
The managers of Shell, UK understood the vision of the CEO and helped him achieve it by using
tactics and managerial understanding. They are the ones who make day-to-day effort and make
the people work what the company requires. The Manager makes rules, procedures, standards,
and the way a unit will operate (Winston, 2018). A manager is the one who is responsible for the
work necessity and demands of people.
Manager Leader
It is a position given by the company based on
the righteousness of a person’s skills.
A leader is made not by his corporate skills,
but by his personal skills like Ben Van
Beurden, the CEO of Shell.

The managers have an authorized rights in the
company by the virtue of his position.
A leader may/ may not have a formal right
All the people down the hierarchy of the
managers are to follow the manager.
The people who believe in the person and his
vision, are the followers of a leader. There is
no formal procedure for that.
A manager is bound to execute all the
functions of management as and when required
by the company.
A leader makes his leader work towards a
particular objective in which he and his people
believe in.
Managerial is an enduring and immutable
position in an organization (Li, 2016).
A leader is an interim position, which depends
on the followers and the need of the situation.
All the managers should have to have
leadership qualities to make the subordinates of
the organization work.
Leaders do not need managerial skills for their
position.
A manager is well concerned and liable for all
the actions of the people down his hierarchy
and their actions.
A leader is not at all held responsible for any of
the actions and deeds of his followers (Li,
2016).
A manager's matter of concern is
organisational consortium
A leader's concern is the satisfaction of his
acolytes and their motives.
The individuals have to follow the manager
due to his position and official power
A leader is followed by self-will of the people
Table 1: Difference between a Manager and a Leader
(Source: Created by the Learner)
3. The different roles of management and leadership in application to different
organizational situations, supported by theories and concepts
The leader and the manager cooperatively work to grow and expand the organization. Various
functions of management are followed with hand-in-hand to the leadership traits which make the
organization to widen up. There are three situations faced by an organization . These are:
Stable Situation: An organization is said to be stable if it has no or minimal changes happening
and it is able to meet the market expectations with changing time. Shell, UK has a stable

situation now. From 2005 until date, it is facing a stable situation. There have been no big
changes and threats to the company, which require change (Robles, 2017).
Slow-to-moderate situations: There are many times when the firm is facing a slow change and
the employees are not ready to accept the change. Like in every organization due to the adoption
of changing technology, the engineers always have an intuition that they will not be considered
useful and important as soon as the new technology thrives in. This thought slows down the
organizational profitability of the firm slowly due to its unsatisfied and suspicious employees.
Fast Changing Situations: These situations occur when there is a shift of market trend from an
older generation to new or the organization falls in some sort of gradual catastrophe(Michelucci
et al, 2016). In 2004, Shell was facing a tough fast changing situation when its chairperson
demised, there was an oil shortage in the plants and day by day the share prices were going
down. The newly appointed chairperson, Jeroen van der Veer, understood that all of the plants
need a restructuring and he instantly along with all the managers decide the change. There was
an obstruction from the side of the employees but he was adamant. He knew the trend shift, he
along with the managers asked the managers to make the people bottom one should know the
change. That operation of the managers by convincing each one to adopt the change along with
the leadership made Shell, UK one of the supreme oil producers in the world now (shell.co.uk,
2019).
Role of a Manager:
The manager is the one responsible for all the grievances, accountability, interpersonal conflicts
and threats to the organization in a small scale which overall increases the productivity of a
company. They deal with tough situations. They should always be ready for such a situation and
bring the resolution to the table as fast as possible before it causes any problems within the firm.
In every organization, the manager is responsible for resolving the grievances of his people. The
people look up to the manager to resolve their issues and keep them updated about their issue.
They want the manager to heighten up the situation to the desired department and fix it.
Managers should act as conflict solving specialist and solve any conflicts happening between his
subordinates. He should also listen to the employees request for leave, increasing the pay and

other requests so that the employees are satisfied with the management and they act accordingly
to grow the firm by their hard work and dedication (Covey, 2017).
4. How theories such as ‘chaos theory’ and ‘management by objectives’ apply to the
organization and how these supported growth and sustainable performance including
‘situational leadership’, system leadership and contingency.
There are several theories, which govern a leader. The first theory developed in the modern
world was:
Situational Theory of Leadership: Situational leadership is a style of leadership, which an
individual develops to evolve his organization to great heights, and he must adjust the style to
suit his follower’s style to make them work. In this kind of leadership, in the case of telling and
directing, the employees are the one closely working with the leader. This leadership follows a
top-down approach. This is a mixed approach also in some situation, the leader is one who
directs but it is the follower’s decision ultimately to follow or carry out the task.
This kind of leadership is seen in Shell, UK. We can see the example of CEO merging the Royal
Petroleum and Dutch Transport to make it the supreme company of petroleum products. The
leader decides this change to take a leap over Standard Oil. The manager and operational
employees executed the decision. The manager made all the employees work in the way the
leader required. Therefore, managers play a important role in hitting the target in the required
time decided by the leader (Lussier and Achua, 2015).
In the year 2004, Shell was facing a huge shake up due to the demise of its chairperson, Sir
Philip Watts. The whole organization was facing a huge loss after which the new chairman, Van
der Veer decided to change the whole structure of the plants. He wanted to implement the
standard structure. There were great obstruction form employees from all over the world as it
meant changing 80 plants. He was determined and his vision made Shell the highest grosser in 2
years.
System Leadership: This theory of leadership allows the top management, which is the manager
and the leader take the resilient and fruitful decisions for the organization. They develop the plan
for change and adoption of new technology and the employees follow them . This is a top-down

approach, which is followed in Shell, UK. It greatly benefits the firm’s gain and decisions are
taken with adequate care and analysis (Antonakis and Day, 2017).
Contingency Style of Leadership: This theory states that the leadership style can only be fruitful
if his leadership style matches with the kind of leadership needed at hand. There is no single
leadership style, which can apply to all situations. Fred Fiedler developed it in 1958. Shell , UK
benefits from this theory as it allows for changing styles of leadership adopting to the needs of
the organization. The crisis of Shell UK and the leadership of its new chairperson in 2004 show
this kind of leadership in effect which increased the gains of Shell, UK.
5. Conclusions on how managers and leaders have made an impact on the organization and
recommendations for future improvement.
Managers are the one responsible for his subordinates accountability and behavior. If there is any
decline in the productivity by his subordinates, he is the one to improve it. If the manager ignores
such scenarios, there may be a disastrous downfall in the profitability of the organization. If a
manager is good and efficient, he sets a good image of the company in the eyes of his employees
but if he is inefficient, a bad image is formed which affects the overall throughput of the
company. This also impacts the top talents eager to join the firm and other image related issues
in the market.
Leadership is the capability of a person to point a group towards a goal and achieve the objective
through proper teamwork. Leadership is an administration, which aims at searching new
objectives for the organization and finding ways which can make his people more determined to
work towards that objective. The leader looks co-ordinates the group people, aims them in the
proper direction and decides the pattern of work. This might be beneficial to the organization as
it increases the bonding and overall throughput of the people and help the organization expand.

Second Section
 An introduction to the key operations of the organization
Shell, UK consists of many operations. It is a petroleum and gas company, which deals with
production, purification, distillation and distinction of layers of petroleum and its products. The
production operation consists of maintaining the oil well, storing hydrocarbons , filtering the
substitutes and production of the extracts at different temperature. There is a technology
operations department, which looks and researches new ways of developing the production ways
and minimizing the losses to the organization in production. They optimize inflow and outflow
of the products.
There is a logistics department, which deals in mobilizing the products into the correct market on
time. There is an HR operations department, which manages the people and also provide
inspiration to the people. They also look for needs of people for the company. The HR
department of Shell, UK looks after everything from training new individuals to their payrolls
and benefits.
 Details of each of the key operational functions, identifying the roles and responsibilities
of managers in key operational functions.
Total Quality Management
All the employees of Shell, UK are devoted to the improvement of the product and strive to
make it finer day by day. It emphasizes on improvements by making the changes periodically to
the procedures, rules and obligations. It involves its employees in taking their decisions. There
feedback is taken into consideration. This step makes the top management realize the problems
they can face and also the problems they can face in the production scenario.
Six-Sigma
Shell has been working with six sigma operations for over 12 to 13 years. Six sigma is a way of
reducing the errors by a great percentage and providing finer quality products to the people. It
reduces time and save the economy of an organization. Six Sigma is said to remove the
defectiveness of any product by 99.664 %. It is a costly method but if implemented pays for its

value. Six Sigma has increased the delivery of Shell, UK. Six Sigma decides the customer needs.
Shell, UK looks to the changing needs of the market and then decides its goal. It then researches
the problems or error faced by its products, in competition to other products in the market. The
last step involves controlling and maintaining the operations according to magnify the profit of
the institution (Kerzner and Kerzner, 2017).
 Explanation of the key operational approaches to operations management and their
value.
Operations management plays an indispensable role in the growth of an organization. There are
three key approaches to the operations management, which are generally followed by Shell, UK.
They are:
Total Quality management: Total Quality Management emphasizes on continuous and regular
improvements of the products to match up with the changing market and adapt to the changes as
it comes in. This is done by taking regular surveys with the customers and it saves the
organization regular cost of repairs and failed product rework.
The work is done one time so it saves much of the cost and improves productivity of the
organization. Shell, UK implements Total Quality Management by taking some additional steps
(Monczka et al., 2015).
Six Sigma: Six sigma is a method, which improves the performance of an organisation. Six
Sigma aims to remove the defects and errors in the product by minimizing the factors which
cause the error by a variable limit. It uses a set of quality management techniques which are
performed by an expert group of people which improve the performance of the company.
 Assess the impact of external business environment factors that affect decision-making
by leaders and managers.
Management and decision-making by managers and leaders.

There are several factors within the Shell, UK organization which impact the operations of the
company and the decisiveness of the managers and chiefs of the company. The important factors,
which affect the operations and decisiveness of the company, are:
Programmed compared to Non-programmed operations:
Programmed operations refer to the operations, which are carried out in a regular environment
and the managers, and leaders have all the analyzed data and information regarding them. The
substitutes in such a situation are well defined. The problems are solved regularly through
standard procedures (Bolden, 2016).
Non-programmed decisions on the other hand, stand for crucial decision, which the managers
and leaders have to take in a crisis, or hay wired situation. There is not any plan devised for it
and the decisions have to be made by implying risks. In February 1907, Shell Petroleum merged
with Royal Dutch Transport as a step to give a tough competition to Standard Oil. If this may
have failed, they would have incurred a huge loss. The higher management always takes these
decisions.
Information Inputs:
There must always be adequate amount of information available about the decision to be made.
Too much and too less decision may impact the company’s overall benefit and stakes. The major
decision makers always have less knowledge of the decision, the statistics and the proper market
analysis is given to them in a nutshell. The reactionary decision makers do it after collecting
every single piece of information they can get on the product (Amanchukwu et al, 2015).
Risk and Uncertainty Perspective:
The managers develop a quality of assessing the risk slowly and gradually. Some of these
qualities are based on his personal experiences and some are based on his organizational skills.
The way in which a manager or a leader assesses these risk and tensed situation show how much
a manager or leader is capable of handling his organization through perseverance or sharp wit in
strenuous situations. There are also several factors which affect the decision making of a
manager and a leader.

 How operational efficiencies can be improved successfully meet business objectives
using appropriate management and leadership approaches.
The elements of Operation Management are:
Product Selection and Design: The right worthy product and designs of the commodity are
critical for the success of an organization. An erroneous selection of the product or poor design
can lead to bad throughput and bad influence in the competition market. Therefore, every
product before launching must be thought precisely.
Process Assortment and Planning: Selection of the finest and the most supreme method for the
processing of the items or for selecting the process related things are really crucial. These include
the preference of the technology, devices, machinery , handling apparatus and automation
techniques.
Plant Location: Plant locations are crucial to the company. The Shell plant, which is the main
producer of the oils and UK’s energy, are situated at St Fergus near Peterhead in Scotland, which
is an great location for the plant. This plant provides easy mobility and transportation of the
products throughout all of the UK and it needs no shifting.
 Conclusions and supported recommendations for future improvements to be taken by
the organization.
Recommendations:
Shell is a UK based petroleum and gas company which is the super major in its field. The overall
growth of Shell is great. However, there may be some improvements, which can increase its
productivity. During the rise of the petroleum prices it should try to level the prices as much as it
can so that people believe in it for time and again. In the past years, Shell also fired 20,000
employees, which made the people have a grudge against the organization. It should be prepared
to face such situations and make sure there employees leave happily or do not get any chance to
leave the company in such conditions. Thus, it may create a bad image of the company in the
market.