Strategic Leadership at Tesco: Overcoming Challenges with Strategies

This report examines strategic leadership within Tesco, focusing on the challenges the company faces, particularly those arising from the Covid-19 pandemic, and the strategies employed by senior management to address them. The report highlights the use of contingency theory, which emphasizes adapting leadership styles to suit different situations, such as motivating employees to work remotely by providing resources and support. It also discusses Tesco's strategies for customer engagement, including home delivery and contactless payment options, and the importance of timing in launching new products or services. The analysis concludes that effective strategic leadership is crucial for maintaining productivity and profitability, even during times of global crisis, and that adapting to changing circumstances is essential for success. Desklib provides access to a wide range of solved assignments and study resources for students.

Strategic Leadership

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................3
TASK ..............................................................................................................................................3
Challenges faced by the company...............................................................................................3
Strategies used by company........................................................................................................4
CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................5
REFERNCES:..................................................................................................................................6
Books and Journals:....................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
Strategic leadership can be understood as a practice in which managers exploits diverse
management styles to create a vision for their business that enables it to remain competitive and
adaptable in the fluctuating economic as well as technological climate (Birasnav and Bienstock,
2019). Strategic leaders are able to utilise vision to influence workers as well as departments,
developing a sense of unity, together with direct with an intent to implement change in the
organisation. The report is based upon Tesco Company. It is a global company in retailing
industry. In this report, there is a discussion on the challenges faced by the organisation and how
senior management reacted to the challenge with a strategy.
TASK
Challenges faced by the company
Covid-19 has created several big challenges for the business organisations. Such
companies find the appropriate solutions with an intent to ensure the continuity of the business.
Underneath is the discussion on challenges faced by Tesco Company:
 Ensuring safety of the employees: During the times of global pandemic, the safety of
workers and employees was one of the big challenges for the companies such as Tesco.
Employees may identified various health risk factors relied on the type of job they
perform, where they perform it as well as their own health issues. Tesco also faced
challenges in helping diversified employees ensuring fairness throughout the entire
workforce (Coffey, Connolly and Williams, 2019). Many of the employees are habitual
to work physically rather than remote working due to the lack of resources and tools to
work on. Encouraging such employees to report to work in a physical way is quite
challenging for the company.
 New product or service launch: It is also a big challenge that is faced by the company
to launch a new product or service in the market. There are many questions raised in the
entrepreneurs' mind such as what type of product should they launch which is acceptable
by customers, what is the right timing to launch or will the target masses are ready to pay
for the product and many more. Covid-19 has affected the income and earnings of the
people due to which their spending power got affected in negative terms.

 Customer services: The another big issue is the customer satisfaction and providing best
services so that they stick with the grocery brand. In the times of global pandemic,
groceries and other retail items were the topmost priority for the customers (Jones and
van Hulst, 2020). As these are essential for the consumption, consumers cannot neglect
to shop it from the stores. Physical contact in billing or payments, physical appearance in
the stores etc. are some challenges faced by the company.
Strategies used by company
Contingency theory: This theory is exploited by leaders and managers to create
effectiveness in the work. This model or theory suggests that no single style can fits in all
situations, thus, leaders have to mould their leadership patterns according to situation happened.
In addition to Tesco, leaders and managers used this leadership to motivate employees to remote
working in the times of pandemic. Influencing them to work is a great challenge for the
company. By understanding the concerns and issues of employees, the company facilitate several
facilities to them such as providing laptops, systems, free Wi-Fi connection, flexible work hours
and many more. The company also highly focused on the well-being of their employees so that
do not leave the organisation.
Customer engagement and satisfaction is very important for any organisation.
Organisations makes every possible effort to make them satisfy and happy with the services and
products. In case of Tesco, as the customers found challenging to shop offline, the company
launches its various options such as home delivery option, contactless payment, website
shopping and many more. With such solutions and changes in the strategies helps company to
retain existing customers while attracting the new ones. They also offering online shopping
exploiting plastic bags as this cut the time required to serve an order, thus, limiting the risk of
infection. Moreover, Tesco also got positive impacts in the Covid-19 pandemic times as the
company gains the rises in demand for groceries and food.
The strategy used to launch a new product is also fundamental to the company. Many
factors need to be addressed while announcing or launching any new product or service. The
time factor is important for the company to launch any new product as it reflects the interests of
customers in the product or service (Olwan, Irtaimeh and Al-Lozi, 2019). If the timing is wrong
then it may not get the desired results. With the help of experts, the company perform a good
research on such aspects to get the maximum results and outcomes. It is also vital to make

customers influenced to buy a product or service of the company. Furthermore, it is also essential
to think whether it is adaptable in market or not, and if not, then the company should make right
changes accordingly (Quansah, E. and et.al., 2021). So, Tesco can increase its profitability levels
even in the times of pandemic.
CONCLUSION
From this study, it has been concluded that strategic leadership helps managers and
leaders to use different styles of management so as to develop a business vision for the company.
Strategic leaders aims to increase the productivity and profitability of the organisation even in
the global pandemic times. There is a discussion on contingency theory which is exploited by
leaders to influence their subordinates to work. It states that leaders and managers should be
ready to use different styles and patterns to lead their employees as no single styles can be
applied to all circumstances. Apart from this, there is a discussion on challenges and strategies
used by company.

REFERNCES:
Books and Journals:
Birasnav, M. and Bienstock, J., 2019. Supply chain integration, advanced manufacturing
technology, and strategic leadership: An empirical study. Computers & Industrial
Engineering, 130, pp.142-157.
Coffey, D.S., Connolly, M. and Williams, C., 2019. Advancing Strategic Leadership: Cross-
National Perspectives. In Strategic Leadership in Social Work Education (pp. 149-160).
Springer, Cham.
Jones, S. and van Hulst, J., 2020. Leadership and Digital Transformation: Building Strategic
Conversations. Effective Executive, 23(4), pp.14-21.
Olwan, A.A., Irtaimeh, H.J.A. and Al-Lozi, M., 2019. Strategic leadership competencies and its
relationship on achieving organizational excellence: A theoretical study. Journal of
Business & Management (COES&RJ-JBM), 7(1), pp.58-79.
Quansah, E. and et.al., 2021. Strategic Leadership in SMEs: The Mediating Role of Dynamic
Capabilities. In Academy of Management Proceedings (Vol. 2021, No. 1, p. 15797).
Briarcliff Manor, NY 10510: Academy of Management.