One of the key components of a business is the organisational culture as it defines the set of behaviours, beliefs, systems, symbols and value that drives the operations, activities, performance and other crucial aspects (Alvesson and Sveningsson 2015). It is the defining factor for the method of internal and external interaction. So, it is of great prominence that an organisation maintains a sound and effective organisational culture. However, many international organisations are facing organisational culture issues and one of the major firm is Uber (Sundararajan 2014). Uber technology Inc. is the biggest taxi cab service provider and has also stepped in businesses such as food delivery, transportation network company, bicycle sharing and others. The firm however, have been engulfed in controversies regarding the sexual assault against women, discrimination within the organisation and several others. A study conducted on the Uber employee turnover identified that the women employee of the firm leaves the organisation because of hostile work environment, lack of advancement opportunities and dissatisfaction with the senior leadership (Carson 2018). Other reasons are also influencing the organisational culture of the Uber that needs to be mitigated.
Challenges
The primary challenges faced by the firm in terms of organisational culture are the negative competition, discrimination & priority, lack of transparency and inadequate HRM (human resource management) (Jordan 2017). The negative competition has filled the organisational culture with toxicity, and the seniors who have adjusted in the environment exploit the young talent and snatches their opportunities. It is developing a barrier between the young talents and established employees, which will impact the firm and its culture. The second most primary challenge is the discrimination and prioritising. The firm discriminates with the young talents and prioritise its employee who have gained certain experience. When young talents or women employee reach to complaint against any illegal or unethical act conducted by the senior employee, the talent receives negative feedback instead of help and support (Glick, Berdahl and Alonso 2018). Another one of the most primary challenge that is leading to high rate of employee turnover is the lack of transparency. The decisions made by the senior officials is not transparent and any decisions made by them has to be followed. The reason for promotion, appraisal or other felicitation of an individual without any proper reason is believed to be stealing the opportunity from the deserved one. Finally, the most prominent challenge is inadequate HRM. The HRM in an organisation is designated with the responsibility to keep the employees and the management satisfied with each other, however, the firm is failing at it (Carson 2018). The complaints and feedbacks of the young talents are ignored, discrimination promotional opportunities and others. So, it would be justified to state that the most prominent challenge driving the organisation’s cultural challenge is its HRM.
Strategy
To amend the organisational culture of the Uber and improve it, Lewin’s Model of Cultural change should be adopted (Alvesson and Sveningsson 2015). As part of the process, the first step (that is unfreezing) should be to include the employee’s as part of the process. The organisational culture should be unfreeze and the employee’s feedback should be collected for the development of the new cultural guidelines. The feedback should be collected through a mixed survey format that should consider both the closed ended and open ended questions. The responses from the employee should be compared and contrasted with the best organisational cultures such as that of Zappos, Google, Twitter and others along with the organisation’s need to develop the guidelines (Naranjo-Valencia, Jiménez-Jiménez and Sanz-Valle 2016). The next step will involves implementing the changes as part of which the changes should be implemented. However, before implementing the changes it is crucial to test the feasibility of changes. The feasibility test should also be done after the implementation to ensure the success. The changes should include non-discrimination, equal opportunity for all and other needful aspects which are directed towards human resource satisfaction. The final step would be to freeze the changes to make them stable and effective.
Leadership is defined as the act of motivating people towards achieving common goal/ goals (Bolden, Witzel and Linacre 2016). Based on the definition above the organisational leadership can be stated as the act of leading the workforce towards delivering the best deliverables to the organisational customers. Leadership is one of the primary factors, which ensures the success of the firm. Hence, it is crucial to have a strong and effective leadership in place for the success of the organisation. To support the objective of attaining effective leadership different leadership theories has been identified. However, with changing time the leadership style, strategies and theories have been challenged so that the modern needs of the leadership can be accounted. According to Bolden, Witzel and Linacre (2016), one of the primary reasons for the challenging of the traditional leadership theories is the development in the field of technology and its association with corporations. Madhav Dhakal in his paper states that the change in the technology and society demands change in the leadership style from short term objectives to long term visions (Shrestha 2017). One of the prime example is Jeff Bezos who adopted the technology instead of sticking to the traditional style of leadership and after almost two decades he is the richest man on earth. Another criticism faced by the traditional leaders is their focus on bottom-line products while the need of time is shared mission that is a win-win situation for all (Mango 2018). According to Anderson et al. (2017), Division of labours was also evident in traditional leadership theories that is being criticised by the scholars and researchers, instead they state that the leaders should focus on the cross-disciplinary.
The most prominent challenges that are faced by the current leaders in the changing world is coping up with the globalisation and technological advancements. According to Genovese (2015), both the globalisation and technological advancements offer different challenges. The most prominent challenges faced due to the globalisation is the demographic issues. The demographic issues include the intra-organisational conflicts and chaos due to gender difference, age difference, cultural & communicational difference and similar others (Martin 2015). The globalisation has led to a high influx of the immigrants into different countries, for job opportunities. They get the job with great ease because they are willing to work at a low wage in comparison to the domestic workforce. The prominence and the opportunity availed to the immigrants generally develop a challenge for the local workforce and leads to the conflict between the local work force and immigrants. Furthermore, the challenges of educating the immigrants in the working technique and tools is another challenge that needs to be managed by the leaders. The second most prominent challenge is the technological advancements that is faced by the leaders. The leaders need to ensure that the employees are willing to adopt the technological change and are comfortable with the technology so that quality work can be achieved (Genovese 2015). Based on the demographic of the workforce the plan for training needs to be developed which is a challenge as old employees are comfortable with the technology they have been using and does not want to change. The cultural and communicational difference also develop challenge for training and development that needs to cope up.
Kumho Tire, the first firm to adopt RFID (Radio Frequency identification), adopted a plan for the adoption of technology in their manufacturing process (Han and Ko 2017). The leaders selected a number of employee and gave them a demo of the manufacturing of tyres using the RFID prototype and it lead them to becoming the first firm to use RFID for manufacturing of tyres. Similar, attempts should be adopted by the leaders when managing a change, they should take the necessary action and lead by action and not only words. In another case, Apple and Google have designed its office with such innovation that it encourages interaction between the employees mitigating the demographic threat (Schawbel 2018). The future leadership theories will be dominated by the technological advancements. The reason for the above made statements is that the scholars of tomorrow who will present the leadership theories are the ones who will witness the use of technology and globalisation in their academic stage. The academic researches done by them will promote the use of technologies such as Big Data Analytics, IoT (internet of Things), VoIP (Voice over IP) in decision making (Dinh et al. 2014). It is also justified because the consideration of the technology and globalisation will offer the opportunity to present an effective leadership theory and should be considered.
European Union has the biggest GDP (nominal) around the world, that is even above United states but with the departure of the Britain from the European union (EU), the scenario will change. The Brexit (departure of Britain from EU) will bring the GDP of the EU below US. The impact of the Brexit will not only impact the GDP but will further extend to the industries. One of the industries that will be greatly affected is the automotive industry which has been booming since the past decade. The automotive industry of UK has an average production of 1.6 million cars annually of which 77% are exported. Of all the exported cars 58% are exported to the EU associated states (de Costa Cabral, Goncalves and Rodrigues 2017). The above statements have it evident that Britain’s automotive industry is greatly dependent on the European Union and Brexit will impact the automotive industry.
Toyota, one of the biggest car manufacturing firm issued a response on the decision of Britain for Brexit and they said “Back in 1992, Toyota chose the UK for its first major manufacturing operations in Europe because of the availability of skilled workforce and the presence of a strong network of suppliers. We are committed to our people and investments, so we are concerned that leaving would create additional business challenges. As a result, we believe continued British membership of the EU is best for our operations and their long term competitiveness” (Clarke et al. 2017). The concern shared by the discussed firm is a common though that is shared by many automobile manufacturer and other industries as well. The country also houses different automobile firms such as General Motors, Jaguar Land Rover and multiple others. The taxes, surcharges, permits, rise of price will lead to decrease in sales and others are the prominent challenge that will rise due to Brexit that will be faced by the organisation. The companies who are producing goods and providing services and action from UK will have to fill in the custom declaration. It will need upgradation of the business operation software.
Another challenge that will develop is the challenge of obtaining authorised economic operator status. The discussed challenge will restrict the UK based plants from gaining easy clearance at the EU borders (Inglehart and Norris 2016). Omission of the free-trade will also be a challenge that needed to be coped up with for mitigating the impact of the Bexit. Supply chain management will be the biggest issue for the automotive companies and they will also have to audit the international contracts with objective of renegotiating (Dhingra et al. 2016). Another one of the most promising challenge would ne the nationality of the employee who will be impacted by the Brexit.
The above discussed challenge could be coped up by signing a transition deal with the EU as it will help the organisations to avail the advantage of EU partners while keeping their plants at UK (Hix 2018). However, the discussed solution is short-term and in long term, the firms will have to come up with a new strategic plan for attaining the smoothness of business. So, as a resolution for the long term strategy the firms should adopt a change management model for the coping up with the challenges posed by the Brexit. Korter’s Model of change, McKinsey 7-S and several other models are available for the change management. However, for the discussed scenario Lewin’s Change Management Model would be adequate because to adopt the change effectively, the firms will have to reassess the whole processes and guidelines of their organisation and the selected model would greatly assist (Hussain et al. 2018). The firm’s need to unfreeze all their processes and guidelines of operations, post which they need to negotiate on different contracts, terms and deals for trade after Brexit. During the unfreeze status transition deal can help them. In the second phase they need to implement the change and then with assurance should free their processes and guidelines again.
The change management in the discussed scenario has enabled a lot of learning because the change in discussion is not assured of what changes will be made. The reason for the above made statement is that the change will be impacted by the ending contracts that is signed between UK and the EU. Furthermore, the broad impact of the change also needs to be accounted and it have helped in learning a lot. The success of the proposed change management can be evaluated on after Brexit is completed, but it would be justified that researching, identifying problems and impacts are some of the key leaning from Brexit and impact on automobile industry.
Leadership is one of the most challenging task and to attain the position as a leader is challenging then justifying it is the biggest challenge (Bolman an. The author’s believe is that the leaders should lead by action ad Deal 2017) example rather than just by notifications, memos, emails and instructions. Hence, the action-centred model of leadership is the most suitable for the author. The vison of leadership that is supported by the author is that the leaders should be involved with the team so that their issues, expectations and capabilities can be evaluated and processed accordingly to achieving the goal of leadership (Antonakis and Day 2017). The understanding of the team and individual needs will help in making decision that are supportive towards achieving the task and motivating everyone for moving towards a common goal (Tannenbaum and Schmidt 2017). However, the team should also be accountable for their activities and evaluation is one of the best ways to attain it. Evaluation will help in identifying talents that needs felicitation and talents that needs to be worked upon. It also mitigates the challenges such as ethical issues and human rights violations that will help in a sustainable leadership.
Action centred leadership is one of the most efficient and easy leadership models that are greatly appreciated by the modern businesses. It takes account for three primary activities and that being achieving the task at hand, managing the team and managing individuals (Fairhurst and Connaughton 2014). None of them are separate entities but overlap each other. However, the need for assessing the team and individuals individually can be justified by the fact that an individual’s goals and agendas may not be same as that of the team. However, the individual goals can be made compatible with that of the team by evaluating, understanding and taking the necessary action for the individual need (Haifetz and Linsky 2017). So, the model of action centred leadership is compatible in nature with the leadership vision and values of the author.
The author is attempting to made a career through MBA which demands a lot of leadership skills. The action centred leadership compliments the author’s style of leadership and will even assist in attaining the position of a perfect (or at least a near perfect) leader (Dalton 2015). The companies of the today’s world are pursuing hierarchy or leadership grid models which can be complimented by the selected model. In both the hierarchy and leadership grid model an individual holds command over other group and other individuals have their own set of individuals to command over (Kumar, Adhish and Deoki 2014). The leading individuals can easily account for the three activities of the action centred leadership for their group. So, the leadership brand selected will prove to be effective and efficient in the career that is being pursued by the author.
The leaders also need to evaluate themselves for identifying their weaknesses as they are on top of the chain and there is no one to evaluate them. Hence, as part of the self-evaluation, the leader may need help and the author did the same and took assistance of three of different team members. The evaluation revealed that the most prominent strength of the leader was the attitude of completing the activity as a team. It was identified that the author will get the team together to complete the task under any circumstances and the approach selected by the author was the most appreciable aspect. The author instead of bribing the team by money or name or fame for achieving the task motivated them to look at the long term benefit offered by the completion of the task. The author in the process off motivating ensured that the individual benefits are discussed. However, one of the weakness that was identified that at moments the leadership style of the author was becoming dominant due to the motive of completing task which could be challenging for the team.
Hence, the author will work towards motivating the employees more efficiently and develop the discussed skill by accounting for an in-depth level off communication both individually and as a team. While, to mitigate the weakness the author will attempt to find better ways of getting the task done by the team rather than becoming over dominant. It will be attained by adopting a softer approach for communicating the neds of the task completion at both individual and at team level.
References
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